Day 26 & 27 - Becky arrives back home

(Quick note:  I’m dropping pictures and video that doesn’t relate directly with what I typed up but that I thought we be fun to see none the less.  It might be a little confusing but just know that the context isn’t direct to the post but to the time here in general, thanks.)

Maksym (photo by big brother)

Yesterday I missed posting about the day so I’ll try to catch up a bit on events.  I say events but really the big events are next week.  This week is just endless summer with the boys (on the grounds of the orphanage).  Cloudy all day yesterday which was nice as the heat was down as well.  Sergei did have school today so it was good that I showed up in the afternoon as Sasha suggested.  I think that Volva had the day off and I think it was because of an injured foot or toe – there was some bandage covering up the details.  Back in the USA he would have had to tuff it out at school but it was nice having him around with Sergei and Maksym.

Masha (Maria)

The mystery visitor keeps getting bigger and bigger in my imagination as today all of the boys had new haircuts which I’m convinced is part of the visit preparations.  We even had to play over in the back corner of the orphanage grounds I think because the soccer field (of sand and broken asphalt) was being kept in its pristine condition.

 Big Sergei (He's not really it just that our Sergei is little)

More flips from the other day- no tires yet

If one of the big boys does it so must Maksym – back flip off a tire stack into a pile of sand no problem for Max after all Volva and Sergei just did it.  Sergei would yell and yell and try every word in the Russian dictionary to get Max to stop with the flips but Max got in at least two dozen flips.  We played a little pass around with the soccer ball and everyone had a turn on the bike as well – yes Maksym as well.  He fits onto the back of the bike on the little tire rack quite well.  I might have to take him home that way one of these days.

The last part of the visit was another competition English where contestants matched their English wits against a growing variety of flash cards (thanks to the Gardiners for leaving them behind they’ve been very useful).  Fruit, vegetables, and home were the main subjects and again having them compete for points is a sure way to keep them focused.  Time, calendar, and numbers are where I would like to go next with them.  We let Maksym get away with the Russian words for now so that he is having fun with the game as well.

I don’t have any pictures of the afternoon right now as I let Sergei keep the camera again.  If I do get a chance to post there should be about an hour of video of them flipping from tires to sand.  Sergei would use the playback to perfect his form.

So I’ve been working on trying to understand as much as possible about the place from which my boys where born.  There is a fair amount of information on Ukraine and even more on Russia but I’ve not found much on Mariupol in particular.  My searching has been limited to Amazon for reads and Google for information.  I couple of days ago I ran across two things – first a website called Old Mariupol and a bubble problem with Google.

You can almost see Mama Mia's

I’ll start with Google.  If you search Ukraine or Mariupol from Google (or Bing for that matter) from the US using the .com extension you are going to get a Wikipedia link with a picture of the Mariupol city flag and a bunch of offers for a bride of your very own but not much more.  Now come to Mariupol and let Google now automatically assume you are Ukrainian and want to search using Google’s .ua address and you end up with a totally different list of links because Google has placed your search into a different bubble (more on filter bubbles here http://dontbubble.us/ and why DuckDuckGo should be added to your search engine list).  Well Google .ua is where I found Old Mariupol (http://old-mariupol.com.ua/) which has an in depth listing of history on the town – all in Russian.  So I don’t speak Russian but one nice thing that Google will do for you (right in the browser with Chrome) is translate the page to English.  I would say the translation makes sense about 80% of the time allowing me to read up on the city’s history now and work on my Russian reading later.

I would like to add some of the city’s history to the posts using Old Mariupol as my guide – I will post more on that later along with more pictures once I get the camera back from Sergei.  Next up is an apartment move, the afternoon visit and then Azovmash game three (thanks Alice)!