Monday Morning
Yesterday was a pretty good day.
Sunday appears to be the day that all the kids get to run around the grounds unattended. This was great for them and a potential nightmare for us. As stated earlier we get to have this little corner of the grounds that are for our use. Alex being six had to see the older kids cruising around the yard in bikes, yes they actually have bikes to use. You can tell that he wants to take off and play with his posse which is understandable. We being the parents have to try to tell him in our pathetic attempts at broken Ukrainian that he has to stay in our little corner of this universe. He actually was very good about it and accepted his fate with us.
In the afternoon it appeared that one of the bigger boys took his toy cell phone that we bought him. He was pretty bumbed about it. He even tried to bribe this kid with candy to get it back but the kid just took the candy and told him he would bring it (we think). Then he just took off. Some very cute little girls who were around 8 or 9 tried to help but still no phone. I then thought it was time to bring out the big guns and I gave him this little hot wheels toy that we were saving and he completely forgot about the cell phone, for now.
We get to see a small slice of how the inner workings of the orphanage and the children work. It's no different than in our world back home. The bigger kids make the rules and the little ones have to abide by them until they themselves become big and get to do it to the littler ones.
Nikki is pretty laid back and just does her thing. Occasionally she likes to bark orders to me to do stuff but I have no idea what she is saying. So I try and guess and usually what I do seems to appease her. She is quite hilarious.
Our lady who owns the apartment introduced us to her daughter and husband who speaks decent english. They were extremely interested in our lives back home. They wanted to exchange coins with us. We have a bunch of US and English coins that we will give them and they have some Russian coins for Judy who also collects foreign coins. They want to take pictures with us and stuff also.
We asked him about a building we discovered yesterday afternoon. It appears that this place is the crown jewel of the town. Somebody spent a lot of money renovating this building. It has a bowling alley, high speed internet, fitness club, casino, fancy restaurant, etc... He is going to take us there and find out what everything costs and who we pay to get into it. He thinks the fitness club is around $1 or $2 per hour. This will make a huge difference in our sanity if we are able to use this club. It has 3 treadmills, not sure if they work yet, and a small set of fitness machines, enough for us to try to stay in shape. I haven't been able to run for two weeks now and it's driving me crazy. Dena will crush me in the half marathon in June if I cannot start running soon. Also the high speed internet will be great. Hopefully we will be able to get a usb connection and upload more pictures at higher speed. The sign says 256 mps but we'll see.
Andre also said if we need any tours of the town or additional places to go or see he would be glad to take us. This is great news for us as we were starting to feel like Jack Nicholson in the Shining, being holed up in our little apartment day and night. I thought I saw Judy last night with an axe in her hand yelling "here's Judy", but I was mistaken, I think. I am too frightened to ask her about it.
I found out Mickelson won the Masters yesterday. I can't remember the last time I missed watching the Masters. Man do I miss swinging a golf club.
We'll try and post again this afternoon after we check out the high speed place.
Bye for now
Cliff
Sunday appears to be the day that all the kids get to run around the grounds unattended. This was great for them and a potential nightmare for us. As stated earlier we get to have this little corner of the grounds that are for our use. Alex being six had to see the older kids cruising around the yard in bikes, yes they actually have bikes to use. You can tell that he wants to take off and play with his posse which is understandable. We being the parents have to try to tell him in our pathetic attempts at broken Ukrainian that he has to stay in our little corner of this universe. He actually was very good about it and accepted his fate with us.
In the afternoon it appeared that one of the bigger boys took his toy cell phone that we bought him. He was pretty bumbed about it. He even tried to bribe this kid with candy to get it back but the kid just took the candy and told him he would bring it (we think). Then he just took off. Some very cute little girls who were around 8 or 9 tried to help but still no phone. I then thought it was time to bring out the big guns and I gave him this little hot wheels toy that we were saving and he completely forgot about the cell phone, for now.
We get to see a small slice of how the inner workings of the orphanage and the children work. It's no different than in our world back home. The bigger kids make the rules and the little ones have to abide by them until they themselves become big and get to do it to the littler ones.
Nikki is pretty laid back and just does her thing. Occasionally she likes to bark orders to me to do stuff but I have no idea what she is saying. So I try and guess and usually what I do seems to appease her. She is quite hilarious.
Our lady who owns the apartment introduced us to her daughter and husband who speaks decent english. They were extremely interested in our lives back home. They wanted to exchange coins with us. We have a bunch of US and English coins that we will give them and they have some Russian coins for Judy who also collects foreign coins. They want to take pictures with us and stuff also.
We asked him about a building we discovered yesterday afternoon. It appears that this place is the crown jewel of the town. Somebody spent a lot of money renovating this building. It has a bowling alley, high speed internet, fitness club, casino, fancy restaurant, etc... He is going to take us there and find out what everything costs and who we pay to get into it. He thinks the fitness club is around $1 or $2 per hour. This will make a huge difference in our sanity if we are able to use this club. It has 3 treadmills, not sure if they work yet, and a small set of fitness machines, enough for us to try to stay in shape. I haven't been able to run for two weeks now and it's driving me crazy. Dena will crush me in the half marathon in June if I cannot start running soon. Also the high speed internet will be great. Hopefully we will be able to get a usb connection and upload more pictures at higher speed. The sign says 256 mps but we'll see.
Andre also said if we need any tours of the town or additional places to go or see he would be glad to take us. This is great news for us as we were starting to feel like Jack Nicholson in the Shining, being holed up in our little apartment day and night. I thought I saw Judy last night with an axe in her hand yelling "here's Judy", but I was mistaken, I think. I am too frightened to ask her about it.
I found out Mickelson won the Masters yesterday. I can't remember the last time I missed watching the Masters. Man do I miss swinging a golf club.
We'll try and post again this afternoon after we check out the high speed place.
Bye for now
Cliff
posted by Judy @ 12:18 AM
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