January 23- Friday

January 23- Friday
We woke up at about 4:00 this morning. We wanted to call the kids at home and tell them about the girls before we tell everyone else, but we couldn’t get through. So, I called Mary and asked her to get a hold of them and have them call us. It was interesting to see their reactions.
After the phone call, I spent three hours trying to catch up on this journal. Keith fell asleep again and Elijah should have.
When it came time to go visit the girls we quickly ate some bread and cheese and ran out the door. The two younger ones both ran up to us and gave us a hug. The other two girls were in school. We played with those two and their friends. A spent the whole time taking pictures with our camera. I brought it with that intention but she wouldn’t do anything else and would only let R use it a couple of times. We got tons of pictures, though about half of them were good enough to keep. Some of their friends, a couple of the caretakers. Our facilitator came in near the end and told us that he was able to talk the judge into setting a court date even though he didn’t have all the paperwork, yet. That court date is February 3, but of course it is contingent on whether he gets all the paperwork in. That is about 10 days from now, then another 10 days for the waiting period, another 3 or 4 for the embassy paperwork and we will have been her for 30 days. That’s not too bad.
So, we came home and cooked the potato dumplings that our facilitator had left us. Very delicious!! We must get some more, and try to figure out different flavors, too. We also had some cheese and bread, our staples.
Then we laid down with Elijah to take a nap. When we woke up it was 10 minutes to 4:00. That isn’t good for jetlag, we either must not take naps or set the alarm for an hour. So we left for the orphanage. This time everyone was there. Half way through the caregivers took the other kids outside and the two younger ones went with them. That was really nice because it gave us some one-on-one time with the two older ones.
After this visit I’m not too concerned about the two older girls not saying that they want to be adopted. Monday is that big day.
We walked around the building and back toward the apartment. We decided to walk down and see if we could find and grocery stores to buy food as we are getting low. We walked down the main road by here in the direction that L told us they were. We did find a couple mini ones (think shaved ice shack size) but didn’t want to go much farther in the dark and went back to the apartment.
We ate granola bars and the last of the bread and cheese and drank hot chocolate. L came in to practice her English and we talked about where the grocery store was. She will take us there after we get back from our morning orphanage run tomorrow. She will also show us the big market where she says we can buy clothes for the girls. We will also ask her to show us the closest internet café, too, as that situation is getting critical , we need to get information out to people.
Anyway, I’m writing a book and we haven’t even been here a week.