The weekend in Mariupol

For ease of reference, here is the link to our photos. We have posted a few new ones up:
http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj262/jhickman13/AdoptionAdventure/?albumview=grid

After we left the internet club yesterday, we stopped at a store and bought more minutes for the cell phone. We had not been able to call Edward, our facilitator, for a few days. We had been able to call the Matthews however. It took Joe some time to figure out what was going on (he’s slow that way). When we bought the phone in Kiev, we were with the Matthews and Andrew, our interpreter there. He had bought us a plan which gave us free minutes between us, the Matthews, Andrew, Valentine (I think), but not with Edward. They came pre-loaded with some minutes which must have been used up. It is easy to buy more minutes for the phone. Many places sell the cards. Our phone uses a plan called “life.” You just go into the store and ask for “life 25,” or “life 50”, etc. The number is the cost in Grivnas. I’m not sure how that translates into minutes. Once you buy the card, you scratch off an area on the back of the card and reveal a number. You have to enter the number into your phone to apply the minutes. Joe got a quick run-down of the instructions from Edward on Friday (we let Edward off the hook for the weekend, feeling he needed a break from Americans for a couple of days). Joe attempted to enter the numbers and received constant “operation failed” messages, without an explanation of why it failed (those darn programmers; couldn’t they create a better message). Then Graham took over. He also got the error message. So much for teenage tech savvy (hey, you just read off numbers and I put them in, you didn’t tell me there was MORE). It did not help that the only instructions were in Russian. An idea struck Joe (he has so few, they usually hurt him when they hit). We have a new son that is quite fluent in Russian. Perhaps he could help.

We arrived at the orphanage. It is bath day again. After waiting about 15 minutes and wondering where in the world Kolya was, he emerged with wet hair and minus 8 layers of dirt (out of 13 total). As we waited outside the orphanage for Kolya to come down, Joe noticed that the security guard was the rather amiable one. So he approached the guard and in his best Russian asked “Can you play English?” (at least he is getting closer; the last time he asked someone if they were the queen of England). When the guard laughed and said neem noga (the rough pronounciation for the Russian “a little”), Joe knew we were in business. He pulled out the phone and the card. The guard went back inside, fetched his glasses, read the back of the card, and nodded. He then proceeded to show Joe what to do. Ah, there was one step he missed. So for those of you who will be traveling over here, I give the steps to add minutes to the phone (note, this applies to the life plan).
1) Buy the card from any store.
2) Scratch off the shiny area on the back. (Wendy was the first one to find the shiny spot. Go figure.)
3) In the instruction area on the back of the card, you will see something like this *111* (the 3 numbers may be different on different cards)
4) On your phone, enter the numbers you see above with the * sign plus the numbers you see in the scratched off area (there are spaces in the numbers, but you do not enter those; that’s for readability). So on my phone, I entered *111*27524437059818#, then I hit the call button.
5) After several seconds, you should get a message in Russian, and not an Operation Failed message. You’re good to go.

After getting the phone minutes set up, we proceeded to play our usual games of Frisbee and the orphans’ version of volleyball over a line of pennants that someone has placed just for this game (Joe remembers this from his elementary school days as being called newcome; and no it was not played over a dinosaur tail). The object is to hurl the ball with your hands over the line hoping the other person/team will drop it. Strategy includes slam dunking, dropping it lightly over the line or hurling it at the other persons face. Kolya does a “wacky” dance sometimes before throwing it across the line. We then play some soccer as his regular shoes are soccer cleats.
We taught him the card game of Concentration for those of you who are old enough to remember the TV show, Memory for those of you without crow’s feet next to your eyes.
Kolya tries to get us to pick the wrong matching card by pointing at the wrong card while looking very innocent. When we choose the wrong one he laughs hysterically. We let him get away with that maybe once.

After about 1 ½ hours we all get tired and sit around staring at each other. Then Graham and Kolya start wrestling or picking on each other. We are trying to get him to speak English. Graham hit upon a great motivation for Kolya. He is trying to get Kolya to say “I want 25 kopyicks (kopyick is their equivalent of cents).” If Kolya says it, then Graham gives him (reluctantly and at the urging of his parents), the money. Great Graham, the first English you have taught him is to beg for money. At least he is calling Wendy Mom, and Joe is Papa.

He loves to draw and brings down his book full of pictures he is working on and at first we believed he was tracing the pictures from other coloring books but as we were sitting on the bench outside yesterday afternoon, he began to draw in the dirt. Puzzled at first as to what he was doing, the kids quickly recognized that he had drawn Spongebob Squarepants. We’re thinking he may be very talented. That would be a first for our family as none of us have any real talent for the arts. Well, Joe and Graham can both draw excellent stick figures, but other than that, we’re hopeless.

We are writing this on Sunday morning. We expect to have nothing exciting happen to us today. We will see if the internet club is open, and then perhaps check out the street market. We will visit Kolya around 2pm and then have a quiet evening watching the sappy chick flicks Wendy brought along (or not).

Tomorrow (Monday, Aug 4) is court. Edward will pick us up at 9am and head to the train station to pick up one document from Valentin in Kyiv and then we pick up the representative from the orphanage and the representative from the inspector’s office (Wendy asked if we have to pick up the judge as well). It’s almost here!!!