Trip Report-Part 2

Visit with SnowWhite. So we wake up, get all of our stuff together (we can't leave anything in the Kyiv flat) and get on a mini-bus to XXX early in the morning. Its a 2 hour drive, but its comfortable enough. Thankfully the bus had a little place in the "trunk" to put our bags. We get to the city center and take a shabby little "local" bus towards the detsky dom. All the old babushkas are looking at us all weird - we stand out as Americans in the smaller towns because of our straight white teeth, my glasses, and I guess our clothes. We tried to dress like Ukrainians....and we were mistaken as Ukrainians in Kyiv more than once....and we are NOT typical fat older Americans like most of the Americans they are used to seeing at the detsky doms...but still they KNEW somehow. We get off the local bus and start walking with all our bags. It was a long dirt road, but it looked familiar to me from my trip in January. When we got the the little green shed at the branch in the road, I knew which way to go. I even remembered where the directors office was. We go in, hug the director, she invites us in to her office and tells us to sit down and put our bags down while she has someone get SnowWhite for us. G talks to her in Russian about our visit, plans, and the status of SnowWhite's paperwork - when suddenly in runs this little elf of a girl screaming "Mayleesa" and jumps into my arms. G introduces her to Andrew, whom she has seen photos of but never met, and she immediately hugs him. We give her her gifts - some we brought with us and some were left at the orphanage over the summer a charity group. As before she is fixated on the cameras and photos. We go back to her groupa, play with her and her friends, she shows off her gifts etc. We were even allowed to have "alone" time with her - with no caretaker supervising us. She flat-out refused to draw pictures for us with paper and crayons....but she loved Papa's laptop! LOL She draw us a few pictures there and even wrote our names over and over in Cyrillic and her own name in English. She really bonded with Andrew - drawing pictures of him and her together and "forgetting" to include me! haha Then it was time for the kids to have lunch and nap, so we went to the market to get fruits and juices for a birthday party/graduation party for SnowWhite. Her birthday was earlier in that month. G had arranged for a driver, Vladimir, and he drove us to the local Rynok to buy fruit - we got plums, tangerines, and bananas. The kids get fruit fairly often, but nothing exotic like plums, so this would be a treat for them. We also went to a indoor market and bought juice, cookies and lollipops. When we got back to the detsky dom (which translates as "Children's Home"), SnowWhite is waiting by the door for us and comes running. We have the little party and the kids make a mess with the plums! None of them could unwrap the lollipops, so Andrew and I became the official lollipop unwrappers. SnowWhite went through her gifts and pulled out the toys she didn't like to give to her classmates. She was very possessive and didn't want to give anything up, but we finally convinced her to share. She also had tons of fun with the polaroid camera we brought - telling her classmates to get together for group shots, assigning her friends to "shake" the pictures as they came out of the camera. The kids just LOVED seeing the photos instantly - so it was worth the expense of the polaroid film. When she ran out of polaroid film she commandeered my digital camera. After the party we left the orphanage and Vladimir took us to dinner at a local cafe he recommended. It was empty, but very nice and the food was good. The staff had issues giving us back change when we paid the bill though - and we paid with a $40 bill (200 grivna bill), so that tells you about their economy there - don't ever pay for anything with a bill bigger than a $20 (100 grivna) as they likely won't have change. That night we stayed at Vladimir's mother in laws home/flat. Ludmilla and her grandson (Vladimir's stepson) lived in the flat - we slept in Ludmilla's bedroom, George slept in Dennnis's bedroom, and they slept on the fold out couch. That was the coolest part of our trip I think - staying with an actual Ukrainian family. Ludmilla is a caretaker at SnowWhite's orphanage - though not for her groupa. She knew SW by reputation though LOL. She told us alot about how the orphanage is run, how the caretakers get paid and just the orphanage culture in general. It was eye-opening. The caretakers actually get paid more than the average Ukrainian - they consider being an orphanage caretaker to be hazard pay type of work - like police or firefighters here inthe US - because these kids are "disturbed" "defective" and "genetically inferior." Dennis was a hoot. He is 7 years old - same as SW- as was starting his first day at school the next day. They REALLY dress up kids for the first day of school - this boy had a tuxedo hanging on the door ready to go! He spoke no English, but knew the English alphabet very well- and when he tried to talk to us, we'd tell him in Russian "We don't speak Russian"...so he'd say whatever he was saying again, slower and louder. LOL It was the same thing with the kids in SW's groupa. No matter how many times you tell them you don't speak Russian, they continue to try. SW was smarter than that though - she was very adept at sign language and a few English words. Andrew wow'd Dennis with the laptop, showing him how to draw like SW did, how to play pinball on it and such. These kids picked up computers very well - Ludmilla told us that at the orphanage the kids actually have 2 computers and they get classes on how to use them. Ludmilla herself was a very warm and gracious host. They had no hot water in the building, but she boiled two HUGE pots of hot water on the stove and poured them into the bath tub for Andrew - without us asking BTW. We were fine without hot water, but once she had done it we couldn't turn her down and be rude. Though she worked at the detsky dom, her father and husband (not sure if she was divorced or he was dead? but he wasnt there)were bee keepers. They made honey...so she breaks out this huge honey comb from the cabinet and slices us off some pieces....I really didn't want to eat it as I am really not a honey fan to begin with, but again, not to be rude, I ate it. I almost puked, but I ate it. Andrew was laughing at me. You chew the honey while its still in the comb - suck all the honey out and spit out the waxy comb. Lovely. Next morning we go to the detsky dom again and visit SW- she runs into the little locker room yelling "Mayleesa" again and jumps into my arms. We play with the kids again, and even got to go outside with SW- totally unsupervised, just the 4 of us. We played a bit on what little playground equipment they had and then sat on a bench. G explained to SW everything -and I mean EVERYTHING. That we wanted to adopt her, was that ok with her, yes, when could she go home with us, why was it taking so long, about the change in ministries, about her birth mom, everything! She even asked some very mature and thoughtful questions, which G then answered to her satisfaction. We finally got our cell phone working too and make two short phone calls to our parents in the states so they could hear SW's voice - she spoke in English, but she was just repeating what G was saying haha.Then we started making plans to transport SW and some of her friends to their new internats. The kids needed to be moved the next morning, but neither orphanage had the transportation to do it. If we didn't arrange something the kids would end up on the local city buses with their bags- how scary and traumatic would that be? So we found a guy with an older mini-bus who would drive us. We rented him and his bus for the day and he only charged us 1 grivna per mile - what a deal! It was plenty big enough for us, G, the 5 kids and their caretaker/chaperone.