Internat Longmont!

Well, there it is...Internat Longmont! Heidi is gonna get on my case! We both aren't pretentious people, so I'll just post this one picture. Heidi wants to be the "Old Woman in the Shoe", you know, the one who had so many children...I'll let you finish the rhyme! With our two girls and the possibility of adopting 4-6 kids over the next couple of years, we felt the need to have more beds and bedrooms. Besides, we practically stole it from a hungry builder who has been trying to sell it for three years.

For those of you who think I keep spelling Internet wrong, I assure you, it really is Internat! If you were wondering, an Internat is a type of orphanage that has a boarding school with it. There are Orphanages and then there are Internats in Ukraine. Some of the kids that attend the Internat go home after classes to their parents while orphans like R & Z live on the grounds and are wards of the State. I'm not sure if R & Z have "outside" children attending their school. Not all Internats have children attending from the community. In Ukraine, some parents use the orphanages as a way to raise their children. They put them there so that they can have three meals a day and get schooling. On the weekends, the parents visit their children and spend time with them. This is especially true of single parents. Many of our friends who have adopted from Ukraine have told us that they regularly saw single dads and moms visiting their kids. This explains why many of the children are not eligible for adoption. R & Z are not yet adoptable because of their registration issues...they have not had contact with family since they were 1 year old.

Still no texts from Zina. Although, we were awaken in the middle of the night by a text message in English that made no sense. It was from a Colorado number. Was this an April fools joke from one of our friends?

It is starting to look like the Ukraine trip may be off. Lilya said she was going to call the director last night. We are awaiting word from her. Oksana thinks that the director is very serious about restricting us. Fran and Nancy feel that he's not bluffing, either. We haven't bought tickets yet and we will make a decision soon once we get word from Lilya.