Orphanage Day ~ Day 14

Today was another day visiting the orphanage. We made the mistake of having breakfast at Pizza Cilintanos today. It is much too rich of a place for breakfast. The apple pancakes were what I was excited to go there for, but both of our stomachs did not agree with our decision to have breakfast there. We went grocery shopping for supplies so that we don’t have to eat out for breakfast for a while.


Our van came to pick us up to drive us to the orphanage. We shared transportation with the Hanson’s today. I love when we can share. It was a lot of fun getting to know them better as well.

At the orphanage we had a better plan for activities. We were there a lot longer today and hopefully she wasn’t too bored with us for the whole day. I had her repaint my fingernails to start. She was nervous when I had her pick the color for me.

We pulled out our origami papers and books. She said she would watch and couldn’t do it, but we handed her papers and had her follow along. We did several different things and it turned out to be a lot of fun.

As we were folding our flowers Spencer received a phone call letting us know that our court hearing for our adoption would be tomorrow. What?! We didn’t even get 24 hours’ notice! I started shaking and we really didn’t know how they wanted us to handle talking to Victoria about it. I suppose we just had to improvise. We told her that we had just received a call and that our court date was tomorrow. She was pretty surprised by how little notice we were getting too. We were worried that she would be scared that it was so soon, but she said that it was OK. She said that she was a little nervous and excited for it. We asked her if she was sure she still really wanted to be adopted and thank heavens, she didn’t even hesitate answering yes. We told her to dress in her nicest things and to be ready to go early tomorrow morning.

Then back to playing games with dominos and cards. Tanya joined us for the rest of the afternoon which was fun. There is a sweet little boy named Zenia who is just desperate for attention. He is darling but really annoys the girls. They didn’t want him around while we played. I felt badly for him. It seems he doesn’t really fit in with anyone.

We tied friendship bracelets for a while.. mostly I tied friendship bracelets. By the time we got thread put together she and Tanya had moved on to figuring out how to shuffle cards and playing card games. A sweet little 12 year old girl named Carina came over and asked me how to help her with bracelets. I think it sort of bothered Vika that I was spending so much time with this little girl. She was so darling. She kept asking me English words and tried so hard to communicate with me.

It was getting close to time for us to go. I pulled out flashcards that I brought with English words and the letters. I gave them to Vika for her to practice. What a fun gift, right?! I hope she tries to memorize at least some of them. We’ll have to get a better picture dictionary to use at home for sure.

After we left we had hoped to meet the Cooks for dinner to discuss their court experience, but now we were meeting with Yana to discuss our own court business! It’s crazy how things change here minute to minute. We finally went to a different restaurant with an English menu. Spen seemed very excited to know about this place. Even though now we aren’t sure how much longer he will actually be staying here! That is a discussion for another day, for now we are focusing on our upcoming court nerves.