Yesterday we got some very good news. Nastia’s papers are done. The school administrator had them ready two days before promised. So now, it’s just a matter of getting Sasha’s in shape, which shouldn’t be an issue now that the relatives have signed off. Then we can go send everything to Kiev for the state adoption agency to bless, and hopefully have a court date by Friday. As always here, the situation is fluid. But this is the best case. And if it happens we’ll be home by new years.
Lauren and I are touched by the care and concern that Sasha’s school has shown for him that we gave them money to buy some sports equipment, and we told the administrator we’d like to work with them to raise funds for an athletic field with a soccer pitch and basketball court. These kids have nothing. They share their clothes, their toys, and whatever love and attention they can get. But they are mostly happy, healthy kids who act with tenderness and generosity to each other, and with great courtesy to their guests. Right now their recreational facilities are minimal. A rocky yard full of weeds, a basketball court that looks as though it were abandoned 20 years ago with rickety rotting backboards and bent, rusty rims, and a weed ridden, dirt playing surface. We haven’t even seen anyone using it. I’m guessing it’s because we haven’t seen any balls of any kind: basketball, soccer, tennis.
So a real facility would be an amazing blessing. We’ll keep you posted. And we’ll try to get some pictures of the field on the blog soon.
We showed Nastia a slide show with our computer of all the pictures we have of her and Sash. She was awestruck. So were the administrator and her assistant. Then we had to show it to the accountant who started to cry.
We played with Nastia for a couple of hours and Lauren brought out the alphabet coloring book she had brought along to give her her first English lessons. She does catch on pretty quickly. She’s not slow at all as we had been told, just behind. She likes to go into Lauren’s black plastic bag looking for treats, and of course we gave her a lollipop and an orange to eat. Her classmates came in for a while and we all played together. Nastia took pictures of us and of her friends with our camera. She seems so proud of it and we love that she gets that what’s ours is hers now. She learned to say Mommy, and although was too shy to say Daddy yet, she gets what the word means.
One of her classmates is a possibly retarded girl named Svieta. All the kids take her under their wings and treat her specially. She kept wanting to sit on my lap yesterday. Today our translator said that the teacher told her that Nastia asked her afterwards, “hey, what are you doing sitting on my Daddy’s lap all day?”
At lunchtime we headed over to Sasha’s school. His class was still taking their nap. The teacher went and woke him up, and he was so cute as he stumbled into the hall and saw us and smiled in that shy way with his head halfway down and his fist pressed up to his cheek. He came over for a big hug.
We sat with him alone for an hour. We showed him the slide show also and then he had to play with my computer. As we’ve mentioned, he is a very persistent and focused little boy. He wants to figure out everything for himself. So we couldn’t do anything but let him bang away on the keyboard for half an hour, watching the screens come up and close down. I was amazed to see the computer do a few things I didn’t even know it could do myself.
He must have sat on Michael’s lap for a whole hour without moving. Then we played with the other kids for a while and went into the snack room to be alone with him again. There Lauren gave him a big banana which of course he insisted on peeling himself and eating the whole thing. Lauren colored with him for a while and tried to teach him a few words in English. He is for some reason very impressed with pens, and that is unofficially his first English word. Today we said, “Dai meni pen” (give me the pen) and he did! He does call Michael Dada which it makes him feel very happy each time he hears it.
The teachers all tell us that both Nastia and Sasha have come out of their shells since we started visiting. The are happier and more assertive. I think this would be true of any of the kids living here if they had a new mommy and daddy too. We try to give them all attention, and there are definitely some of them that we would take home too in a perfect world.
Last night we got in a couple of hours on the internet and watched a few Seinfeld episodes before going to bed. As it was Saturday night, club Tik Tak was in full swing outside our window, but it really didn’t keep us up.
Today, Sunday we visited Sasha first and then Nastia. More coloring, more English lessons. She’s already learning her ABC’s and can count to 10 in English. In fact, the only word she knew to read in English is love! (“Lou-vay”) She writes her name in English now and proudly says ‘Nastia Gold’. We met with Sasha’s administrator this morning and she explained the importance of doing everything by the book and being patient. She had a problem a few years ago when she was accused of wrongdoing in an adoption case where the birth father wasn’t listed on the child’s documents. In that case she released three children to a foreign couple and the relatives of the father made a stink. The case went all the way to the supreme court. Although the administrator prevailed in the end and cleared her name, it was apparently three years of hell for her.
What can we do? Either she’ll proceed apace now that Sasha’s relatives have agreed or she’ll take her time. We did express our understanding of her situation, thanked her for all of the love and care the school gives the kids, and said we’d like to make a donation to buy something of use to the school. She said that was good, but we’ll have to wait until the papers are done to discuss the details…