Thursday, November 20, 2008

Back in Cyberspace!

Whoo-hoo, we're back on the internet. After searching for days here in Boiarka (yes, I misspelled it earlier with a Y in it) we found an internet cafe! Our gracious Boiarka guardian angels, Becky and Nadya (not our Nadya), let us use their internet at home to post once or twice. Now we can walk just 15 minutes down the road to get on-line at the internet cafe. We will post daily if we have down time. When adoption work happens, we will of course be working that day and we will get back to ya.

We should find out soon when our court date will be. This whole week has been a blessing. We have a fabulous place to stay, American missionaries to talk to, a cooperative director, and 500 channels of TV! Every single middle eastern, African, Slavic, or Latin country is represented...several stations each! And yes, we are getting some good English stations too! The school we where we are staying has class during the day. Today, Heidi and I were guest speakers during a "middle school" English class. The children were adorable as they used their English skills on us, asking questions and answering our questions. Two nights ago, we were guest speakers during two different adult English classes. One was advanced and the other group was intermediate level. So, we are having fun, passing the time, enjoying good company and good food. We may move here! Just kidding!

Here's our present schedule. Most mornings, Heidi wakes up and starts breakfast for us while I snooze another hour or so. We then run errands or walk around the town looking for things. We have instituted the "Twyla Barrett" method of shopping when we don't have Becky. We open a door, peak in, and if it has what we need, we stay! Kudos to you, Twyla, we learned from the best! We have been to the bank, the open air market(s), the grocery stores. We usualy return around noon and we hang out until the kids get home from school, which is around 2:30-ish. Becky has been gracious, serving as taxi driver in her nifty Daewoo, for the past few days. But, we need to wean ourselves from doing that. We will start using the taxi today, but it has been nice finding out about the kids as Becky translates and has a way with kids...they open up to her and us and we have learned a lot. We have to pick up the kids from the orphanage at 3pm everyday. It's kinda like being at home with kids, except we give 'em back each night! We have the kids everyday from 3-6 pm at which time we reverse the process and drop them off. During family time we always have dinner together and then we do English work together and have a little play time. Heidi was exhausted last night so we watched "The Incredibles" in English with them and we got halfway through it before we headed back to the orphanage. Hey, American movies are English lessons right? All work and no play... A few minutes to 6pm we load up and drop off the kids and it is hugs and kisses all around. We have complete trust from the director and she agrees that we need this time to bond as a family. The kids go upstairs to do their homework and get ready for bed, we leave and usually head home where I watch a movie (we brought 20 or so). Heidi usually falls asleep during it which is why she always wakes up before me...or maybe it's because I'm being lazy! We get up the next day and repeat the process. Each day we get an update from Olga, our translator/facilitator, on where we are with the adoption. So far, so good!

For those of you have asked, the kids go to school outside of the orphanage during the day and return home to the orphanage every afternoon around 2:30. So it is an Dietski Dom (children's home), not an Internat (boarding school) like Rimma and Zina's school.

Monday, we had to come up with the names of the children for the court documents. They will be:

Nadia Isabella Roge'
Julia Grace Roge' (Yoo-lia sound at home, Julia in school)
Nikolai Daniel Roge' (Nickname Kolya at home, eventual shortening to Cole perhaps)

We don't know what the director will allow for the weekends yet, but I assume that it will be more of the same, just that we will have all day instead of three hours. We will "Metro" it into Kiev for church with Karen on Sundays before kid pick-up.

I had a post ready for this past weekend with Rimma and Zina ready to go. I used our laptop to compose it and put I put it on a thumb drive to upload. I was eager to tell you about it and since we hadn't found internet yet, I wrote it on MS Word. Well, for some reason, it won't open here. They have Word and these are new computers, but for some reason, I can't figure it out yet because the problem pop-up window is in Russian...hmmmnn. I knew that I should have saved it as a text file! I'll work it out and post it up for you along with a picture of them. Be warned though, grab you tissue! I can get mushy when talking about my girls!

All for now, we'll let ya know something as soon as we do. It is going well, though, so don't worry about us. I had hoped to drop a few lbs here but there is abundant good food on every corner. Pass the Chicken Kiev, bashalsta!

~ Felix ~

5 comments:

Matt and Aimee said...

Hi, guys! I am so sorry I haven't been able to comment more. Caught up again, though. I've been putting in 12-15 hour days at UPS-I don't know how I have done this job for 18 years-it's killin me! Everything sounds great. Your house is still there! Great posts, great attitudes and all that other "positive reinforcement" non-sense that makes me gag, or at least want a hug-ugggghhhhh! Counting the days for return.

Rolan and Eileen said...

Hey F and H! How did you arrive at the names of the kids? F got his Grace and Isabella!! Makes me smile.
Julia is actually my favorite name ever. I'm aching for something to do to help missionaries there. Can you feel that one out for me?
Miss you! Don't have a date yet but Olga thinks Feb.

Rolan and Eileen said...

P.s. Did you get a bad comment? Curious why you are pre-approving comments.

Amy said...

HI Heidi and Felix!
Almost sounds more like a vacation than an adoption journey! :) So glad that you are truly getting to experience more than just the daily "Ground Hog Day" routine... You have some variety and many things to do - which is wonderful!

Hopefully, you'll get a court date soon!

Take care!

Hugs!

Twyla, John, Duncan, Mari, and Misha said...

Heidi and Felix,

So glad to hear that everything is going so well! The children's new names are beautiful. We can't wait to meet them!

I am also happy that my "clueless" shopping method is working. One day I opened a door into a smoke-filled casino filled with slot machines - my presence brought a few glances from the locals inside who were gambling in the middle of the day! On to Door No. 2!

Matt and Aimee found some great kid's movies in Russian for a reasonable price in Mariupol for us at the open air bazaar. The kids love them for "down time" to relax and take a break from English(we have to use a small DVD player with a tiny screen as our normal DVD player does not play them due to regions). Each DVD disk has 12 movies on it. We didn't see anything like this in Gorodnya or near us in Kyiv.

The little round or oval papier mache pins painted with flowers or palekh designs make great teacher gifts for their new teachers (include an ESL teacher in that mix and possibly a reading teacher). We wish we would have bought more gifts/souvenirs to give away when we returned home.

We also bought Rushniks (the long table runners that were originally made to drape across the top of an icon and are still used for this purpose) for each child for their wedding day and to be used during holidays in their homes someday. Mari selected her own.

Enjoy your days and stay warm!
The Barretts

About Us

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Longmont, Colorado, United States
Heidi loves to play sand volleyball, sail and garden. Felix loves to fly at the local aeroclub, sail and fish.