Sorry for the delays...

Sorry for the delay in additional posting. You see, in Ukraine the internet is steam powered (it was built during the Soviet era). Since Russia cut off the supply of natural gas to Ukraine, the internet has slowed to a crawl. There are huge warehouses in Odessa full of millions of words that cannot get into the internet as the pressure is too low.

Even so, I did manage to get a bunch of pictures into a draft the other night. Now I'll try to add a little commentary before the steam is shut off for the night.

The next few pictures show Valik and Ruslan on one of the sleds we bought for the school. This was when Valik was flipping the bird. He actually got one in a picture which I have edited strategically. It is after the one where he is doing the bat-tusi. You can see his hands are a blur as he tries to trick me in some pictures.












































































































Notice how Ruslan is holding a bag in almost every picture? He brings his bag of stuff to every visit. It contains pretty much all the little gifts we have given him in the past 2 weeks, including the original packaging. When he is outside, he will not put the bag down.






















































A pretty good shot of Claire and me, even though I am having a bad hair day. It usually starts out good until the boys get hold of it. It's a lost cause after that, I actually need to get a haircut, but I am worried how it will come out here, since I can't explain myself.


























Notice all the shots of the boys taking pictures. We try to take pictures of the boys as much as possible (since we were first allowed to on Christmas Day). However, it is difficult as 1) the boys are rarely still long enough when they are playing, 2) we are not allowed to have pictures of other children (as explained in an earlier post), and 3) once the boys see the camera, they want to take hold the camera and take pictures and do nothing else. We are slowly building a library of shots, but it takes a while.

























































































In the inside pictures, you can see how excited the boys are about their glow-in-the-dark bugs we got them. They kept putting my coat over their heads and going "Wow!". I included a few of these even though most are blurry and over-exposed.




































































Soap bubbles were also a big hit.





















































































The green building is where they sleep. Ruslan is in one wing of the building and Valik in another. We have not been in their room, though we got to see a representative bedroom (7' x 7' for 2 boys, including 2 short beds, a small dresser and wardrobe).
















Nancy and I are not making peace signs. We are telling Ruslan he can take 2 more pictures before he has to give the camera back.































Our first picture of Ruslan. He is wearing his pig costume for the Christmas play



























And a picture of Ruslan during his melt-down (when he thought we were only here to see Valik)

Valik is always a blur of motion. Beep-beep-zip-tang!