Day 13 in Ukraine

Still no word on the interpol situation.  We are really hoping this will get cleared up VERY soon!  We woke up this morning to no electricity.  We called Marina who called the woman whose house we are staying in and she said it was not a problem with the house, but with the whole area.  We waited but no power.  We needed to shower before leaving the house (we were kinda gross) but no such luck.  The house was very dark because it only has a few winows (I promise I will post some pics of the house soon hehe) so we coulndn't even see to shower.  Plus if I washed my hair without blow drying it, it would be wet for the next 2 days!  We saw some men banging on the electricity poles looking like they were trying to fix them. 

We decided we didn't want to miss our visit with Zoya so we freshened up the best we could and took off for the orphanage.  When we got to Zoya's room, it was unusually quiet.  I looked in and saw her just sitting in one of the wooden play areas.  She leaned her head up against the wall and just sat there.  That was hard to see.  I imagine she had done a lot of that.  I was happy to see she shares a play area with Sasha, another little boy who has a momma and daddy coming for him soon!  Zoya happened to turn around and she noticed we were standing at the door.  She just stared at us.  When they brought her out to us we got a smile and it was the first time I really felt she remembered us right away.  She held her arms out to me with a big smile!  It melted my heart!  She was tired again when we got there.  We took her outside where she again fell asleep while her Daddy was holding her! Every time we take her out she falls asleep! But then again every time we take her out it is 10:30 and maybe thats just when she needs a nap. After our visit we found a bank on our own to exchange money, picked up Zoya's visa photos, and ordered some prints of us with her to take to the judge and to the social worker.  We also went grocery shopping and bought some new things.  We are getting sick of eating the same old things.

Taking a break along the way.

People pay to have eyelashes like this!

This is what she looked like when we tried to wake her up! Haha. We tried to wake her up so she wouldn't get in trouble! Once inside she finally woke up while we were undressing her. 

 

We got to feed her lunch again today.  Here she is right before we fed her.  She was dancing to the music on a little toy we had.  She is too stinkin' cute!

And the mugshot pictures! Haha.  This is what we did yesterday...tried to get a good picture for her visa.  I think it's pretty funny we ended up with this mugshot! At least I put a bow in her hair for her picture :)

People here are burning piles of "stuff" everywhere.  Everywhere we go it smells like smoke and burning garbage.  Yesterday when we took the long drive we saw fires all over off the road.  I guess they are spring "burning" instead of cleaning.  We also noticed that there is garbage EVERYWHERE, like lots of it, all along the streets and in the grass.  Tamara, the woman whose house we are staying at, did our laundry for us so kindly and then hung it to try, except when she brought it in, the clothes smelled like we had worn them camping because of all the burn piles outside!  I really do feel like I'm camping here, it's pretty funny.  There are stray dogs EVERYWHERE too! You can see them mating in the streets...it is a real problem here.  The dogs are wild and we get a little nervous when we see a pack of them coming our way.  Our facilitator says every so often they will catch all the dogs and kill them....she said you can see they haven't done that in a while. 

Please keep praying for this interpol issue to be cleared up very soon.  There are several other families who have already had to cancel court because it has not yet been cleared up.  Thanks!