Trip 2, Day 4: Hope you like Pizza

Saturday, July 24th

When we arrived in Kirov the next morning, we realized that we were in for another hot, humid day. Morning temperatures were already in the 80’s, and going up quickly. While we were excited to see our little guy, we were dreading the heat inside the orphanage. After unloading our stuff from the train, we again got to do dash madly up a steep hill, to keep up with our coordinator Andre. Between the heat, the speed, and the number of bags we were lugging, we were rather crabby by the time we reached our driver Sasha's little white van.

Our first stop was the hotel, where we dropped off our baggage, got the gifts ready, and then left for the orphanage. On the way to the hotel, our interpreter informed us that we would need 10 gifts – 4 VIP gifts and 6 other gifts. On our first trip, she had told us we would need 4-6 gifts, so we were 4 short. Not good. Alan frantically began putting together gift bags while Kathy ran to the grocery store to buy some additional bottles of wine to use as gifts.

With everything bagged up, we went down to the lobby. We still felt like we were overloaded, since we now had many bottles of alcohol, boxes of chocolates, and a large bag of orphanage donations. All three couples piled back into the dreadfully hot van, and off we went to the orphanage.

As we arrived, we saw the children (who were old enough to walk) playing outside. It was so hot, that they were all running around in only their nappies, hats, and footwear. No pants, no shirts. It was very cute, but we decided not to take a picture of them. Inside, we were brought to the director’s office, where we were asked to make piles of the gifts that we had brought. Andre sorted them into what he felt were appropriate gifts for the different officials. In that way, we found out that the gift bags we had brought were unnecessary.

Note to any prospective parents: Be prepared to acquire more gifts, and don’t worry about any type of packaging. Also, if you go to Kirov, there’s a grocery store up the hill from the hotel, which has nice bottles of wine for under $15.

After the dumping of the gifts, we went back to the section of the orphanage we had spent so many hours in during trip 1. Eventually they brought in our little guy, who was just waking up from a nap. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on, and did not seem to recognize us.

After a few minutes, he started warming up to us. Alan decided to play his Ace card, lifting ‘A’ into the air. As he came down, Alan made farting noises on his belly. 'A's face instantly lit up, and we could tell from his expression that he now remembered us. In seconds, he had gone from tired and cranky, to giggling and ready to play.

So we played. And played. And then played some more. In total, we spent eight hours with our little guy that Saturday. On the first trip, they kept the visits fairly short, and took the children back for feeding and nap times. This time, we were instructed to keep him with us. When it was feeding time, we brought him up to the room, and Kathy fed him his meal. He got a treat after the meal, a cup of tea.

When I say cup of tea, I don’t mean in a bottle or a sippy cup. This was a regular size porcelain tea cup. The caregiver held her hand under his chin, slid the cup in, and ‘A’ drank. During the trip, we also learned that the children are trained very early to use the potty. They wear diapers, but are taught to use the potty every two hours, or after meals. This was much more advanced developmental behavior than we were expecting from an 11 month old.

We were told that we would be eating lunch inside the orphanage, and so we ordered pizza from a local restaurant. We had been looking forward to getting some air, but it was not to be. We wouldn’t learn why until 2 days later.

The German and Irish couples informed us that there was a small market just outside the gates of the orphanage. We hadn’t known about this our first trip; being able to buy supplies during the day made things much easier.

Finally, it was time to leave the orphanage, and head back to the hotel. We ate a quick dinner at the restaurant upstairs, and then went to bed. We knew we would have another long day on Sunday.