Tuesday Time...

We walked to the school again today. We made it in 33 minutes!

And today I saw Masha!! (I’m sorry Jen, Nastia is sick and still with her grandma, I asked if she’d be there soon and no one could give me an answer so I went ahead and gave Masha your package. She was very shy about looking at it so I tried to show her and get video-I'll send it to you directly-I told her through my great sign language skills to take pictures and bring me the camera’s and I’d take them on the airplane back to you. I'll keep asking about Nastia and try to get pictures of her before I leave. I did post a video of Masha at the bottom of this post. I found the translator to help-I hope you can hear it!)

I also got to take pictures of two darling children…

This little girl (with very short hair) is Karina Sotnikova she is 10 years old and likes to draw, read, write, play games, fairy tales and act. She is tiny, very petite and has a beautiful face. I'm not sure why her hair is so short. But her eyes just sparkle!

This is Eugene Lesnyak age 10. He likes to read, draw, construct things, puzzles, football and tennis. He seems very serious. This is him attempting to smile. He's also seems on the short side as my Alex is a head taller than him and roughly the same age. Both children were shy but who wouldn't be with this crazy Amercian woman snapping your picture and asking you questions?

At one point I was told there were seven children, then four and when it came down to it, they only brought these two. Maybe later they'll let me take more? For more info contact Elliana @ elliana@adoptionway.com

Lex was super excited to see us again today, but it was a short day as Lex had to do homework at five. James and I thought we came up with a fabulous and fun way to work on English. We had the kids draw simple pictures in duplicate on small pieces of paper and write the English word under them and then we played Concentration. We thought that would be such a great idea but they didn’t like it too much. Then we played a little more Hot Dice and took Lex too the store to get treats to share with is class.
(I brought him new clothes and switched out the Sunday clothes so I could launder them before court on Friday. I figured if I supply his clothes and take them back and forth with me, they won’t get lost in the orphanage? And besides, he looks so cute in clean nice clothes.)

After a rip-roaring session of pelt the parents with tennis balls I got lap time with lots of hugs and snuggles before he had to go do his homework.

James and I walked to the train station to see if we could figure out how he gets on the train tomorrow but although we were successful in finding it, we couldn’t make heads or tails as to what train he gets on, we’ll have to get Constantine or Oleg to help us.
Then we successfully took a bus back home. Yea for us!
While walking home from the bus stop we saw these eight dogs just lounging around. Stray dogs run rampant here. At least once a day you hear a dog fight. I heard that the rabies shot series here is a forty shot series here so we steer clear of the dogs around here. And they steer clear of us too.I thought it was kind of ironic that they were sitting under a cat food advertisement!

So tomorrow I’m on my own. Straders are heading to Kiev too and it will just be me without any facilitators or translators. However, James will be back that night as well as Oleg so it will be a good practice for my ten day wait when I'll be alone for part if until the Rast’s get here. (Hurry Amy!)
Miss and love you all. Especially my four back home!