Meeting the Kids

As you can see from our last pictures, the leaves have begun to fall here and the weather has been beautiful for the last 2 days. We were not able to connect to the internet yesterday, so we have 2 blogs today.

Today has been a very long day of waiting outside of the inspector's office (4+ hours) in Bili Tserkva (which means "white church" and there is one in town). We had to stop and pick her up to go to the orphanage for the first time. Finally, at 4pm we left with the inspector in our car to go see the kids for the first time. The orphanage is very small with only about 50 kids. We met with the orphanage director for a few minutes as she sent for the kids to come to her office. The youngest 2 came in and could not take their eyes off of us (out of curiosity). Immediately the director explained who we were and why we were there. The girl seemed excited, the little boy was scared and began to cry. She told them to come outside and play. We had a flat soccer ball to play with, but it did not take long for them to begin to enjoy being with us. After a while the oldest boy came to play and he joined right in. It is easy to tell that they crave a male role model, but had little to do with me. (This is the opposite of the experience that we had with Katie). It took all of about 10 minutes for all other children and teachers to find out that "Americanski's" were in the play yard and everyone came to see us. We only had about 1 hour to visit with the kids, but at the end of that time we got the thumbs up from all 3. We will be able to visit with them tomorrow and will leave early in the am to do a little shopping first. It was easy to see that these 3 are going to keep me extremely busy and the little boy, E., is a live wire and it is apparent that he is not afraid of anything or anyone!! They are all the cutest kids.

Sasha was also able to find an affordable, nice apartment for us close to the orphanage. Thankfully, we got to and from the orphanage safely with Sasha driving. Those who have ever ridden with him know that the tires touch the pavement only a couple of times per mile!! The driving is something you would have to experience. One-way streets are optional, speed limits are optional, park anywhere you can including the sidewalk, and if you can fit 5 lanes of cars in between 3 white lanes, they do so.

After our visit and drive back to Kiev, we went to The Double Coffee for a late dinner (everyone knows I'll drink coffee just about any time). Katie and Kevin both ordered a "cheese hamburger". When it came to the table, Kevin said, "It is chicken". It looked like chicken on a big bun with lettuce and tomatoes. He took one bite of it and we found that it was a huge piece of fried cheese on a hamburger bun, but no hamburger meat!!! It was very good.

Well, we are about to go to bed because we have a very busy day tomorrow.

We miss you all!!!!