If you haven’t the stomach or time for minutiae you may be well-advised to skip today’s entry. We are experiencing what those before us have termed the “stagnation period” where little occurs or changes from day to day as we wait for the next event. The children are accustomed to our daily visits. The communication levels are insufficient to convey new sentiments to the children. To fight this we will begin playing games and such to occupy the time and to further explore their personalities. Toli seems to be his old sweet self that others had described to us. He's very playful, loving. He sees us from across the school grounds, yells "Papa!" and comes running or riding on his old bike. Stan's very agreeable and says yes to everything. He's just like Edward and Richard -- walking around with his headphones on, ingoring everything and everybody, including Dasha's "Suhozhenko!!" call that usually gets his attention when all else fails.

This morning we fumbled our way through purchasing produce and other needed items at the outdoor market down the street. Dasha’s and Stan’s teacher, Valentina Ivanovna, was to be celebrated on her birthday by her class yesterday; so, at the children’s request, we bought her a few red roses at the market.

We visited with the children, bought treats for them at the store by the school, and returned to the apartment. Susan cooked up some pork-filled dumplings, similar to some we had tried in Kiev, and served them with sour cream over the top as the Ukrainian kitchens do. Excellent! The children had indicated that they enjoy dumplings very much. So I translated what I could of the directions and we gave it a try in order to be ready to make some for the children on Sunday.

After dinner we watched the DVD of “Pursuit of Happyness”. I was not engrossed in the movie as I was alternatively reading a book and dozing off. But I must have gotten into it enough that when it was over I looked around the room and wondered, “What are we doing here?” Susan had a similar thing occur during the movie as she suddenly asked herself, "We are adopting what?" We felt as though we could have been watching the movie in the comfort of our home in South Jordan, or we were just visitng here briefly. Then we're sanpped in to this reality. We have had such a singular focus until know that we have constantly been aware of our purpose. For a moment we were distracted.

I have learned very little Russian, but I enjoy trying. On occasion I find myself attempting to form an expression in Russian. If it includes a word or phrase I don’t know, the word that will automatically come to mind will be the Thai equivalent – or once in awhile even French or German. It’s a strange phenomenon. So many aspects of life here remind me of Thailand.

In a related manner, I get twisted up trying to assess US dollar value of prices here. In Thailand the baht was valued at essentially 20 per dollar, with a value of 5 cents each. In Ukraine the grivnya is valued at close to 5 per dollar, or 20 cents each. My pea-brain plays tricks with this reversal and I find myself reflexively dividing or multiplying by 20 instead of 5 and getting things all mixed up.