Day Ten - Meeting Peter

8:30am came early this morning—Sherri hadn't slept well given the yelping dogs in our hotel's front yard. We started our day by going to meet the city adoption administrator who was responsible for preparing the document stating we were OK to see Peter. Our facilitator must have dazzled her as what had started as a half day of paperwork to be completed before we could see Peter turned into just 30 minutes in the park.

We both had visions in our minds about what the orphanage would look like and what kind of care Peter would have been receiving there. I must say that we couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised—the place looked better than some of Nashville's preschools that we have toured. The SDA officials in Kiev had warned us that the director of the orphanage was rather difficult and didn't seem to have an interest in seeing the children adopted, so we were somewhat relieved to hear that he is on holiday and that we would be meeting with his interim who also acts as the orphanage psychologist. He was a wonderful surprise full of encouragement and eager to make things with Peter work out for us. We met with the lawyer and the physician and heard what we already knew from his medical record, and then finally had the opportunity to meet Peter.

He was very shy and unsure of us, but that was understandable given that he had been visited by others previously who from his perspective were probably very full of promises and then never returned. We played trains (all little boys love trains) and with some hand puppets before heading out to their playground where this tiny little child shocked us with his gymnastic abilities—he could do chin ups on his own! We got quite a laugh out of that which of course caused him to repeat it. Very funny!

It was time for his lunch and nap so we left for a few hours and returned again this afternoon. I think he was a bit surprised to see us again. We got to join Peter's class of 11 in their music lesson which was about 20 minutes of pure joy for us. A man taught their class playing Ukrainian folk songs on his accordion while they danced and sang along. the kids were very funny—a few of them offering to sing songs on their own for the group and all joining in on silly group dances. For a moment in time i thought maybe we could take more than one—then I snapped back to reality. We spent the afternoon with him playing in their playground sand box and having a few brief moments of coloring. It seems to us that he is a very normal healthy 3 year old boy who will only blossom more with a home and more love and attention.

Tomorrow we will return to spend a couple of hours with him in the morning and again in the afternoon, and on Saturday morning we have a specialized physician coming to visit him to ensure his heath is in good order. It's been a busy but happy day here. We're looking forward to tomorrow.

Evening addendum...After a pizza dinner downtown, we visited three internet cafes – none had WiFi and only one was brave enough to disconnect a computer and let us try to connect via ethernet. Unfortunately, despite heroic efforts, the static ethernet connection settings didn't work. We did, however, develop a posse of 11th graders who spoke good English and led us to one of the internet spots. They earned 20 UAH – enough for a couple of hours of gaming without asking Mom for more money, I figure. Not bad for 5 minutes work. A final effort at a restaurant reported to have WiFi turned out to be false. So, we are without a direct connection to the outside world using our computer. Thus, we're on webmail (presumably, we haven't tried yet) and blog updates will be irregular.