Meeting the Kids

Today we met our children. They are not at the orphanage this month. Instead they are at “camp”. Before we could meet them, we had a few hoops to jump through. All that travel to have to wait… welcome to Russia. We first had to get the permission of the Ministry of Education. The Minister has a meeting every Monday morning, so we had to wait until that was finished. Then, we traveled to the orphanage to give them the ministry’s permission document and to get the orphanage director’s permission document. We had to take one of the caregivers from the orphanage with us to the camp to supervise our meeting. When we arrived at the camp, the (armed) guard at the gate had to take our documents to the camp director before we were allowed to enter. When it started raining, he had pity on us and let us wait in a building for the camp director. The kids were brought to that building to meet us.

When they first met us, they were a little shy… but Yana took control of the situation. She ordered her brother to take “Mama” by the hand while she took “Papa” and led us to a small gazebo with a picnic table where we spent much of the day. We looked at pictures of America and played with toy motorcycles and floam (no one here had ever seen floam before). We also played with a beachball that looked like a globe (played volleyball and used it like a map to show our route of travel), played with bubbles (big hit!), and Yana had a great time taking pictures and showing the "crowd" where we were from. She very quickly figured out our camera and our video camera and seems fascinated with electronics. We also played a game of “futbol” (soccer) where Mama and Papa played goalkeepers. Watch out Beth... they are both strikers.

Our impression is a good one. The kids really needed a bath and several good meals, but they seemed happy and reasonably well adjusted. Yana was eager to start bonding and Gena did not resist the idea. The hardest part was the group of boys (and a few girls from a distance) who followed us EVERYWHERE and used every English word that they knew to try to impress us. It was clear that they wanted a chance to have a family and come to America. They were trying so hard to be “worthy” so that maybe we’d pick them. One boy in particular really made an impression. He even tried to give us a 5 ruble coin (about 20 cents) as a souvenir of Russia and so that we’d remember him. Another girl stayed on the fringes, but kept looking like she was going to cry. This experience is both wonderful and terrible at the same time.