Two very active days

As my short note mentioned, yesterday was a great day. The facilitator and I played soccer with the two boys (2 on 2 with a 2-foot goal). Being on a team with the older one gave lots of opportunity for passing back and forth and giving high fives. The two of us spent some time alone, too, passing the ball back and forth like a volleyball.

We were unsupervised again today in a two-hour Saturday morning visit except for a few minutes, which makes a huge difference in the dynamic, since the kids are naturally more reserved when there are peers or caregivers present, and these often feel compelled to give a stream of input in Russian. Even more than that, when the facilitator takes one of the kids aside or wanders off to make a phone call, we actually have much more productive communication even though it is not as precise; it forces us to make direct eye contact and do what it takes to communicate, and probably is important to give the kids confidence that life could work without an interpreter. It felt a little rocky at first, as we had a little more trouble than we had getting everyone to have fun with activities, but it ended up working out fine. The facilitator was very encouraged today, more than yesterday, by the kids' demeanor and responses, even though we still have more connecting to do.

Today we did an English language TPR (total physical response) exercise with the goal of helping the kids realize how quickly they would be able to learn some functional English. The goal is to keep the scope small and focus on understanding and response rather than speaking, so we named a few objects on the table and then had them point to the object that was named and respond to commands like "Put the key on the book." The youngest was a little distracted, and the oldest already knew a lot of the names, but otherwise it went well.

The two boys and I played "volleyball" again today by ourselves for a good chunk of time while Julie and the girl did girl stuff. We played all together, too, though; it's amazing how many activities you can cram into 2 solid hours of play when you are trying to keep everyone interested, though.

Tomorrow we have permission from the orphanage director to take the kids out; we will go to a nearby war memorial park and also out for ice cream or something. I think being in a different setting will be good, especially since we won't have other kids walking by every now and then. We might even get to look at some other Indiana pictures on our computer. Our chaperone will be the social worker, which is great since she is very positive about adoption. Last time she was with us, we went through an album she has of kids from this orphanage that are now in adoptive families, mostly in other countries; the kids were very interested and recognized a few of the children in the photos.