June 11, 2011

We had a very good day yesterday. Visited the orphanage around 12 PM, S and Alec played soccer. S showed us his room (see pictures). The room is very good shape and very clean. Another thing is the bathroom facilities and dining room. The bathroom doesn't have any privacy at all; and the dining room needs extensive cleaning.

We brought different activities for the kids to play with. S's group has about 16 kids. We brought origami making kits, construction paper and lots of pencils to draw. Kids were very excited by all the activities. This 8yr old named Zhenya or Evgeniy, drew several pictures for me and another girl, Natasha, made several origamies for us. Also, we brought fresh strawberries, cheeries and kiwis, and kids ate them in less than 2 minutes. They tell me that they get lots of fruits here and sometimes ice-cream. The director is very good at this internat. She really takes very good care of the kids. We didn't get to have lots of one-on-one interaction with S since all the kids were amazed by the Americans that spoke Russian. See the pictures that Slava took at the internat. We asked S's teacher if their group needed anything. We went to the market and bought everything she requested, like underwear and socks for boys and girls. We had to leave around 2 PM since it's their lunch time.

By that time, we were pretty hungry ourselves. On the recommendation, our driver Lenya, took us to this Ukrainian restaurant. Their menu was huge, around 10 pages. It took us 20 minutes to go thru the menu. But when the waitress came in, she said that all the things that we wanted were not available. We got up and left. We decided to go to another restaurant, Roksolana. Their food is a mix between Ukrainian and Moldovian food. Our facilitator and her husband ordered mamaliga (kasha made our of corn) with lots of fixings on the side (cheese, pork belly, feta cheese and etc.). Also, our table ordered pork and chicken cutlets, vareniki with meat (amazing), fresh salads, new potatoes, pork belly with pumpernickel bread and uzbek style bread (lavash) baked with feta cheese and herbs. Everything is made fresh, per order. Nothing is prepared ahead of time, even soup. Our facilitator wanted to get some pastries to have with coffee later on. We stopped by this huge supermarket, Tavriya, clone of Wal-Mart or Target. There, I got really nostalgic about a pastry called potato (it's called that because of the shape of the pastry). It is pure chocolate with nuts.

The hotel we are staying in, VIP hotel, has a great terrace. We had tea and coffee with pastries and just enjoyed the rest of our day. More on the hotel, I would highly recommend this hotel to anybody. It's very modern, up to American standards with very friendly staff. Here is the link to the hotel's website: http://en.vip-hotel.com.ua/  We will visit S. tomorrow morning and I will try to get a bit more one-on-one time.

Sveta