Our Last day in Russia

This has been a long day. We got up very early. We had to eat and be on the bus by 8:00 if I remember right. We were traveling to a Christian drug rehabilitation center. It was a couple of hours from here. IT WAS VERY, VERY COLD. They told us to be prepared to be outside. Can you even imagine? The orphanage packed snacks for us to take with us. We stopped by the church in Samara to pick up our interpreter Katya and the pastor and some others. They took some supplies to the center. It was a long beautiful ride through the country. I kid you not when I say it looked like we were driving through the tundra. They have had rain while we were here so there is ice on top of all of the snow. It is absolutely beautiful. Pastor Olga keeps saying "ice flowers" and I can even understand her! I don't know what time we got there, but whenever it was we had to go through the introduction thing where they could not understand us and we could not understand them but we did it anyone. You understand don't you? The polite thing, right? Anyway, they loved us being there. Each person there told his "story" through the interpreter. It was quite interesting. We toured the facility. It was a farm. They had all the animals you would expect. Some of the kids got to milk the cows. They took us took their cellar where they had all of their vegetables stored from their garden. They had huge bins of potatoes. Cabbages were hanging from the ceiling. Lots of different vegetables were canned. Fascinating. The highlight of my trip.............we got to take a horse drawn sled ride. I LOVED IT! It was the coolest thing in the world. They put us in the sleigh and covered us with these big wool blankets. What a ride. A dream come true. I felt like I was in the movie "Heidi". By the time we got back I was frozen to the core. I did not get warm until I got out of a hot shower.

We had to say goodbye to Pastor Olga, Natasha and our interpreter Katya from here. That was so hard. They are such good people. They have been so good to us. I had a really hard time with this. But the worse was yet to come.

When we got back to the orphanage the children were all waiting on us but so was our dinner. We had to eat but the kids had a hard time with this. We ate as quickly as we could and then we played. Everyone went their own separate way. I am not sure what everyone did. Our room sort of turned into a hang out. Caitlin, Diane, Myself and I am not sure who else ended up there with 5 or 6 kids at a time. They just kept coming and going. It was so hard. One little girl just saying she did not want us to go home. I told her I had to go to see my husband and she said to tell him to come here. I would tell her that I had a job at school and she would say but we have schools here. She always had an answer. That is tough! They stayed up about 1 1/2 hour after their bedtime. Then when I came down to the computer she was hiding around the computer and came to the computer room with me. She was in her pajamas. I kept saying "You are going to get into trouble" and she said "No I won't". I finally left so she would go to bed.

Well this had been a great trip. A hard one though. I have seen a lot. I have done lot. I am ready to go home.