Back to Kachiry

Friday afternoon we went to a kid's amusement castle. It's named after a Russian cartoon character and is sort of like Chuck E. Cheese. It was lots of fun, and we plan to go soon again together with the other family here who has their sons with them.

Saturday morning we got to go back to Kachiry to visit Julia. She is still in the hospital, and the orphanage assistant director said we would draw too much attention if we went in (it's the Kachiry village hospital and very small and not used to Americans). So she went up and got Julia and she came and sat in the van with us. She was very quiet and looked like she was still feeling pretty bad. She definitely still has a lot of chest congestion. But we had a good visit and talked to her a bit through our translator about coming to live with us in our house in America. I don't think she really has any frame of reference for that, and she was really quiet like she was just trying to take it all in, but when the assistant director of the orphanage brought her back up, she said that she was telling the other girls that her family had come to visit her and that she was going to get to go and live with her mama and papa after she got better. She is definitely less comfortable with us than Angelica is, which is probably in part because she's older and in part because we've seen her a lot less.

Then we went to visit Angelica and it's getting pretty funny to watch how much more okay with us she is each day now. She talked to Nicholas for the first time today. Before she would look at him and point and say Nicholas, but Saturday she was coloring (don't mess with her coloring book!) and Nicholas came and started trying to color with her, and she grabbed the colors out of his hands and fussed at him. "Nicholas, Nicholas, nyet Nicholas!" Nyet means no. I think I foresee a referee job in my future between those two!

Last night we went to a really good restaurant with the other adopting families. It was lots of fun and we were so loud we thought we might get kicked out of the place! We had like a four hour dinner! Luckily it was an outside restaurant, so the boys all just ran around playing and collecting pine cones.

We are going to go to lunch at the apartment of the family who is from Australia and are volunteering in the orphanages here. She works at the babyhouse and he teaches English in the school at the Kachiry orphanage. They have a 4 year old son, so the boys should have a good time playing together.


Blessings and love to all of you! Enjoy the pictures!