Valentine's party, Rehearsal

This morning we sat down with our facilitator and traced through a couple of possible timelines for the rest of our time in Ukraine. One issue that has come up is that there has been a misunderstanding between the judge in the local court and the SDA in Kiev that could end up delaying our return by at least four days. We are praying that this might be cleared up in the next day or two.

Even after court yesterday, our day ended up being eventful. After rushing back from court to post our good news we hiked back to the orphanage to tell the girls. Stan had bought them each a long-stemmed rose for Valentine's Day. When we arrived they were all busy with classes so we pulled them out of their classrooms just long enough to give them their rose and a Valentine's Day card with chocolate and tell them the news from the court. Maria seemed the happiest to hear the result; she probably better understood the implications of the decision.

Yesterday evening Stan had made some reservations at a restaurant here in Perechyn that was hosting a special Valentine's Day dinner featuring live music from a local band. We had gotten to know the owner of this restaurant because he had taken us up to the mountains when we went hiking a week ago Sunday. We were enjoying the music and had just finished the salad course when the restaurant owner began to systematically move from table to table with a microphone, apparently interviewing the men at each of the tables. It was all happening in Ukrainian (mostly in the very regional dialect of Ukrainian) so we didn't have a clue what was going on. Because the owner knew us and knew that Stan could speak some Russian, he wasn't going to leave us out of the proceedings. He introduced us by name and launched into his interview. Unfortunately, we still couldn't follow what he was saying even though he apparently switched to Russian when he started interviewing Stan. Stan had just replied (in Russian into the microphone) "We're glad to be here, thanks!" when a lady came over to our table and offered to interpret. She quickly explained she was also American. The owner had been asking all the guys to describe their first encounter with their first love.

Stan, to my chagrin, launched into the story of when we decided to start dating. If you're not familiar with that story it involves a return trip to a coffee shop, a stop at a gas station in Norwalk, and an attempted gang assassination - but that's a different story for a different blog post. When I crawled out from under the table where I was hiding, I realized I knew our impromptu interpreter. She was a Peace Corps volunteer who had some blog sites that detailed some of the community projects she was working with in Perechyn. I had been reading her blogs and was planning to contact her about a specific housing project for kids who had graduated from the orphanage school. I introduced myself and explained that I had been reading her blog site. She invited us to come sit with her and her husband. Her husband grew up in the orphanage where our girls are now. She and her husband had just gotten married a few months ago and will be moving to the U.S. this summer. We spent the evening getting the inside scoop on life in Perechyn and thankfully avoiding any further interview questions from the restaurant owner.

Since our day had already been a long one, we excused ourselves early and made arrangements to meet with her again today. We spent a couple of hours with her at a cafe this afternoon, asking her questions about the community, the challenges for kids that graduate from the orphanage school, and some of the amazing people here who are working hard to support these kids as they struggle to negotiate their first years on their own.

This afternoon when we went to visit the kids, we were invited to a presentation by the younger grade school kids (including Julia and Olena). It was called, "The Kingdom of English Grammar." The very enthusiastic English teacher directed the kids as they played their parts in a very creative presentation of the congugation of the verbs "to be" and "to run" in several tenses, in the negative form, and in question form. Each of the kids had a different word hung around their neck as they played different parts of the sentence. Julia was the word "it" and Olena was the word "do." It made me very glad that I never had to learn English as a new language.

After the program we chatted with the English teacher who showed us the language lab and various learning materials. We accepted an invitation to spend some time with her at her home tomorrow afternoon.

Julia as "it" hangs out with "he" and "she"














Olena is the second girl from the right