Day #2 at orphanage

We spent about 9 hours at the orphanage with the girls yesterday. We got there a little after 11 am and left a little after 8 pm. It was a nice visit with the girls.

We started out distributing the bows that so many of you helped me make. Masha didn't want to share them at first. Every time I would point to a girl that didn't have one yet, she would roll her eyes and say "Mama, no." But she would go with a smile anyway. By the time we had been distributing the bows for an hour she was happy to be sharing with the others. They can be taught! :) We gave the remaining bows to Nadiya (the orphanage director) to distribute to the girls that weren't there for this summer.

After this we went to lunch at the "Potato House." It was pizza and had a Mexican restaurant above it. Drew ate ribs and potatoes from upstairs and the girls and I ate a vegetable pizza. I let Masha order what she wanted on the pizza and she chose all vegetables. I was pleased with that. It was a good pizza with thin crust.

After lunch we headed back to the orphanage and worked with the kids on letters and sounds. Nastia was farther behind than any of the other children I have come across so far. We started out with a and b and she had a hard time with just that. We got up to e in the alphabet, but she still had problems remembering b. We couldn't work on sounds at all because she still doesn't know what the letter is. We have a lot of work to do with her!

After this we put a Ukrainian movie in and I pulled out all of the extra hair bow material I brought with me. The girls loved this and decorated me with all kinds of bows that they made themselves. It was a big hit!

We spent time with Oxana (our facilitator, working on our paperwork) and Elena going over some documentation then left the orphanage. It was a fun day. We enjoyed ourselves. I'll post some pictures later tonight from yesterday and today.