Our Little Snowflake

We have been having a great time with Lana. She smiles and giggles when we come in and today she reached for me the minute she saw me. Of course this brought me to tears.

Today the the nurses told us that they call Lana, Sne-shen-ka, which mean snowflake. These ladies are amazing. They really love all the children. They know each one so well and take time to interact with each child individually.

The conditions however, are tough. Chris and I are trying to stay strong, but it's very hard. We can't believe how well they do with so few resources. Diapers and formula are extremely scarce and often they are forced to make do with creative alternatives.

We stayed inside to play today. We found out that Lana is quite a crawler and has no trouble getting where she wants to go very quickly. Since we were inside the other children were around so we played with them also. It was interesting to see Lana's reaction when we were holding and playing with the other children. She already knows we are there to see her and she made sure we knew that. She would crawl up to us, or lean over and make eye contact when we had another child in our lap.

Barbara asked what we are doing when we aren't with Lana. After we feed her lunch we usually ride back to Bishkek and get some lunch. Today we ate at a place called Navigator and it was good. The other days the food hasn't been so great. We've been spending the afternoons walking around the city and seeing the sights. Today we went to a museum that was very interesting, but we couldn't really read the signs, so we weren't able to full appreciate it. We've been trying to get a real feel for the place so we have walked quite a bit. We've visited some local markets and all the official, former Soviet, sights. Bed time comes early for us. Some nights we've fallen asleep as early as 6pm. Tonight I'm up really late, right now it's 8:45 pm. I brought two book and have finished one and a half. I'm trying to pace myself, I still have a long time here. I'm doing a needlepoint for Lana's room and that's helping keep me busy. Chris has been doing quite a bit of reading also. We have a TV in our room, but we can't understand a thing because it is all in either Russian or Kyrg. The little bit of Russian we know helps us get around but isn't enough to understand a tv program. The internet has been a big help for us both but we are having to use the lobby computer and it's often occupied. We have asked to be able to help out at the orphanage in the afternoons, but we aren't sure if they will let us. We are hoping to find out tomorrow. We will both feel much better if we can do something to help out while we are here.