Playtime at the Orphanage

1. Nastya on the big kids' swing. The man in the beret is one half of the Spanish couple who are adopting a little boy named Danil (the kid in the swing).

2. Nastya drawing. By the way, all the children there have the same matching down jackets.

3. Phil swinging Nastya and one of her boyfriends.

4. The children returning to the building for lunch.

[Phil]
While our adoption petition is making its way through the legal system, we continue to go to the orphanage every day to play with Nastya and her friends. It usually begins with 10-15 minutes on the swing (with the caregiver telling her repeatedly, "Nastya, stop letting go!", and she’ll obey for about 10 seconds, until the caregiver isn’t watching anymore). Then, when we think she might be tired of swinging, we’ll ask her if she wants to draw. She’ll nod, get out of the swing, and march over to the picnic table. She’ll start rooting through our bag and pull out the coloring book.
[Robin]
Each day we’ve tried to bring some other form of entertainment, one day a coloring book and crayons, the next day watercolors and paintbrushes; yesterday, we brought modeling clay. She’s liked all of these activities. However, our offering of the stuffed animals has been met with mixed success. She really liked the bear (mishka), and the baby seal (tyoolen) was a big hit; yet, she didn’t show much interest in the puppy (sobachka) or the lion (lev). We also bought a balloon inflator to make balloon animals that she absolutely thought was terrific. Food is a whole other story. We brought cookies for all the kids a couple of days in a row. On the third day we found out that Nastya got sick on the chocolate ones, so when we asked the caregiver what to bring she said "caramels" (meaning hard candies), so that’s what we brought yesterday.
[Phil]
We’ve also met another American, Coleen, who with her husband is adopting a really cute little girl named Masha. She’s the one in the far left in the photo of the children returning to the building. Colleen apparently has a great apartment for even less than we’re paying for the hotel. We have apartment envy.
There’s not much more to tell right now. We keep exploring the neighborhoods around here for restaurants and cafes, but so far haven’t had much luck. Almost every night we’ve eaten at a Ukrainian/Georgian restaurant called "Premier". We did find a pretty good pizza place, however, so that’s where we had lunch today. Right now we’re sitting at the hotel’s outdoor cafй, watching the locals stroll by on their Saturday afternoon.
[Robin]
Within walking distance of our hotel there are two city parks, a movie theater (showing Harry Potter!), banks, shops, and a large department store/mall with a grocery store on the bottom level. It’s a beautiful day here today and we plan to do a little more exploring on foot. We hope to find another cafй to eat at for dinner. Speaking of dinner, the night before last we were at Premier and they asked us to be seated inside (they have an outdoor area). When we sat down we realized that the music we were hearing was coming from a girl on stage singing along to a karoke machine. She had a good voice and we heard a number of pop songs. No one clapped or even acknowledged her, so trying to mimic the locals, we didn’t either. When our bill came it included a music fee of 10 hryvnya ($2.00).
[Phil]
One more thing: there is no such thing as a laundromat in Ukraine. Since all of our clothes were dirty, I asked the front desk if they had a laundry service. They said no, but that I could talk to Tatyana, the maid for the 6th floor. So I got all of our laundry together, found Tatyana, and asked her if she could do it. She said okay, and I left the laundry and 20 hryvnya by our hotel room door. When we came back later, the laundry and money were still sitting there. I went down the hallway and found Tatyana in the maid’s office. I asked her if she somehow missed our laundry. She said, "I saw it, but it’s a huge amount of laundry! You would need to pay me at least 100!" That’s about $20, but I was basically at her mercy, so I said okay. It really is a lot of work, because almost no one has a clothes dryer; she had to hang out everything to dry.
[Robin]
I ran into her in the hallway this morning and she stopped me to give me the items, all carefully cleaned and folded. We passed a drycleaners on our excursion to the pizza place for lunch today and we are going to price that out next time. One other funny thing before we wrap up this post: At the pizza place today, we saw a set of twin girls, probably aged 10 years old, wearing what can best be described as jeans where the jean material ended mid-thigh on each leg and then off-white cotton material flowed to their ankles like a skirt or large bell-bottoms. The only thing I can think to call them is "pantaloons", but even that doesn’t adequately describe it. This outfit also had matching jean jackets. It was quite an amusing sight.
We had a rather tough day yesterday, sitting and waiting outside notary offices and the courthouse. Today we are just trying to enjoy the weather and Nastya and leave worrying about the other stuff until next week.
[Phil]
To end on a light note, I have to mention that there is music playing everywhere in Ukraine. Even yesterday, as we sat in the chambers of the Head Judge, he had a boombox on his desk playing a cover of "Abracadabra". Everywhere you go there is a radio or CD player playing the same Russian techno-pop. I can’t say I like it (though Robin likes it because it invariably has a disco beat), but we’ll probably end up buying some CD compilation of Russian pop just as a memento of our trip.