Orphanage Day ~ Day 9

It feels so strange to have really nothing to do or no plans or responsibilities to take care of until we are supposed to be at home to meet our driver at 1:45. I’m going a bit stir crazy and it really is a big chunk of time to sit and miss my kids at home. I haven’t seen or chatted with Ezra in a few days and it is killing me! He is having such a great time where he is that honestly I think we’ll get a bigger reaction of him leaving there than we did him leaving home. That’s just how I wanted it though.

Our internet connection is pretty bad here. We couldn’t really connect last night at all. I am writing my blog posts and saving them until I have a chance to get internet. Spen thinks that a person could make a killing if they set up internet and a router and just sold access to neighbors. I really just don’t think that there is that high of a demand for internet access at home around here. This is such a different place. The thing I really missed this morning when we walked our 25 minute walk to the big grocery store was fast food places.. I would have loved to grab something to eat quickly. I was starving and we were running low on time. I suppose that’s why the most popular clothing size around here for women is 0 – 2. It’s crazy how slender these women are. I learned today why they all wear such tight jeans too. After mine finally dried they looked so silly being all wrinkled up. That’s just a theory though.

At the grocery store I was looking for chips to have with our typical sandwich lunch. We were at a large enough store that they carried them, but there weren’t any plain chips. They were all flavored. Not flavored like bbq or sour cream and onion, no.. they were salmon flavored, or crab flavored. There was a bacon flavor and a vegetable flavor. Yum. We’ll see. I got an onion type flavored one to try.   Another accessible underground crosswalk.  Sorry Mase, I'd have to take my chances crossing the road with the crazy drivers.  Because of course there was a ramp on one side of the underground 'crosswalk'.  Hard to go up the other side!

As I said our driver met us at 1:45 to take us to the orphanage.  We were very excited because today we had an interpreter to spend the day with just us.  Turned out that with so many families around today wasn’t really the day that it was the most useful, but still comforting to know that she was there for any interpreting.  Vica (her nickname – pronounced Veeka) was very happy to see us.  You have no idea what a relief that was.  We assumed that we would just be spending the day sitting in the cafeteria again but it didn’t look like that was an option.  I was nervous after hearing stories from other families to do much of anything without the director’s permission.  I just don’t want to assume anything we do is just fine.  We don’t know any of her rules.  So we walked to her office to ask and Dasha (our interpreter) told us that she was on the phone and she was talking about us.  She didn’t understand why we were there at her office and was too busy to deal with us!  Time to assume I suppose!  Walking in to the orphanage.  It's actually very nice and is very big!Vica took us to the common room over by her bedroom.  We got our Uno cards out and immediately had a giant crowd of kids surrounding us.  They were all younger kids.  It was so fun and so sad.  They were all so happy to play and have grown-ups there.  I think Vica was happy that we were there for her.  Her friend Tanya had her ‘family’ there to play and visit.  They are having trouble with paperwork, so it was more of just a visit rather than an adoption visit.  They were having fun though.  The other families started to arrive and all kinds of chaos broke loose.  There were so many kids and families in that one little room.  Vica is very shy and really got embarrassed when we pulled out the camera.  We got a few pictures every once in a while.  We’ll have to really figure that one out.  I want pictures and video of her room and of all the places that she lives.  Maybe she doesn’t want it now, but someday she may.

Vica painted Tanya’s nails and then my nails.. purple of course.  She was very nervous to do it, but she eventually did.  It was fun.  We tried to put together a puzzle we brought but it was too hard and it isn’t really a great place to put puzzles together that take that much time.  We also had a lot of helpers!  The kids like to do tricks for us and have us teach them things.  Spencer finally convinced Vica that we would start to teach other English and Russian.  We learned couch – “divan” and window – “awk-no”.  We have picked up a bit more, but she seemed to think that was a fun idea.

We asked her if she was still feeling good about coming after visiting with her brother and she said “of course” with a huge smile. We were a bit nervous because we were told by Luba yesterday to come up with her name for the paperwork, but then we were told after we left yesterday that we had until noon today. That is a very confusing way of saying that we didn’t really have a chance to actually talk to her again about her name before we had to make a decision. At least we brought it up with her a little bit and asked her if she wanted to keep her name or change. We were so happy she wanted to keep her name. A little sad, but understanding, that she wanted the American spelling. The spelling here with the English alphabet was Viktoryia, she went with Victoria. We asked if she would like to keep her surname as a middle name and she wanted nothing to do with that. After thinking it over this morning for a bit we went with Anne. ‘Ann’ after my aunt Ann, and her new aunts Kasey Ann and Ann-ie, and I added the “e” because my middle name Lynne has an “e”. Maybe there was too much thinking in there, but it worked for us and we felt like it was simple enough that hopefully she’d be OK with it. Holy Schmoley you have NO IDEA how weird or uncomfortable it is to have to rename a 16 year old girl. It was a very strange thing to do and we are just so glad that she wanted to keep her name. After all this time referring to her as Victoria and changing, or for her to have to get used to a new name! Some of the other kids forgot there new names when we were asking them today. It was funny to give them a hard time for that one!

We packed up to leave when we were told to, but because of all of the families that are here we ended up being the 3rd wave to leave. That was an extra 1 ½ hours. Fun, but we’d already said goodbye and Vica was long gone. While we were sitting there though Ilena (Helen) got permission and filled out all of the necessary paperwork for us to take Vica tomorrow. We were kind of nervous because she was telling us how her class was going to the circus tomorrow and how excited she was.. we are not nearly as fun as a Ukrainian circus, heck, I want to go to the Ukrainian circus!! Tanya saw us sitting in the entry way waiting for our car and ran to get Vica just as our driver showed up. She ran and hugged me and said that she wants to come with us and not the circus. Crazy girl, but it sure made us feel good! We were so tired when we got home. It was nice to chat on the phone with some family tonight. I’m sure we’ll be hearing from Ethan around 3 or 4 am!! (I love it, don’t stop calling pal.)

But for now.. It’s a girl!!
Victoria Anne Shaw