September 24, 2002

Today was another day in Donetsk, visiting with Evan at the orphanage and handling paperwork requirements in between visits.

Inna arrived at the apartment later than usual, because she'd had to wait at the train station for our formal adoption application form to arrive from the Center for Adoption in Kiev. We got to the orphanage around 11:30am and Inna left us so that she could get the application filled in by the inspector downtown.

Evan's caretakers told us that we had to return him to them by noon in order for him to have his lunch with the group. We took him for a brief walk around the orphanage grounds, gave him a small pancake from our breakfast which we'd stowed away in a plastic cup and a bit of juice, and then returned him in time for lunch. We were happy to see his group assembled in the kitchen area of their rooms, all sitting up at tables with little wooden chairs, with small metal plates and spoons. It looked like they were eating mashed potatoes and some kind of squash or applesauce or something. Basically, it was mush, but it looked like decent mush, at least.

Inna and our driver were still somewhere downtown, of course, so we decided to take advantage of our first real "alone time" to go for a walk. (Inna had been adamant that we were not to go off on our own anywhere, but it was wearing thin, especially on Kristin!) We left the orphanage grounds, and walked a couple of blocks to a park that we'd passed on our way to and from the orphanage every day. We wandered the park a bit, took a look around a restaurant at the far end, and started back. When we got back to the orphanage, we saw that the van was parked in front. Inna was back, and was surely looking for us. We winked at Victor on the way in, who seemed quite amused. Kristin went upstairs to look for her, and Lee went downstairs toward Evan's group's rooms. When Lee caught up with her, she was apologetic about being so late, and wanted to know where we'd been. Lee said simply, "Oh, Kristin's upstairs," and that seemed to satisfy her. We'd gotten away with it!

We left the orphanage and went downtown to shop a bit.  Inna referred to one of the places we visited as the "government store". It was like a department store, with many small booths or kiosks specializing in its own type of good: perfumes, cameras, baby clothes, scarves, men's suits, cell phones, televisions, coffee sets, etc.  We also visited the baby market again to get some toys for Evan to play with (which we would later leave at the orphanage).  We then returned to the apartment for lunch.

Inna picked us up again early for our afternoon visit. We needed to stop by the notary's office to get our application signed and notarized, then drop it off at the inspector's office at the town hall. The notary's office was a nice office in an ugly, run-down building. I was surprised that anyone would let a building fall into such disrepair (paint peeling, garbage in the hallway, empty light sockets hanging from the ceiling), and still have nice offices inside. At least it was nice and cool. Town hall looked like a typical office building, and we didn't go inside.

Evan was in good spirits when we met him at the orphanage around 4pm. His group had just been outside in strollers when we got there, and we had to wait for them all to be brought inside before we took him. We went right back outside for a long walk and playtime, and introduced a new toy: foam rubber mats with removable "puzzle piece" animals. He found them mildly interesting (especially when we showed him that the colored pieces came out). We put the mats together and laid them on the ground to give him a clean surface to sit on, but he was much more interested in crawling off into the dirt to look at fallen leaves and bugs and things, so we eventually gave up and moved on.

A little later, we got out a bowl of watermelon chunks that Kristin had taken from our lunch. Evan was pretty doubtful about it at first. It was probably like nothing he'd seen before. But as soon as he tried his first bite, he decided that it was pretty good, and he kept at it until it was entirely gone. The funny thing was, there was so much water in each chunk of melon that he would pop a bite in his mouth, chew it for a minute or so, then all of a sudden a bunch of juice would dribble out of his mouth, down his chin, and land on the plastic bib we'd put on him. It was a good thing we'd brought the plastic bib! We had a real clean-up job on our hands by the time he was done.

We stayed out for about an hour and a half, then returned to the visiting room upstairs for another snack (cookies and juice) and lots more playing with the foam mats. Evan loved pulling all of the pieces out of the mats and collecting them. He seemed very meticulous about getting the pieces he wanted and putting them in his lap, moving them around, picking up the mats and swinging them around, and so on. Kristin made a box out of the mats (they interlock), and Evan thought that was the coolest thing, especially when Lee swung it over his head so that he was sitting in the middle of the box. (Big smile!)

We kept Evan until about 5:30pm, then he started crying and just wouldn't stop for anything. We hope it wasn't anything to do with the watermelon. He seemed very interested in the green bag in which we keep the cookies, but when we gave him one, he stopped crying but didn't actually eat it. We took him back to his group around 6pm, and then left the orphanage.

We visited the Internet cafe on the way home. Lots of messages this time from lots of people. We replied to a few (it took forever to send a message using these computers), and sent a few more photos to the mailing list.

In the evening (back at the apartment), we watched an episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer on the computer's DVD drive, read, and processed the photos from the day. The evening seemed long, and Lee couldn't keep his eyes open past about 10pm.