I arrived at the airport at 5:35AM to a wonderful –7 degrees Celsius.. (brrr). Anyway, I ran into a few hassles with the Russians concerning the amount of luggage that I had for one person, but I smooth talked my way through it and went on my way. I met our new driver Vladimir, but then found out he was only the driver for the transfer; I would have another driver for the rest of the stay.. Again, no problem, just going with the flow. Finally, got to the hotel and was going just rest for today, since everything was to begin tomorrow, but then found that the orphan home was expecting me at 4:00pm and they had requested that all donations be dropped off at this time. Thus I ended up immediately unpacking everything to go through it and ensure that everything in the bag was for the orphan home and I hadn’t cross-packed anything. Finally, I was able to get some rest.
Went and saw Ally, she is doing well. I don’t know if she was exactly happy to see me but she was very excited because I was taking her for a walk outside. We walked around the building a couple of times, she was fascinated with the icicles and kept breaking them off and trying to suck on them. I was initially horrified not know what pollution might be contained in them but no one else around seemed concerned so I figured that this was something that we would have to break her of at a later time. Also her tummy was growling but it was nearly an hour before their dinnertime so I got out some animal crackers and gave some to her to tide her over. She only accepted one, but apparently that was enough to calm her stomach. She was very happy when she went back up to her room with me because the other children again swarmed her as if she was a returning war hero or something and she was genuinely soaking in the attention. It is going to be hard for her to leave the orphan home because of the friends that she has there and she will never see them again. She really has a bond with a couple of them because she goes right up to them when she walks in and they follow her around as well.
The director was extremely happy to receive the pediatric stethoscopes and blood pressure kits, she stated that she would get the to the Dr. right away. She didn’t want us to unpack the toys and clothing for the kids, she stated her staff would do that and get us our suitcases back in two days. That was a little odd for me because I would rather unpack everything and make sure that all the shoes are together with the right size and such, but oh, well. I was able to see the back storeroom today. It was piled high with things for the kids. I don’t know if they are rationing things or what, but it is apparent that they do keep a great deal in storage and only bring out a little at a time. Maybe it is because the kids only have so much room and they don’t want to allow them to break everything all at once, I don’t know. Anyway, diapers were everywhere, -- the disposable kinds—I believe it is probably because they don’t use them, but I could be wrong. When I was walking outside with Ally we also saw the infant rooms through the windows. It was very heartbreaking. There was crib upon crib lined up with a walkway in between them and the children were in the cribs. I watched one baby – I don’t know if it was a boy or girl because they had the baby dressed in a white pullover onesie, but anyway, that baby was in a corner crib just crying. You could see that he had turned himself around and his leg was caught in the rungs of the crib, but no one even approached him/her. I wanted to bang on the window, but that wouldn’t have been appropriate and would have been considered extremely bad manners so we just watched though the window. There must have been at least 15 to 20 babies in the room and I saw 5 different caretakers as well. You could definitely tell that they were extremely tired and worked very hard to try to take care of all the children, but how much can one person be expected to do?
The Russian circus is performing this weekend and I may take Ally. Our translator thinks that I should, but I am hesitant taking her into a huge crowd when she can’t understand me nor can I understand her. What if she gets lost, I won’t even be able to call for her. It is a terrifying thought. I will think on it though because I do want her to be able to enjoy Russia before leaving here. I got to see the monument that was erected signifying the defeat of Napoleon and also the statue of the man on a horse right near the hotel that founded Russia in 1147. Finally, I visited a material store to pick up some fabric from here, and was very surprised that nearly every fabric in the store was from Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, there was only one small area with about 20 different styles of fabric from Russia. I quickly purchased a little of four of the selections and figure I can use them for a quilt somewhere along the road.
Well, that is all that I have to report for today. I have to figure out how to download my camera without the connection cable so I will write more tomorrow.
