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| Our first outing with little Natalie - March 30, 2003 |
Clarke:
I have
retreated to our bedroom and am laughing because our hosts are rubbing vodka on
the outside of Kris’ nose to help her from sneezing. Our day (Sunday) was good
because we were able to take Natalie out for the first time. Nurse Natasha,
Georgiy and Sasha joined us. This and 5 thousand flea market shoppers kept
Natalie at bay. She won’t even mutter a word in Russian. Nurse Natasha is very
much in command, so we only buy necessities before returning to the orphanage.
The other reason for our outing is to take passport pictures, and she quietly
complies. We return to the market without both Nurse Natasha and Natalie to
finish our shopping. Sasha burst out ‘Karumba Mama” as we bargain for another
purchase.
There are so many people I want to photograph, but almost all decline
when I respectfully ask. Id like to take a picture of bag lady selling her
fiber reinforced plastic bags, which everyone seems to have. She smiles, and we
flashed with gold galore. She patiently holds her sixty or more bags in the
middle of the crowd of people, till a passer by (like ourselves) forks out the equivalent
of $1.00 USD for a bag. We’d also like to photograph our potato lady who sits
on the same corner every day with about 4 bushels of potatoes for sale. She
looks like she’s trying out for a role in the next “Oliver” movie. We’ve not
seen one customer in 5 days with perhaps 30 passes. We pass by at about 30
miles an hour, just feet from the curb.
We wish we could photograph all of the
people with their strange jobs. There is the lady who by the Xerox copy machine
to help you make a copy. There is the KGB grocery store police who look so
fiercely important talking some special walkie-talkie code to each other. There
are orphanage workers who would all make for a wonderful picture. These old
ladies labor so hard to carry their metal buckets for cleaning and feeding. All
of the women are clad in multiple layers of wool and cotton. But finally,
covered in a white cloth apron. Much of their cloths are tattered as bad as the
children’s clothes. There are also the opposite extremes of black leather with
bright red hair, leopard skin collars, and high heel 3.5 inches tall! The
experience are all so rich we want to take them all in at once and not forget what
we see.
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| Sasha, Kris and George in front of the orphanage |
Natasha the
nurse spent most of her life immediately across from Alaska in Eastern Russia.
She has noticed our photos of snow in Natalie’s album that we have given to
Natalie and wants to hare with us some picture books fro hr life near the wildlife
preserve. The books smell of mold, but we take them anyway to show our
interest. Kris can’t stop sneezing and sniffing since we took these books.
We’ll have to return them immediately tomorrow. Meanwhile, we have spoken to
Amanda and Alex twice since our arrival in Lugansk. This has helped our
feelings of being homesick. The Internet has become vital to our staying in
touch with our friends and family. We are so happy to have brought our laptop
for the sake of viewing pictures. Everyday we return to the flat to organize
our thoughts and review for the day’s pictures.
Tomorrow we
will receive important news about the acceptance of our petition to adopt at
the NAC. It is interesting to note how upset Valery was with Georgiy for
allowing a mistake on our request. Humorously, the local typewriter (not having
Ukrainian alphabet) causes the mistake he is referring to. The error was noted,
stamped and justified, but may still be rejected y the National Adoption Center
in Kyiv.
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| Natalie and Kris - it was so bright out for Natalie |
Kris:
I have not had
a lot of time to write lately. Today we were late for picking up Natalie for
our shopping trip. We did not know it was daylight savings time. The caretakers
said Natalie cried when we didn’t show up.
Georgiy gave
me a little history lesson this morning on Russia. It was very interesting! He
loves life and lives it to the fullest! He is very deep in his thoughts and
expresses them clearly.
When we
arrived at the orphanage, Natalie was all bundled up. She was ready to go
shopping! In a little car we all squeezed in; Clarke, Georgiy, Sasha, Natalie,
Nurse Natasha and my self. It was a very tight fit! We drove 1st to
get her passport pictures taken. Then, we went to an open market shop (kind of
like a flea market). They had a lot of cute clothes for her! It was fun to
pick, although Nurse Natasha definitely wanted her say. That’s ok though, I
think she will miss Natalie. Natalie was very quiet with so many adults and so
much action and attention. We took her back by noon.
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| You are my sunshine |
Then Sasha drove us back
to the market, because I wanted to shop without Natalie and Nurse Natasha. We
picked out several outfits for the trip home. Natalie will come with nothing,
so we have to bring the new clothes to her. We bought 2 pairs of shoes,
3dresses, underwear, tights and some turtlenecks. Then, we went to a very fancy
restaurant. The food was ok, but a little greasy.
After lunch, Sasha took us
back to the orphanage. We had purchased some fruit for the Groupa. It was so
joyful to watch the kids eat fruit like it was the sweetest thing ever!
It was
one of the best feelings I have had on this trip!
I wanted to bring all of the
kids home! All the children are so cute and of course, I think Natalie is the
cutest. She is the tallest in her groupa.
She is very quiet with all hr friends. The other kids were saying
“banana” after I would say it and “orange” and apple.” It was very precious!
For our visit
with Natalie, we were able to take her out de for a change. It was very muddy,
but we found a dry wooden platform to play on. She was very shy around Georgiy
and Sasha. After the two of them left, she was still very quiet and shy and did
not want to interact and play ball with us. Clarke and I did not pay much
attention to her and played our own game. We have figured out that if you
concentrate 100% on Natalie, that she goes into a shell. She has to be the one
to initiate the interaction. After a while, she started to warm up to our game
of ball. We gave her a cookie and she would not take it. We set it besides her
and eventually she grabbed it and put it in her pocket. Then, after a while,
she ate it. After about 15 minutes of her being shy and quiet, she started to
open up. We played bubbles, ball, ate Starbursts and cookies! She is already
testing our boundaries. She tries to go for my purse to get another cookie. We
say “nyet” and she looks and then listens very well! She still tries to get to
it when she thinks we are not looking, she is very smart.
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| Worlds collide |
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| Natalie, not only stealing candy, but our hearts. |
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