Our day...

Hello everyone. Today is a beautiful sunny, breezy day with no humidity. It is about 90F in the sun but not unpleasant.

On our visit to the orphanage this morning, the other children were playing in “our” playground. We were surprised to see them but it was a lot of fun to have some interaction with them and see Emma in her real environment. There are about 12 kids ranging between 3-6 (I think…it’s hard to tell). The rest of the kids are away at camp so this seems to be the remaining group. It took them awhile to warm up to us but after a while they were climbing all over us, brushing my hair, & clamoring for any little bit of attention they could get. Emma seemed to handle it fine at first but occasionally she would push one of them aside if they were getting too friendly for her taste. There is one little girl who took a particular fancy to Chris and Emma said something to her which I think was “Natasha…get away from him…he’s MY Papa”. It’s funny, because she doesn’t have any kind of jealousy of Lucas but her friends are a different story. It really is survival of the fittest and they tend to all be a bit on the rough side (completed understandable). I took some pictures and they would each take turns looking at the photos on the camera. They were so amazed to see themselves. Lucas didn’t seem all that enthusiastic to have our little area invaded by these loud and boisterous kids. He kept pretty close to either Chris or I or he was off collecting shells by himself. He wasn’t jealous of our attention to them…I think he was a little scared of them. He kept asking “when are they leaving?” They are so cute, funny and so independent. I wish all of them could find families of their own. It is hard to know if any of them are even available for adoption since that requires termination of parental rights (if parents are alive). It is so apparent how starved for one on one attention these kids are. They were all calling us Mama and Papa and it is hard to imagine what their future holds. They are all so cute with the potential for great things. It breaks my heart to know that their future is probably bleak and there’s nothing we can do about it. But…we have our Emma and that is something we are so grateful for.

We ventured out to the local pizza parlor last night for dinner. We’d passed it a few times and decided last night that it was time to try the infamous Ukrainian pizza. Fortunately for us they have a menu in English so we were able to make an informed decision. We settled on the ham, garlic & cheese pizza. We were tempted by the “tongue” or the “chicken’s liver” pizza’s but thought that was a little out of our comfort zone. Well our pizza arrived with ham, garlic and cheese…and mushrooms (yuck!). It was pretty good…we ate the whole thing, but that might be due to the fact that we were really hungry. The whole meal including drinks cost about $7 so we’re definitely not complaining. Food is pretty cheap to buy, but we are finding it difficult to find things we are familiar with. We finally figured out which container was milk so we’ve been successful in that endeavor…something we were never able to accomplish on our last trip!
We got a phone call from Luba today and she said court is scheduled for next Friday August 10 (instead of the 13th). This is good news!

Well, that’s all for today. It’s time for a quick nap before heading back to the orphanage to see our sweet girl.

Love you all,
L,C, L & E

PS: Bob- Ukraine is divided. Western Ukraine speaks predominantly Ukrainian (we adopted Lucas from Lviv and they spoke Ukrainian) but the East (including Kyiv) still speak predominantly Russian. During Soviet times, Ukrainian was not “allowed” so the majority of people learned to speak Russian. Many people can speak both and the “Official” language has been declared to be Ukrainian but the East still holds onto the Russian language. The east vs. west dilemma was the main reason for the Orange Revolution in November 2004 when Yushenko and Yanukovich were battling for the presidency.