Tai's Birthday

     Tai’s birthday was yesterday and we decided to throw her a party with her 4^th grade class. Dave and I brought in cake, cookies, Capri Suns, and bananas, and the kids had a blast. The kids sang Tai happy birthday and instead of spankings they teachers pulls their ears to help them grow and instead of gifts her classmates give her compliments (what a cool idea). Over the past 2 weeks she has been asking for shoes (which poor thing she needed, her little toes were crammed into the ones that she had), so we got her new tennis shoes and a Barbie for her birthday. So as not to leave Jacob out, we got him a small set of legos, of which he, Dave, and about 3 other boys settled in to put together the lego set. Fran and Rick gave her a really cool book that helps kids learn how to speak English, so Tai piled in my lap and we started working our way through the book. Tai is eager to learn and reads really well, she can read English, however she has obviously not mastered the comprehension part yet. Jacob is the typical boy and shows no interest in sitting down to learn anything, much less English…unless it suits something that he wants or needs.

     Dave has been getting daily Russian lessons from the kids in Tai and Jacob’s class, they are so funny they pile in all around him and point to different words in the dictionary and they get Dave to say them. He does not do half bad, all the kids think that it is funny, plus he is teaching them a bit of English too, tit for tat, he says a word in Russian and they say a word in English. At some points during the day Dave will have 6 or 8 kids surrounding him to play this little game. I wish that we could take a few more home with us, there are a couple of really nice, sweet, and cute kids here that could desperately use a good home. So if anyone knows anybody who is interested please let us know, we can help you out with that.

     After we left the orphanage, we went over to Fran and Ricks and celebrated Rick’s birthday, it was very nice to sit down and have dinner and dessert with everyone. Viktor came over as well as 2 missionaries from the church where Rick and Fran were staying. It was really nice to have some other company other than our own.

     Not a lot has been going on this week, we have been making our daily trips to the market and to the orphanage, and Viktor has been running around like a chicken with his head cut off to get both sets of paperwork complete. We are hoping to find out when our court date is today, the court date will essentially dictate the rest of our stay here, so keep your fingers crossed for a date as soon as possible so that we can come home soon. Well that is all for now, until next time…