Time Change

Today we got a call from our facilitator wondering if we knew the time had “sprung forward” and hour. So did you know that not all of the world springs forward at the same time? Not even within the same week. Back home we “sprang forward” the day we left for Ukraine which was two weeks ago. How funny is that? I guess you learn something new everyday!! When we arrived in Kiev, we asked our facilitator if Ukraine changed their clocks forward an hour. She told us that Ukraine is still on the same time. So we just figured Ukraine did not move their clocks forward an hour at all. Well we were wrong. Maybe you already knew that, but it was news to me! : ) I am starting to get confused about what time it is here and what time it is back home! Ah! All of this changing time at home, now here and all of timezone thing is throwing me off. :)

So the whole time change thing kind of threw off our morning a little bit. We got the call that we “sprang forward” when we were about to leave for the orphanage. We were running a few minutes behind (which is not new for us), it is a fifteen minute walk to see our little guy and we were already an hour behind with the time change. So with all of that, we would only be able to see him for about thirty minutes. We figured that would not be good to get there, barely have time to see him and then have to leave. He would not understand and we could not tell him why we had to leave in such a short amount of time. So we decided to relax and go to town to get a few things done before we went back to see him in the afternoon. When we went to town we got everything we needed like cell phone minutes, glue (I will tell you why we needed this in a Minute), some water (to drink and brush our teeth with), coke and Oreos (they help us feel at home here).

We then decided to explore a little of the city and found a market that we think is only open on the weekend because we haven't seen it open during the week yet. So we decided to explore. It had all kinds of clothing, food, purses, shoes and household stuff. Imagine storage containers opened up to display items and that is what it looked like, individual little stores side by side. I was really excited because I was looking for a jacket to wear to our court date on Thursday. I was not about to wear my worn Columbia jacket when everyone here is always dressed in high fashion. We found a place that had super cute jackets for a great price so I decided to stop and try some on. It was an adventure for sure!! I could barely tell what the lady was saying and she had no idea what I was saying. We pretty much played charades and laughed . I found this really cute white jacket with big black buttons down the front and wrist. I liked it ok but decided to buy it when I accidentally pulled a button off of the jacket...whoops. :) So I decided it was cute and went on. It was only after I was wearing it a while that I realized it is a unique type of pea coat. The jacket sleeves button on and off. The part that comes off is right below the elbow. It then becomes a spring jacket. Who knew? I was wondering why my elbows were really cold whenever it got windy. :) Ken said it was like those pants that turn into shorts. Oh well. It sounds strange but it is cute. I will have to show you a picture sometime.

After our time in town we headed home on the bus and then to the orphanage after that. The bus ride home was a bit longer than usual. We decided (as in Ken) to get adventurous and see where the bus went if we took it going the opposite direction from where we normally go to head home. From where we were in town, we would have to walk a long way to the usual bus stop. So we decided to take the same bus on the opposite side of the street and see how long it would go before it would eventually turn around. Well we ended up outside of town and then when it got to the end of the route, we had to get off so they could wash the seats. Great. So we were sitting at the stop for a while so they could clean the bus. At least they did not make us pay again when we got back on. :) So we hopped back on and headed back into town. We did get a great tour of the area and we also found some places we wanted to visit, like a huge grocery store that is not far from the main part of town. We also discovered that there is a bus stop right across the street from where we got on that would have gotten us home pretty quick. Oh well. But if we got on there, we would not have been able to see such great scenery! Thank you my sweet adventurous husband for a great day!

We had a lot of fun at the orphanage with our little guy today. We played outside and enjoyed the great weather and mostly dried ground (yay). After a while we headed inside to eat a snack and play. We brought him a toy we got at the market and he played with it until it got really hard to work with. It was a peg board type of thing that I saw him playing with in his group. He was having a great time with it in his group so I decided to look for something like it around town. Imagine a light bright without the light part, just the board and pegs. He seemed to like it until he couldn't get the pegs to go in the holes like he wanted them to. It was a pretty cheap looking thing and the box looked like it was from the nineties because of what the kids were wearing on the front. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. :) We then read books and played with whatever for the rest of the time.

Oh yeah I was going to tell you about the glue we bought. So yesterday when we were playing around in our usual visitor room, our little guy got a little crazy and tore some brand spanking new wall paper off the wall. That's right folks...like they just remodeled the whole room before we got there. Our little guy happened to find an edge that was coming unglued and had fun with it for a split-second. Great. So we couldn't speak his language, we are in the orphanage and he can't understand us (although I'm sure he could understand our expressions). At least the tear was only the size of a dollar bill, the wall paper was textured and he didn't tear it completely off the wall. It laid flat on the wall and really didn't look torn at all. Sweet. So since it was Saturday we decided to leave it and get some glue today in order to fix it before anyone returns to work tomorrow.  And, with the help of a Ukrainian type of Elmer's glue, the wall looks as good as new. Whew!

In adoption news, our court date is in four days!!! Yay!! Please pray for us and for the judge that everything would go smoothly. Also we are waiting for our Interpol background clearance form to come. Please pray that we would get that tomorrow. Thank you so much!

Here are some pictures from two days ago that I meant to post:

A well that the locals get their drinking water from.

There are four packs of four oreos in each box. This is the only type of American food we have found here and I have not been able to find a bigger box of these. So we each eat two Oreos out of the package every night to make us feel at home. :)

Our Little Guy loves finding new things to play with in Papa's backpack. Too cute!