It stopped raining so we are able to enjoy some time outside with Elijah. The temperatures dropped from 90's to 50's.

Our hotel room costs $90 per day. This includes 3 meals a day in the chow hall. Here is a picture of the Soviet era chow hall. The experience is much different from the U.S.

First, you get no menu or choices. You sit down and they bring you what they have cooked. The food is in no particular order as far as meals are normally arranged. This is breakfast as pictured: chicken and noodles, tomatoes, tea, and buttermilk. We sometimes get egg pie for dinner. Also, the Ukraines love pork. It is the most popular meat. So we are fed pork meatloaf almost daily. Both of us have lost some weight.....

You'll notice that Rick is in long sleeves. It's 90 degrees here, but he needs to keep his arms covered because of his tattoos. The younger generation are ok with them, but the older generation are not. In Soviet Union days, only men who served prison time had tattoos. We did not want to give a false impression!

The kids love to pull the grapes off of the vine at the orphanage. They aren't all ripe, but they still like to eat them. There is also a walnut tree that they pull the walnuts from, stomp on, and eat.

They not only love to blow bubbles, but also shake their juice, water, whatever they have to look at the bubbles inside their cups.

This is one of our taxi drivers: Tola. We see him frequently. We call him our tour guide in training. He doesn't speak a word of English. He talks all the way from the hotel to the orphanage in Russian, pointing things out to us along the way. We have no idea what he is saying but he always seems happy to see us!

Here is our little one - Jeremiah. He is very loving and runs into our arms!