The Holiday of the Protection of Children

We went down to the river yesterday and went to the festival. For everyone in Ruston, think Peach Festival but on a river. Translate that: not a lot to do, but tons of people. But there's the river, so that makes it a lot better than the Peach Festival. Also very interesting since underwear is considered acceptable swimming clothes for kids and grown men. Yep, grown men walking around the beach in their boxer briefs. At least they weren't in bikini briefs. :) It was our first day to walk around all day with no translator or Russian speaker, and we were pretty proud of ourselves on how well we did. We watched the demonstrations, which sounds like it would be children yelling and waving signs around, but was really kids from schools and orphanages doing musical programs and plays. We watched one that was very complex and had hundreds of children in it. We have no idea what happened in it, but it ended well, because at the end, the kids dressed like gardens chased away the kids dressed in black capes and sang a happy sounding song. When we got to Julia's orphanage today they told us that children from her house had participated, but only those who are school aged (7 and up). So she wasn't there. Which is just as well for her, because she probably wouldn't have been able to go anyway. She had what looked like a nasty cold last week, but has ended up being bronchitis. She was in the infirmary when we got there today and if we hadn't just driven an hour, they wouldn't have let us see her at all, and they told us to call before we go out there tomorrow. But we did get to see her and her little face lit up when she saw us after us being gone all weekend. Poor baby, she didn't look like she felt good at all. We sat and played quietly with the Polly Pockets for about 20 minutes then they made us leave. We could tell she didn't want us to go and she held on to us for a while when they came to get her. I'm sure that now that we haven't been there for a few days, she doesn't feel like she knows when we'll be back, which makes it harder for her to say bye. And I couldn't even tell her we would be back tomorrow because I don't know if they will let us go see her. And it's hard to know she's sick and not be able to take care of her and baby her and all the things I do when Nicholas is sick. :( Pray for her to get better quickly. We are going to the babyhouse at 4:00, and I'll post pics from both visits after that.

Donna, yes we did serve the Joneses spam spaghetti, but we warned them before they came over that that's what it would be. :)

Tonight Tania is going to take us to see Prince Caspian dubbed in Russian at the cinema. We loved it in English, so we thought we'll try it in Russian!