International Women's Day

So next weekend Ukrainians celebrate National Women's Day. It's kind of funny based upon how they normally treat women, but that's neither here nor there. When we went to the orphanage this morning (they told us that weekends we could visit 10-1 and 3-6), but when we got there they told us AS was at school because next weekend was a holiday. I thought that was funny... they give you something, but they take something also. So S (the facilitator) is going to take us back over in a bit and then head back to Kiev. A new translator is coming in the morning, and she will be with us while S is back in the capital.

The man who owns our new accommodations is former military and very severe looking. Yesterday he was telling us "I am former military, no one will bother you here" and "I walk at night all the time. No one bothers me. You can walk at night". Then I said "But we're not as scary looking as you are!", to which he laughed (it's very difficult to make anyone laugh here), and told us we could carry his screwdriver. In any case, we paid about $300 for a weeks' stay, and a couple loads of laundry. Not too bad. We paid less than $5 for our breakfast of an omelet, pancake, and pastry with a pot of tea and bottle of water. The man who gave me my tea today was the first person in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi to actually speak any English other than S, us, some other foreigners, and AS (who knows most of the alphabet, 1-11, yes, no, and some other things). Some things here are pretty reasonably priced, but I am still afraid we will run out of money before heading back to Kiev.

Since we didn't get the document we needed from the orphanage director yesterday, she told us to get it on Tuesday. She says if she gives it too early the prosecution (the people representing the state in the court adoption hearing) will say they have been bribed, and no bond between us and the child had actually been made. So we hope to get it Tuesday and then be on the way to getting the next document from the Adoption Inspector. S is working overtime to get these things done.

So AS's absolute favorite thing is the android tablet. He loves playing games on it. We get in a little conversation, a little English, and then he's ready to play. Today we're hoping to get a little time in looking at where we live, our houses, around Alabaster etc on Google Earth while we're in the orphanage. I'd also like to explain a little about what it means to be adopted. And then we will let him ask us any questions he wants to. Of course at the end I am sure he will want to play more games. He loves the Tank Hero game... he's a regular military genius. S says he's very Russian... destroy everything and use every bullet you can. To me that's a very 8 year old boy thing. No sense of conservation.