We Meet The Kids

Dave and I had a day to ourselves, so we slept in late and they got up and went to St. Sophia’s, it is a beautiful 1,000 year old church. The frescoes inside were amazing, but they would not let you take pictures of them because it would destroy the integrity of the paintings, but I highly recommend to anyone visiting Kiev to make a trip to St. Sophia’s. After that we had lunch and waited on Viktor so that we could go and pick up our referral from the SDA. Soon after we headed to the train station.

Riding the train was a rather unique experience…it wasn’t bad minus the bathroom, and of course I forgot how Laura told me to turn on the water in the sink, so needless to stay I stood there for about 5 minutes trying to figure it out before I finally went and asked Viktor, then I remembered how Laura told me to turn it on.

We got to Berdyansk this morning. We had a great ride on the train, myself, Dave, and Viktor stayed up til midnight playing rummy…it was a nice way to pass the time, plus it was fun…minus the fact that Dave kept cheating. Once we got settled into the apartment we went over to the orphange and met Yakov and Taisya (I hope that I am spelling that correctly). In all honesty we were both nervous and apprehensive, we had no idea what to expect and we had no idea how the kids would react to us or how we would react to the kids, however it only took all of 5 minutes to decide that we would adopt them. Yakiv is 9 and loves to play soccer and he is quite the ham and Taisiya is 10 and loves to do ballet and play soccer as well. They are both in the 4^th grade and appear to happy healthy kids. The two of them were eager to look at the pictures that we brought and they were excited to show us the pictures that they had of themselves with their friends. Dave and I spent about 2 hours with the kids today and had a blast, we promised that we would go back tomorrow and this time bring a soccer ball so we can go outside and play, although I have a feeling that Dave and I are going to get beat by a 9 and 10 year old. We are eager to proceed from here and we hope that they agree to let us adopt them, but I can’t help but wonder how scared and nervous they must be, I know that if I were in their shoes I would be petrified. The two have been in the orphanage since they were 3 and 5 and we are the first family to meet them and it amazes me as to why, they are absolutely adorable and so full of life. We can’t wait to go back tomorrow!