Big Honor Today

We were hanging out with Vladik, as usual, in the large open room on the 2nd floor when we saw the director going up the stairs to the third floor. We smiled at her and it turns out she was actually coming to invite us up to the 3rd floor too. She told Vladik to bring his mom and pop :) upstairs to the gym so we could watch the competition. It is not a gym as we would think of one but really just a very large classroom (high ceilings as are most in these older buildings) with gym equipment, like mats, balance beams, pull up bars, basketball net, and some other gymnastics equipment to which I do not know the name. The older kids were separated by class and wearing mostly matching shirts so it kind of looked like our version of field day. Except for not all the competitions were silly, there were also competitions of doing the most pull-ups, balance beam routines, boys doing gymnastics routines on that big padded beam thing with the 2 handles on it and the parallel bars (I think that is what they are called and I got a geometry reference in so I am happy), and building these awesome human pyramids with like 8 or 10 kids. And the scores were tallied and awards were handed out at the end. It was really long. Lasted until 6:30 so Vladik got a little antsy like the last 30 mins but I didn't want to leave because we felt really privileged that the director invited us in. We had been told that we would be allowed to hang out with our kid but were to kinda stay away from the other kids, but that is not what happened tonight. It really was an honor to be invited in to watch and we made sure to say "spe-see-ba" quite a few times (means thank you in Russian). Vladik will have a similar competition tomorrow but we are told the younger kids will have a shorter competition. So hopefully we will get to see that as well. Without having our translator around today we weren't able to ask what time Vladik will be in the competition tomorrow and Vladik didn't seem to know so hopefully we will be there when it happens.
On another note, as excited as I am to be here spending all this amazing time with Vladik and with Keith, I am really missing the other part of this wonderful family of mine... Jackson! He is such an awesome kid and my parents say he is doing really well at home with them. I am so proud of how much he has matured and what a responsible and cool kid he is. I just miss him like crazy! So if you see my kid, tell him his mom and dad love him and miss him. He is certainly hearing it enough from us on the phone/skype all the time!

Our Sunday Excursion

The view out our bedroom window this morning.

On our way to "Main Street" we pass this fabulous Nail Bar

This look is SO unusual here that I had to take a picture of the guy with dreadlocks and baggy pants

I was playing the game, what does Luhansk, Ukraine have in common with Atlanta, Georgia. I found graffiti...

This is the drink I ordered at the City Cafe because it looked good in the picture not because I could actually read what was in it. Don't be alarmed, the little class with clear liquid is not a shot of vodka but, rather, a small glass of water. Still can't figure out what it was for... The drink itself had whip cream (lots of it) icecream, coffee, and the yellow stuff at the bottom was a really sweet fruit flavored syrup. Weird.

Showing the inch thick ice that coats the sidewalks. I look like I am at least 200 pounds, lots of layers...

We decided to get some food from one of these street kiosks but the pictures were on the outside so we couldn't point and expect the workers inside to careen their heads out the window and see what we were pointing at so we took pics on the digital camera and then showed the lady what we wanted. Keith's idea. Very creative, huh? This is a pic of the one I ate. The outside is sweet like a pancake and the inside was meat (maybe pork?!?!), onions, and cheese. Very yummy.

This one turned out to be bananas and chocolate sauce. Super yummy!

This was Keith's ham and cheese one.

And this was the coffee I ordered. It tasted so awful, like dishwater, but I was REALLY cold so I drank most of it anyways :(

Pictures of our time at the orphanage so far...

This photo had to be taken for Vladik's passport.

This is the main school building, not where the children sleep/live.

This is the building where the younger kids live, including Vladik.

He liked to wear my purple hat!

Vladik yelling goodbye to us from his 2nd story window.

This time Vladik wanted to wear not only my purple hat but my mittens and big green jacket too.

Keith and Vladik playing in the school yard.

The toilets actually have a platform built around them so that they are "squatting" toilets...

Pictures of our time at the orphanage so far...

He was very intrigued by figuring out how to play games on our Ukrainian cell phone

Great Day!

Had a fabulous day today! On our way to the orphanage we stopped a place called the City Cafe to pick up some sandwiches to take with us. So today, instead of sending Vladik to lunch at 1pm and us going to have lunch by ourselves, we all ate lunch together. So we spent an extra hour with Vladik today. We played outside, Keith and Vladik watched the Simpsons and played video games on the laptop, and (of course) Vladik ate and ate and ate! We took two videos today of us playing on the ice in the yard behind the orphanage. The audio was a little off timing when we watched them for some unknown reason but you can still understand.

More Pictures....

I was obsessed with taking a pic of our groceries. Turned out that we thought we had bought milk (center of pic) because it was white and had a cow on it, but it was really this stuff they call "keffer" which is like sour cream yogurt - not good on cereal!

Pictures from around Kiev. Didn't get to do much sightseeing unfortunately though. This is the old city center.

This is a beautiful church that was right next to the building where we had our SDA appointment. They were having to reinforce the foundation because over the many years it has been there it has slowly been sliding into the river below!

This pic is to show Jax two different makes of cars they have here that we don't have in the States. One is a Skoda, don't know the other one... and you can see they park on the sidewalk. It is like this everywhere in downtown Kiev. No need for parking garages!

Bacon Pringles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

This is our train ride (15 hours overnight) to Luhansk (pronounced Loogonsk).

I ordered a coffee. It was black as night and tasted AWFUL! But I felt bad giving the nice train lady back a full cup of coffee so I forced myself to drink it like medicine.

Train toilet. When you stepped on the pedal to "flush" you could see the train tracks racing past below us. It just dumped it out on the ground!

Ukrainian countryside