I had been thinking we would go home early next week, but there’s a Ukrain*an holiday on Friday which may keep us here in region through the weekend. I can’t do anything about it except pray for speed! Please join me in that prayer. At the same time I’m praying for speed, I know that goodbye to his friends is coming for V*ktor and I feel a need to postpone that pain. My heart is hurting for his friend Mi$ha and I pray that he will have the family that he so fervently desires. It’s really easy to see why he and V*ktor are friends. They are a lot alike - extremely shy until they get to know you, amazing with younger kids, polite, helpful, and wanting a family.
Sunday, I went to the orphanage at 10 to pick up V*ktor and Mi$ha. We came back to the room where the boys played some video games and I did laundry. I suppose it wouldn’t be a trip to Ukra*ne if I didn’t have to handwash clothes at least once! The washing machine at the hotel was apparently broken. I threw all the clothes in the tub, added probably way too much detergent, and proceeded to stir it with a coat hanger and scrub clothes together to get out stains (unsuccessfully I might add). The washing and rinsing part didn’t take all that long - though I did refill the tub about 4 times in all to completely rinse everything out. Wringing out the clothes was the part that took FOR-E-VER! Then I hung them all over the place - on radiators, side of the tub, the crib, and the bed’s metal headboard. After that, I used google translate to ask Mi$ha some questions about himself that will be used on the New Horizons page for his hosting information. YES - you read that right. He will be available for summer hosting in America! Yaaaaaa! V*ktor asks me all the time if I’ve found a family, yet. It’s really difficult to explain the process and that it will take some time. I just keep telling him that I’m working on getting him to America on hosting and we’ll pray for what happens after that.
We ate lunch at Bel*ni where the boys were laughing a lot and having fun. For whatever reason, Mi$ha had to be back at school at 2, so we walked back to school and played games in the playroom for awhile. At 3, they said he could leave again, so we went back to the hotel! I asked more questions on google translate, we skyped with Brian and kids, and I helped M upload pictures to his Russian facebook page. He put the one of him and C as his profile pic. V*ktor is loving the tablet (he calls it iPad - doesn’t discern brand- haha) and playing games on that. Later, we went for… drum roll… pizza. Again. It’s a good thing I love pizza!!! V*ktor wanted to get a pizza to go for the teacher. He was carrying it on its side in a bag! Oh well, hopefully it wasn’t a sloppy mess… It was dark when we got back to the orphanage, and I couldn’t get in touch with Aleksey to call me a taxi because he was on the train and couldn‘t hear it ringing. I was just going to walk, but V and M insisted that I just couldn’t do that! Misha called a teacher to get a taxi for me. Such gentlemen. Since I had already made the walk between the hotel and the orphanage a total of 5 times, I was kind of glad to have the taxi.
C was up bright and early this morning - yaaa. There was no hot water, so I boiled water a liter at a time in the teakettle to make a lukewarm bath. It just makes me appreciate all the things we have. Ukr*ine isn’t like a 3rd world country. They are pretty modern, but even then, they have no expectation of a lot of things we take for granted. I remember the day early on when I was horrified about no hot water, and when I asked Aleksey his response was, “Oh, I just took a cold shower” like it was no big deal. Well, today I just boiled water in the teakettle.
Aleksey got here this morning, we had lunch, and he ran around checking on documents. We will go to the orphanage in a few minutes for the last “visitation!” Tomorrow, V*ktor will be coming with US! My next post will likely be later today to tell you more about Mi$ha, hosting, and how you can help V*ktor’s friend find a home, too!
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