Unlike in the U.S., Ukrainians don’t start putting up their Christmas decorations on November 1st. It is true that they don’t celebrate Christmas until January 6 or 7, but we’ve been watching decorations just start to go up over the past week or so. The hotel has a courtyard and it has been filled with inflatable snow globes just like you’d find at Wal-Mart and other lighted decorations. I think the icicle style lights here are proportionate to the size of the icicles. While the ones at home are about 12 inches long, these have icicles about 4 feet each – no exaggeration! I will try to send photos when we have capable internet. The hotel put up a small Christmas tree in the lobby (about 5 ft tall) and even decorated our room on Monday. We now have a small garland draped over a mirror with a pine cone shaped ornament hanging from one of its lights and a white, glittery spherical ornament from the other. The grocery store has toys and candies boxed for Christmas and the Pizzeria has ornaments hanging from the ceiling tiles. It’s all very festive and a stark contrast to what we’ve otherwise found to be a function over form style in this region.
As expected, Victor got back today and we’ve been running ever since. Sasha picked the three of us up around 10:30 AM and we were off for the day. The BIG news of the day is we got to take V out of the orphanage! As I said before, she will need clothing when she leaves, so today we went shopping! Oh, to have a Target here! There is an outdoor market in town that is supposed to have good prices, but it was not open. There is no Wal-Mart or mall, either, but they have what reminded me of an indoor flea market. The merchandise was all new and sold by multiple vendors, like mini-stores, inside a large building the size of… maybe a two story CVS. (It was actually the 2nd place of its kind where we found anything appropriate… kids’ clothes are NOT prolific here.) Even at this market, there was not a lot of choice in kids’ stuff and we rejected the first children’s store as too expensive. The clothes were all imported from Spain and a pair of girls’ jeans was over $45. We ended up finding a few pair of socks, panties, two t-shirts, cute mittens, a sweater and jeans for around $64. I expect V will outgrow the jeans and t-shirts quickly, but the sweater might last longer. (One of the shirts has a size 8 tag… it is comfortably snug.)While waiting in the car at one point today Dan gave V his phone to play with. (He has an Uno app and we had been sitting quite a while waiting.) She VERY quickly learned how to play the game and enjoyed it, but obediently gave back the phone when it was time to get out of the car… until later. We got our first dose of “if Dad says no, ask mom.” We had just finished dinner (Pizza again) and were on our way back to the orphanage. She asked Dan for the Uno phone and, knowing it was only a short drive, he said no. That got a long pleading, “Pazhalsta.” Translation… pleaaaaaasssssseee. They went back and forth a few times and then she turned to me on the other side of her in the back seat, smiled, and tried the same thing. I quickly said, “No. Papa said no.” We were rewarded with a big pouty face and chuckles from both Victor and Sasha who listened to the whole exchange from the front seat.
Court is tomorrow morning at 9AM (2AM EST). Please keep praying for us.
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