What a fun day!

Today we went to the orphange with Maria and Sasha. This was day 7 of visitation. Sunday when Almira was here at the apartment I let her pick from some of the things I had for us to do. She picked the bracelet making kit. So I brought that and also my camera and video camera. Maria checked with the orphanage director and made sure that we could film inside the orphanage. He said he could. He is just a wonderful and understanding man. I really like him. So I started off filming and about half way through Almira wanted to see how the camera worked and she took off from there. She was running down halls going in all these rooms and talking to people. You can hear her on the video just jabbering away in Russian. Some of it Maria translated for us. We got to meet her family, Family #5 at the orphanage. Almira showed us her bed where she sleeps. She sleeps in a room with 10 other girls. Then next door was a room with about 10 beds for the boys. There are a lot of older boys in her group. She video taped them today and said all of their names. She doesn't want to forget anything. We met her teacher, a Kazak man that seems to run her family. He was so very nice. The social worker was with us a lot today. She comes and goes and sits in our visits a lot. She is a very nice lady, tall blond and so nice. Her name is Tatiana. You can tell she wants Almira to be happy. She asked Almira today if she had any doubts about going home with us and she said "No!". By the end of our tour we had an entourage of kids following us. We saw the sewing room with the most incredible embroidry I've ever seen. The lady in the sewing room was so nice and gave me a handerkerchief that was embroidred. It is beautiful. We also went in the music room and were given a performance by 4 of the girls. I will post their picture. One was Saltant, one Sonya (I think) and the other two we didn't get their names. We went to a computer lab, the chemistry classroom. We ran into Almira's geography teacher who told us that Almira was very good in geography. We also went and visited the youngest family there, Family #9. These were the 7 and 8 year olds. Then we went back and finished up with the bracelets we had started. It is always so hard to leave and I have to give her several hugs and kisses. I'll post a picture of Almira sitting on her bed. She was showing us her bunny we gave her the first day.

Till tomorrow!

Kathy B.