Catch Up Note: Arrival in Lugansk

We crammed into 2 cars to go from Lutugino to Lugansk (Sergei, Nancy, Me, Ruslan, and Valik in Sergei's car; Peter, Colin, Claire, and Natasha in Peter's). We had arranged to meet the MacDonalds' at New York Pizza (in the basement of the Lugansk City Centre mall), a favorite of the MacDonalds, for dinner.

The boys started started out very talkative. They spoke to Sergei since he could understand. They were very excited, but still somewhat worried we were taking them to America to kill them (this came up once during the ride). It is terrible that this rumor goes around, but I have heard of it in several blogs I have read. But be real, if I were going to kill someone, I wouldn't spend $30K to do so.

They started to get more quiet, mainly because the road to Lugansk is very dark and there wasn't much to look at. They were fascinated by the graphics on Sergei's radio, so that provided some entertainment.

We eventually saw Peter's car ahead of us. So Valik started yelling "Natasha!" as loud as he could, as if she could hear us from 100 yards away, and with all the windows closed. Speaking of windows, they did like rolling the windows down, but were pretty good about rolling them up when we started moving.

We arrived at New York Pizza just in time to meet the MacDonalds. We ordered several pizzas and juice. They were very excited about that. They also enjoyed meeting all the MacDonald kids. They were relatively good during dinner, at least if we held them. Except that Valik has absolutely no fear of strangers and kept striking up conversations with people at other tables. Fortunately, he is very charming when he does this, so no one seemed to mind. Of course, we head it off as soon as possible too.

After about an hour, Valik was beginning to melt down, so we decided it was time to head out. Valik walked around the restaurant saying "Da svedaniya" to each table, and to those at the nearby store. he also swiped some (fortunately, complimentary) candy from a jar in a store, but the clerks said it was ok.

Colin and Claire went with the MacDonalds back to our flat, while Nancy, Ruslan, Valik, and I waited for Peter to drive us back. While we were waiting, the boys decided to ride the escalators over and over. That was fine, until Valik fell down on the up escalator. He fell down about 4 steps. Fortunately he was wrapped up so tight in his shirt, sweater, coat, hat, and scarf (think Randy "I can't put my arms down" from "A Christmas Story"), that he just rolled down, and there wasn't a scratch on him. Still it gave us all quite a scare for a moment. He just stood there catatonic for a minute, then snapped back, and rode again. I took one picture, but then was scolded by a security officer for taking a picture in their facility, so I put it away.

Then, all of a sudden, Ruslan starts jumping up and down, yelling "Pee-sit", so we had to find a bathroom ASAP. Ruslan, like most children never has to use the bathroom until it is suddenly an emergency. Since we were in a mall, we were able to get directions "Gdye tooalyet?" to a bathroom and all was well. Crisis averted.

Peter pulled up soon after and we rode back to the flat for the last time. We said our goodbyes to the MacDonalds, and discussed details of making on on-going contribution to the orphanage through them.

The boys were very impressed with the flat, and ran around excited for about 45 minutes. Then as a special welcome home treat, we put on the DVD of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". You will recall we had read that to them on the second day at the orphanage. They remembered the story and enjoyed it immensely, even though they could not understand it.

[Ruslan has "read" this story to me several times. Actually, Ruslan can barely read. In this case, he just looks at the pictures and tells the story in a very dramatic voice about the "Gdintch". Its funny. i have no idea what he is saying, but every page has him saying "shoo-shoo-shoo" in a very sing-song voice.]

Then came the long negotiation of who sleeps with whom. We had not intended to do this though. We put the boys in the living room, with Valik on the sofa and Ruslan on two chairs pushed together. Well the boys were a couple of monkeys, and kept yakking and playing and pushing the chairs over to the sofa. Then they would come bounding out of the room with one excuse or another. We used to go through this with Colin and Claire a lot. The first few times, we are very nice about reminding them that it's bedtime. Each time they come out, it gets a little less pleasant in tone.

Finally, we decided to separate the two. Valik had been acting up, so we removed him from the room and put him in our bed. big mistake. I think Ruslan saw this as Valik being rewarded even though Valik had misbehaved. So Ruslan had a fit and started yelling. I have no idea what it was, but I don't think it is something you would say in church. After a bit of yelling, it just became loud complaining. Nancy went in to lie down with him and "shhh" him. He literally complained for 1 hour and 15 minutes (no kidding). Finally, he started sort of humming his complaint a bit softer until he fell asleep. Ruslan is a great kid, and usually pretty even-tempered. But he has a hair-trigger fuse. It seems random to me.

Eventually, after doing some blogging, I went in and slept with Valik. I decided I would get up early, so I could get in bed with Ruslan before he woke up so as to limit any further collateral damage.

Day 1 with the boys....

By the way, I still intend to add pictures to this and earlier blogs. However, that will have to be later. Each picture takes about a minute to format to smaller size (from 3MB to about 40KB for the web), so time is an issue. Sorry.