As you've probably noticed, there is a lot of down time at the apartment. Unless you want to sleep or take a lot of walks, there's not much to do. William had his Blackberry with an AT&T International Data plan which allows us to email from anywhere. He also has Facebook and various other things available (like all his on line reading material). From this he has been able to send FB snapshots of our trip with pictures. (Feel free to add him as a friend if you want to see these). We learned that we could have brought DVD's since the apartment has a player. We didn't bring a computer, but probably will for trip #2 so William can do some off-line work. We'll use it on the plane to show Ukrainian DVD's to the kids. I read a lot.
About 10:oo am we set of to visit the kids. I brought photos of a massive water fight between Misha and Viktor v. William. This took place the night before they left US. We also brought puzzles for the kids. Though appreciative, there was more interest in playing with the FLIP recorder and William's Blackberry. We spent about 2 1/2 hours with the kids. It was a beautiful day, so we went outside (which is fine as long as we stay on the orphanage grounds). We spent our time collecting bugs, pinecones, and feathers. Viktor hung out with us as well. He was very excited that he would get to speak with his American family later that day.
After our visit, we again hit the Internet Club & walked home. An ice cream treat, purchased from one of the many vendors along the streets, was the perfect conclusion to a very nice day.
Later, our coordinator returned to the orphanage to translate phone calls for 3 of the children from their host families. She brought back a request from Misha that we bring junk food tomorrow - specifically, chips, cookies and CocaCola Light & juice for Anna. Our coordinator was so nice to buy these things on her way home along with some minutes for our phone.
After loading 300 grevna (the form of money) worth of minutes, we got to call Emily and Mason. At about $4/minute, this lasted about 5 minutes. We need to re-think our phone options for trip #2. William's Blackberry doesn't have International calling (just data), and we realized that our home phone doesn't have International calling either. This will need to be changed.
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