Another Great Day

Ashley - Thank you for the pictures of first day and stepping up... you are awesome.

We had an incredible day today... we went and signed a bunch of papers and headed down to the "Sea Camp" with the rep from children services. She was a very young girl and had already been prepped from Tonya  (our translator) and Tatiana (Head Care Taker of Stas) about everything so she didn't really even question us at all. We go to the camp and Stas came in and signed right away... (pictures to follow). Went and checked into our hotel and went back to the camp and spent rest of the afternoon with Stas and his buddies.

We were able to hang out and play with everyone in Stas's care group which was about 12 kids. They just hung around us and played with us. We are really struggling with just bringing one child home... wishing we could bring them all home. In this one care group, they are all very close and love each other. There is plenty of love in this orphanage... just no money or food or shoes or clothe or future once they hit 16. 

We learned a few more things about Stas as well today. Mom was married when she died and Stas was cared for by his then single dad. Dad didn't do so well caring for Stas and his sister and the State took Stas away to the orphanage and grandma took the sister. The grandmother is the father's mother and is 66 years old. The care takers tell us that she could only handle one child and decided to let Stas go into the orphanage and keep the sister. Stas has been in the orphanage for 4 years and apparently dad died about a year after Stas went into the orphanage. We don't know how the parents died but we should find out this week. They seemed pretty concerned about convincing us that Stas has a clean bill of health but honestly, he could be terminal and we would still take him.

We are by far staying in the best, cleanest place since we got here. It is a small beach resort town and quite beautiful. Disregard earlier sarcastic comments about resort area...

So now  Tonya is off in Kherson moving paperwork and working on our behalf and we get to hang out in the beach town and then spend the afternoon with the orphans. Weather continues to be about 80 and sunny. I know weather will get worse here but right now, we seemed to have hit a pretty good run.