Second visit

Today's visit lasted at least 2:30 hours and went just as fast as the last one. These girls are little sweethearts and so fun to be with! The youngest especially is very expressive; we were playing a game where you have to match one half of imaginary colorful animals to the other, and her enthusiastic noises when she saw a match made all of us laugh. All three of them are eating and sleeping in the infirmary now, although they are much more cheerful than I am when I have a cold. We started out by coloring together for at least an hour on blank paper (we had left behind the coloring books last night since there is nothing to do in the evening in the infirmary), so we have our first little stack of signed masterpieces for the fridge. I got to do a whole number-themed sticker book with the oldest and youngest. The middle girl played the whole matching game seated on Julie's lap and gave her lots of spontaneous hugs. The oldest girl voted to play the matching game a second time, which we did, although the youngest was certainly the most into it and I had to promise her that we would play again tomorrow. Then we all 5 ended the session cooperatively playing Eagle Eye, working together and leaning all over each other looking for random objects in these colorful photographs of masses of miscellany; even after doing that both days, I think there are hours of fun left in that game.

It turns out that yesterday the chief of social services, after getting feedback from us while the girls were on a snack break, actually encouraged Val to get the paperwork started and he would have done that but the notary was out of the office that whole day. So we are going to have to wait until Monday to ask the girls for formal consent and start the government wheels turning. I am trying not to feel like, "What could go wrong between now and Monday?" As it is, at least we have extra time to get to know the girls since we can visit 7 days a week. We even have permission to take them for walks except we haven't done that because they are sick.

Today, we did walk into town twice, this morning to buy a hairbrush, fingernail polish, and a drawing tabliet for the visit and this afternoon mostly for exercise after a late lunch (we were with the girls from 12 to 2:35), also looking for coffee filters, which we could not find even in 6 small grocery stores; too bad, we will just have to spend the weekend getting great European-style coffee from the hotel's 24-hour restaurant instead of using the drip coffeemaker. The crisp mountain air is awesome. It feels like you are breathing in pure good health with a hint of fragrant wood smoke from people's fireplaces.