Day 24

I don’t believe in omens, but if I did, the heavy rain in the morning would have been one.

I woke up feeling not-so-good, so after a breakfast of pancakes, I went back to bed and slept until 11:30. Then I tried a cup-of-noodles with a not-so-hard-boiled egg added. Cup of noodles (ramen) here is like cup of noodles in the US, but less salty. Eileen had an instant cup-of-soup, a classier version of the dried stuff at home, this one has a concentrated foil packet of wet ingredients. We have cleaned out the local market of their instant foods. Tanya came over, and I tried working for a while, but the power went off twice in 5 minutes. My laptop has a battery, but I have an external hard drive where most of my work is, and it does not like having power yanked away. Power is going up and down because work is being done on the hotel. Tanya let her feelings be known about the TV going off and on.

At 2:30, we three headed for the internot. The rain had stopped by now. The bus/trolley was slow in coming, so Tanya started walking. We took the walkway down the middle of the boulevard. It’s paving is not yet broken up, and it was dry. As we approached the internot, we saw a small crowd of people looking up the road. We looked, and saw a man lying on the road. A car was stopped a few yards in front of the guy. Had the car hit him? No, the driver had gotten out to help the man. He and another guy picked up the downed man, and tried to help him walk, but it looked like his legs would not hold him up. We were continuing on toward the internot. Sasha and Nastiya were waiting for us, and came running. We turned around to go to the clothing store. The crowd was gone, but as we walked past the site where the man was lying in the road, we saw him lying by the side of the road. Sasha indicated he was a drunk. He had a nice coat and hat on. Is this what happened to our girls’ mom? At some point she just gave up, and lay down by the road?

Not far to the clothing store. Direct transliteration of the store name: Fart. Oh, well. I’ve encountered this sound in German: ehr/sie/es fahrt. The store did not smell bad despite the name. We found some jeans and shirts and pajamas for the littler girls, socks and unmentionables, but only one pair of jeans for Sasha. While shopping, Tanya got a call that made her very agitated. Tears. Are you OK? Yes. I doubt it. We called a taxi, and rode into downtown. We found more jeans for Sasha. Tanya wanted some pajamas. Eileen said OK. Tanya wanted sexy pajamas. Sorry, no. What ? Why not? Our house gets cold at night and she needs something non-revealing to wear to the bathroom. (Eileen) I wish I could find a “granny” flannel gown just to tease her. We find a shop that sells pajamas that we would consider to be ok: full length terry with cats on the front. Kind of childish, but not too much. Tanya acted like it was an oversized burlap bag with holes for arms and feet. Then we found something a little more shapely but still warm. She was OK with that, after considering the burlap bag.

I found some magnetic Cyrillic letters for the fridge at a little toy shop. Fun.

We went to the pizza place for early dinner. More words were spoken. Now Nastiya is crying. Now Sasha is crying. Tanya got out a napkin out and started wiping tears away from her own face. I badly needed a tape recorder, so I could find out what was being said. Tanya said this is “normalno”, which I thought meant OK, but maybe it means this is normal behavior. This is not normal in my book. Tanya headed home with her PJs.

The four of us walked out of the pizza place, and into the store next door. I think it was just a curiosity check. It had maps! It had a map of Slovyansk! Finally, we can get our bearings. It was wonderful! It was beautiful! Major victory! The store also had books geared toward teaching children to read. We must come back here. Next stop was the local market, another favorite place. We got pop and juice and instant meals. I thought we got shelled sunflower seeds. No such luck, shells still on. Then we caught the trolley back to the hotel.

The girls tried on their new clothes and I took pictures. We told the girls that the clothes are for travelling to the US, and they cannot wear them to the internot. More tears. I put on “Toy Story” to distract them. After 30 minutes, the clothes must come off. More tears. Sasha threatened to stay in Ukraine. This is not new behavior for her. Last summer when she stayed with us, she threatened to catch a plane back to Ukraine. Eventually, Sasha changed clothes, put on her coat, and sulked. Nastiya would not remove the clothes. Eileen and I had to do it for her. Hugs and kisses. Wish they could understand. I got some food in a bag for their dinner.

We caught the trolley back to the orphanage stop. No one was collecting money. That bothered me, but Sasha thought we got away with something. As we got close to the internot, Sasha wanted to divide the food between her and Nastiya. I think she wanted to do this before we are in sight of the other kids. I gave them both big hugs and kisses and tried hard to let them know how much I love them. I walked back down the boulevard. It was getting foggy and drizzling slightly.

For dinner we had instant meals. Eileen’s was a kasha meal, mine was a chicken soup. Mine had a large urinal cake of noodles at the bottom of the bowl. They both tasted good.

Was today a bad day? Is the honeymoon over? Being reminded of the challenges of parenting. Where will I find a Russian speaking therapist for the children? And what about Sylvia?