What a great three days we have had!! Saturday we skipped our morning visit to get a taste of the area. The two couples we have befriended from Israel, Paul and I all decided we needed to do something different. Our friends' facilitator took us to a Cossack show. This show featured men dressed in the time and did tricks with ropes and horses. It was a lot of fun! After that, we went to the Cossack museum, which Paul and I had already been to. It was good though, because the facilitator knew much of the history of the area and told us quite a bit. Then we went to a huge oak tree where the Cossacks used to meet. It is over 800 years old. They have preserved it so it still stands. Finally, we ate lunch at a place that makes pizza. It was the closest thing we have had to familiar foods in three weeks. It was wonderful. We then had a great evening visit with Lizzy. She has finally decided she likes Mama and Papa better than the Ukrainian woman! Yea! She talked to her for a bit, but then wanted time alone with Mama and Papa. She is obsessed now with watching herself on video. She loves to watch all the video we have taken on our camera while she eats her cereal we bring for her. She is mesmerized for at least twenty minutes. Another breakthrough: she now comprises with us and motions what she wants instead of saying it in Russian and getting mad when we don't know what she wants. We have also picked up little Russian words here and there and she likes when we say Russian words to her. Breakthrough 2: Lizzy has learned that sharing is a good thing. Papa and I have been working with her and she shared her drink AND snack with us! It was a big deal!! Friday night, the dynamic six went out for dinner. We walked to a restaurant that was near to all our apartments. However, they were hosting a wedding reception. They let us eat there anyway. There were no English menus but luckily the waitress spoke a tiny bit of English. She gave us the highlights of the menu and we all were able to order. The lights then went low for the reception and the "DJ" started the music. It took us all about thirty minutes to realize that he was not playing cds but actually singing!! He was also playing the pan flute for slow songs. We were amazed!! Today we went to the open street market. It was really cool. They literally sell everything there!! We bought Lizzy some new shoes for 55 Grimna (or 6 US dollars!) Everything is so cheap here! We also bought her a dress and a full outfit. We then went to the children's store down the street. There we bought two shirts, three pairs of tights, five pairs of undies, bubbles, balloons, and pjs for...ready?.....$25!!! (209 Grimna!) Crazy!! It's great!!! We brought her her new hat and shoes tonight to our visit. The hat has three pink balls at the top. It looks like something she would pick for herself! She was so cute! She was sooo proud and happy. She hugged us both and couldn't wait to put them on. We also brought her bubbles and balloons today. She loved them! She screamed and tried to catch them. She also loved the balloons.We popped a few balloons as we played, but we had many more so it was OK. She loved to run and catch the balloons, also. It was windy so they were blowing everywhere! She had a great time with Mama and Papa today. We were also playing with our friends and the children that they are adopting. They speak Hebrew so we always say "Shalom" to them. Well, Lizzy got confused today and said "Shallo". Haha. She tried to combine hello and shalom. It was hysterical! Now we joke about it and say Shallo. We'll cross our fingers that we get our clearance papers tomorrow so we can get our court date! We'll see!!!

Love,
Candace and Paul