Day 13 bonding 5/1/2007

May 1 2007
Day 13 Yippee

Still in Central Asia or the land of the cutest, chubbiest, cheekiest baby’s. Oh that makes me miss my Gabby Girl (the most beautiful) so much. There is a little girl that plays outside of our building and her name is Dianna and that makes me miss my daughter in law, and that leads to my son Danny and my Nicky, it’s so hard. Why is it when we were home we couldn’t wait to get back here and now that we’re here you’ve guess it. I want to go home!

Today is May 1st and it’s Victory day! So big celebration in the town square. We enjoyed having chicken Shaslyks (shish-ka-bobs) and it’s been long enough I think we are in the clear from getting sick from it! I don’t think they know about “sam-n-ella” or the Asian flu here yet. Things come slowly, a teenager actually asked us today if we drove here from America. We said are you crazy do you know our gas prices, and what that would cost us!!! Their gas is still very cheep (good ole Kaz oil, about 60 Tenge a liter) I know my mother is expecting us to bring her home some as her souvenir.

On to the orphanage, we played outside the whole time with the kids. The little girl who looks like Gianna, was so shy one day when I came near her, she pulled her hat down over her face as to not connect with me. Today, I don’t know what happened but when she saw us, she coming running to us with her hands up. It’s so bittersweet, we enjoy immensely holding, singing, kissing and rocking these kids but it breaks our hearts to peel (literally) them off of us when we have to leave. I know it can’t be helped, but I get so angry at the mothers for leaving these helpless children behind. I see them so emotionally needy, yearning for a human touch. The care takers really and truly do the best that they can but there’s just not enough of them. I wish the mothers were made to take a tour of this place before leaving them at the maternity hospital. Maybe I am very wrong but I think they make it to easy (no questions asked) but I think that’s only in some cases. I know there are others were it’s absolutely necessary and it’s to save their babies life. We feel a deep connection with Gianna’s and Almira’s mothers, while we are here we wanted to look up Gianna’s mom but Habiba said no, it causes trouble. We wanted her to know how much loved Gianna is. Habiba said don’t worry she probably doesn’t care. Knowing Gianna, that precious kid the way we do, that women cares! As far as moms go, we need to have a release signed from Almira’s mom before court. There is no address or record of her and she wrote that her parents are deceased. I doubt it’s going to be that easy, we’ll see and pray about it… a whole lot.

My quest, though I am not very good at it, is to convey just how awesome of an experience and joy adopting one of these children brings to you. You all know the love and gift from God Gianna has been to us. Today we had a real overwhelming experience with Almira when the caregiver said it was time to go back to the group she had a extremely sad face, but we had to give her back. As we left the building and headed for the flat her caregiver (a wonderful women, that always wears the Chicago T-shirt we gave her 2 years ago) came back out with Almira because she was crying hysterically for us. She let us calm her down and she took her back inside. Sure, we are human and it made us feel very loved and wanted by her but it mostly broke our hearts, I actually started crying with her. Bill turned to me and said do you think we can stay for the next four weeks? Then we came to our senses. We both knew there was no way we could pull that off again. So we have to count on the Lord to completely take care of her until we can come back to take her home, it’s going to kill us to leave her for a month though.

On a much lighter note, Bill has figured out how to work the TV, yes it’s all in Russian but right now he’s watching topless G-string bowling (he probably doesn’t even notice it’s not in English yet). It’s unbelievable how risqué and uncensored Russian TV is on a regular basis. You don’t want to be watching a news program and view an accident scene, it could be quite graphic!

So happy, sad and hopeful,

Paka
Marie