Court & Ice-cold Water

Court #1 Down!

It’s Saturday and we’ve had a relaxing morning, sleeping in, breakfast in the hotel, quiet time, and Russian study. Yesterday we had the Preliminary Court Hearing where everything went fine—same judge as last time--and Katya didn’t even need to be there. The judge set our next court date (final-Godwilling) for Tuesday at 2:00pm. After, Tanya recommended a café that we went to for lunch with the girls, and Oles.

Thursday Tim and I walked approximately 15 kilometers (8 ½ miles) through a beautiful park to the center of town.
One of the highlights was seeing bathing-suit clad people (even a woman!) coming from a hot banya (one room shack that is heated like a sauna or steam room) and walking down steps to dip themselves in the freezing river. It was snowing out! Another man was breaking off branches to hit each other with in the banya. I didn’t realize how popular this activity still is here! (Tim saw the same thing on his walk this morning!) Also, folks were cross-country skiing and many older folks were out walking in the snow. Men were ice-fishing on the Desna River. It’s charming to see so many folks out in all kinds of weather communing with nature and each other.
When we reached town, we visited a beautiful cathedral and had a snack in a quaint café in town. After some window-shopping and dinner, we took a cab back to the hotel as Oles was still in Kiev.
Katya has a roommate that just came to the orphanage 2 or 3 weeks ago named Marina. She cried for the first few days we were there and stayed in bed almost all day. She wouldn’t join in our Uno games and when she wasn’t crying just clutched a cell phone she has. Katya told us she just wants to go home. Olha told us that her mother brought her here because she has just had another baby and can’t afford all her children (4or5) and Marina is the oldest at around 13. It’s heartbreaking to see this end of it. Please pray for this sweet little girl who is so homesick.
Well, that’s all for now. We miss you. Charlene

Now some pictures (from Tim)

1. We continue to enjoy the wide range of transportation. On the same day we saw cars and busses, trucks and trams, bicycles, and horse-drawn carts. These carts are pretty common in the country here. Only surprise to me is that we haven’t seen any snowmobiles – maybe that’s a business opportunity.

2. Charlene’s love for animals is demonstrated here as she feeds the last of her cat food to perhaps the cutest dog ever (sorry Lucki and Freida). This dog lives at the local gas station and resembles an artic fox.

3. This is one of the churches we walked to in Chernigov. Not sure the name but it was beautiful inside as well as out.

4. A view of Charlene and the river from the nice park behind our hotel.

5. These are steps leading to a large hole cut in the ice. Today (Saturday) I took a walk and this deserted site had a line of people leaving a sauna and walking down into the ice cold water. It could have been an old-time river baptism except for the mixture of men in speedos and those without (in the interest of modesty I didn’t think pictures would be appropriate). I guess what was most interesting – was the complete silence. Nobody said anything like “Wow that water is cold!” Maybe it was the Slavic soul of quiet suffering in action.