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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