monday

Our last Monday here began with me (shona) actually sleeping quite soundly until the alarm went off at 7:30 and I eventually dragged my carcass out of bed at 8. Having the apartment cooler has resulted in much better sleep! (thank-you Lesya) We got up and ready to go and headed off to the train station for our LAST trip by train out to Boyarka. Well, as usual, I headed to the Kasa (where you buy tickets) with pretty close to exact change (they usually like that) only to have trouble communicating with the lady this morning – she didn’t seem to get where I wanted to go and then she said I needed more money. I figured she just didn’t understand where I wanted to go so I repeated ‘Boyarka’ ‘Dva’ (two) but she still said I needed more money. Then Darren came up and said that he didn’t see our train on the list this morning. I took my money back and we went to look outside to see if we could see our usual train – no luck. So, life lesson #1 today – apparently our usual train doesn’t run sometimes (although it has run every other holiday). So we decided to walk to the circus (another 5-10 minutes or so) to try to catch a ‘Marshutka’ (little bus). We’d seen the buses in Boyarka with signs for the circus so knew there should be some (and Jonathan had mentioned I think that they left from there too). Anyway, we eventually found one with a ‘Boyarka’ sign and tried to ask when the bus was leaving. We thought the guy said ‘chas’ (in an hour), so I clarified and pointed to my watch and I thought he said 10:10. Darren and I walked a little ways away to discuss what to do. After a while, as we stood there Darren noticed the bus start up so we moved toward it and managed to get on just in time. We laughed a little but were thankful to be on our way. Now we figure they were probably saying ‘soon’ or ‘in a minute’ when they said ‘chas’ and were probably telling us when the bus would arrive in Boyarka (because we did indeed arrive just before 10:10). Anyway, have we mentioned how nice it would be to know the language better? Life lesson # 2 – we don’t know how to communicate very well (but we really knew that already!). So we got out to Boyarka with no trouble once we were on the bus and the driver wasn’t as crazy as we had been told bus drivers are. We had a great time with Ivanna going for walks, swinging, and looking yet again at the chickens. A German lady (who I think we’ve seen once or twice before) and her son were feeding the chickens with scraps of bread which Ivanna found fascinating. She wanted to get right in there and despite me trying very hard to keep her hands away from the fence, at one point I was watching the other little boy and she got her little fingers through the chain link and one of the chickens immediately gave her a peck to see if she was food. No broken skin or anything, but she cried out briefly and was a little more hesitant about getting close to them after that (but still wanted to watch!). The only other hiccup in the visit so far was at one point she headed from the swing into a little ‘house’. Darren had noticed a bunch of flies around and was just saying ‘there are a lot of flies around – I wonder why?’ when we realized that Ivanna had stepped in what we thought initially was mushed up apple – no such luck. It was poop. That would explain the flies. I grabbed her and whipped off her shoe and tried to wipe off the little bit of poop off her sock then held her while Darren dealt with the much worse of sandal. As I held her I realized her other shoe also got a small dose so dealt with that one as best I could while holding a squirmy kid who wanted to get down and play – shoe or no shoe. Eventually Darren got the first shoe as clean as he could (not a good day to forget wipes!). As her shoe still stank, we decided shortly thereafter that we should head in. We took off both her socks and shoes and took her back to her group. We tried to explain what had happened – hopefully our ‘foo’ (stinky) and acting out stepping in something gross got it across! The nurse took her stuff anyway. Life lesson #3 – where there are many flies there is often poop (or other gross stuff you don’t want your kid getting into). Ivanna headed into the mess of kids that surrounded us and we squatted down for our goodbyes. We were surrounded by all the kids in the group and Ivanna was none too impressed that the were so close to us getting kisses and ‘pakas’ so she headed into her daddy’s arms for some attention. So many kids who want and need love.