Thursday, April 19, 2007

To All Readers,
Do you have any thoughts when reading this blog? Are ready to send comments? It would be great to hear from someone other than Kristy G. She has been a faithful commentator. Can you join her at this level?
Cindy and Tom


After a leisurely breakfast, Tom and Cindy started getting organized to leave the country. Tom leaves Zap on Friday evening. He will take the train to Kyiv. Cindy will bring the children home. We arranged one way tickets for Cindy and the kids on Lot Airline. They are scheduled to leave May 5th from Kyiv to Chicago via Warsaw, yet another country and city to visit on this journey. While it was nice to have fewer stops on the way to Kyiv on Delta, we planned to use another airline on the way home since the one way tickets were prohibitively expensive for the kids. Lot offered the best price for the three of us. We are excited to plan our exit from the country.

Larissa asked us to lunch at the orphanage. We took a marshutka bus to the orphanage. It is always crowded on these buses and the bus with a capacity of 13 held over 20 people. Tom rarely gets to sit down for the ride, and in this case was happy to get close to Cindy.

We did eat lunch at Matveevka then just enjoyed a wonderful sunny day at the orphanage. We played basketball, soccer, volleyball and Frisbee all in one afternoon. The children just like the adult interaction.

Tom had the video camera and was getting lots of footage on his last trip to Matveevka. Natasha and Vika wanted to say Hi to Mike and Paula and Tom made a video postcard. We talked with a teacher that understands English and asked the kids to sit on a jungle gym and speak in Russian. Some times these postcards are nothing more than hello and I love you. With this approach, the girls spoke for 10 minutes! Tom was encouraged and tried to get others to send a message.

This is the warm spot of the day. Tom was shooting video and a girl went up to speak with Maria Oksana. She was older and spoke only a little English. Tom thought that she said that she knew Maria’s mom and dad. She had to leave and this was too much to leave alone. Yana, their English teacher and our fond friend and Matveevka, was there and we asked her to ask Maria about the girl. Maria said that the girl was her friend and that she thought she knew her pappa. Yana asked if she knows her pappa. When she said no, Tom looked at her. She then pointed to Tom and said “Dad” and gave him a big hug. She knows her dad now.

We did walk to the little convenience store for a snack. The kids just like having options when ordering food. A goat has been tied up along the sidewalk for the last two weeks. This trip, we decided to pet the lively goat. Many folks will tied a cow or goat to a concrete block and move the block around to taller grass. See, they do not mow the grass. They use animals or just plow up the yards and plant flowers.

Spring is definitely here. The flowers are beautiful and each day the trees are becoming greener. It is nice to see more green color. It tones down the bleak buildings. See, most of these apartment buildings were built after WWII by Stalin, who did not really like the Ukrainians. He did not use his best assets.

We ate a light dinner at the orphanage then returned to Zap for Tom’s last evening. We ended the evening swapping pictures with Mark and Julie.