Monday, July 9, 2012

A full heart


I like this very much

This morning I got up early and sat down to write a letter to Sophia.  I find it’s easier for me to compose my thoughts and translate them, than to try and wing it.  There were some feeling and thoughts I wanted to share with her and while my Russian pronunciation is decent, it’s my lack of vocabulary.  So with my letter finished, we started off at our usual 9am and stopped by the photomart to pick up the pictures we had developed, then we were off to the orphanage.  When we arrived Sophia was up in her room getting ready.  She came down and we got hugs, which I gotta tell ya, I hate letting go.  This morning we were going to go down to the river bed and hang out, dip our feet in the water, and oh yeah, our local facilitator was with us today and she was able to translate various questions and statements for us.  A huge plus right now.  Though today’s visit was supposed to be only about an hour and half.

An observation on the “process” (their word, not mine).  These children live in a world of depravity.  It’s not their fault.  We have asked Sophia a couple of times if she has any questions for us and the answer is always, no.  Understandable when you are not sure what the question should be.  I can’t begin to comprehend the courage it takes to face this, but I can at least make sense of her silence in this regard.

We had our usual group of 4 girls, Dima, and Maxim (pronounced Max-eem) as we headed down to the river.  We got down there and found a log to sit on and soak our feet in the cool, very cool, water.  It was nice and it would be a great place to take a chair and read a book.  The orphanage is not in the middle of a city, it is actually off the road a bit and is surrounded by trees and hills.  It’s quite beautiful actually.  But to a teenage girl, there ain’t a whole lot to do when school is out.  We meandered down the river a little further to a shady island in the middle and sat down and pulled out the pictures.  They loved them and are looking forward to scrapbooking tomorrow.  We started to head back as our time ran out fairly fast, it always seems to go by too quickly.  The orphanage was apparently running low on ink so our driver had to run back into town to get some.  Now mind you, this is not like going down the street to the local office supply warehouse like we have in the states.  It took him a little while so our stay was extended, however on our walk back, we had told Sophia that she could listen to the iPod, so she and Anya were each listening through one ear piece.  I asked them if they had a favorite and they said, no it’s all American music.  While I may not have Beiber (sp?) fever, I do know who he is and how far he is known, and he even reaches Ukraine.   The children were all being taken inside the school for an activity.  It was at this point that I pulled out my letter and gave it to Sophia to read.  I won’t divulge the contents other than to say, I spoke from the heart.  It worked as I got to see her beautiful smile and get a hug.  Today’s activity for the children was to have them act out a skit.  They invited us in so we took a seat at the back of the room.  There were about 20 characters in the skit and each time the character’s name was spoken, he or she had to recite their line.  Some had words, some just had sounds, and some were just movements.  Quiet Luda around us anyway, volunteered to be a part of this skit and her role was that of the queen.  I was thoroughly impressed with her willingness to participate.  At the conclusion of the skit, our driver pulled up and off we went.

Tomorrow is a big day as we get to spend almost 4 hours with Sophia.  We are really looking forward to it as we are going to help her create her photo album.  We are also going to ask her friends if they would like copies of any of the pictures as a keepsake for themselves.

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