A true Soviet experience

Our facilitator, "S", said the other day that we are getting the true Soviet experience that few of the families he works with ever recieve. That is because we are adopting from a very rural area in which their way of life is as it has been for generations. Not many people adopt from here, so we Americans are a bit of a novelty in town.

We are staying in a town that is probably smaller than our little hometown of El Granada. I bet there are less than 1000 townspeople. The claim to fame here is the Nemiroff Vodka factory. Nemiroff is a premium Ukrainian vodka that we have been enjoying nightly(in moderation!) There is not much to do around here in the evenings! The weather is very, very cold. -5.7 C 0n some days. There is no sun all day long, and there is a heavy fog that hangs in the air all day.

We are staying in the town's Sanitorium, which is one of their other claims to fame. It is where people go to rest after an injury or illness. It has beautiful grounds,like a resort. Here you can see Mark posing with a statue of Lennon (not John) one of the many statues on the well manicured grounds.

The rest of the town is a pretty ramshackle neighborhood of old stone or brick farmhouses, each with a bunch of chickens fenced in the yard. Chicken and geese cross the road all the time. Lot of stray dogs too, all looking at you longingly for a handout. We have also seen a horsedrawn cart of some sort of going along the side of the road. Regardless of impoverished conditions, women are warm in their stylish fur coats on the street. I am sure that many of them are fake fur, but not all. It seems odd for us Americans to see a woman in a fur coat and high heeled boots hopping over potholes on a dirt road with stray dogs and cats to do her grocery shopping.

Every morning we have breakfast at the Sanitorium. Breakfast is usually a small plate of prunes, beets (or carrots) or today it was a salad that tasted like a seaweed salad you would find at a sushi restaurant. Next you get mashed potatoes with some kind of meat. Boiled chicken, stew meat, a few thin slices of cold sausage or the ground meat mixture that they stuff their cabbage leaves with. I know this does not sound appetizing, and it is certainly not what we usualy have for breakfast in the US. But it is really pretty darn good.

After breakfast we do some running around with paperwork, maybe buy some toys for Natasha and her class or stock up on supplies for us. We'll stop for lunch at a local restarant. Lunch is typicall Borsht, cabbage salad and Pelmini (sp?) which is ground meat wrapped in a pasta-like dough. Delicious.

We spend for 2-4 each afternoon at the orphanage. We are getting to know the kids in Natasha's home room class. We do pretty well communicating with each other. Today 3 boys from the class joined us in our Uno game. Natasha is different with the boys than with the girls. When the girls joined in our game there was lots of goofing around and giggling. Today when the boys joined in we saw a new side to her. She was definitely getting frustrated by one boy in particular, and the tone in her voice changed. I found that she is not quite as quiet and shy as I thought. I think she gave the poor boy a piece of her mind! Glad to hear she can stand up for herself when need be! However, she has one boy wrapped around her finger and that is Dad! She can get him to let he see her cards, and can convince him to play the cards the works to her benefit. No wonder she wins so many hands.

One boy today, Sergi, wanted to show us all kinds of things in the classroom. We saw their individual photo albums, drawing projects from Christmas and their English Language learning books. Today we also got the rare opportunity to eat with the kids in their canitna for lunch. We weren't planning on it, we were simply looking for Natash for our visit. But they insisted, and it would have been rude to refuse. All the kids fell over each other to serve us. We sat with Natasha and her older friend Nastia. Nastia is 15 and we have become very, very fond of her. She is in the picture with us up above. In fact, if she were available, we may have been coming home with 2 girls. But she is not available. Nevertheless, we have her address and phone number and plan on staying in touch. Perhaps there is some way we can help this really bright, cheerful girl.