Trip 2 Day 13 Friday May 28

This turned out to be a full day. We went over to the orphanage in the morning and smoothed things over with Valya by giving her a shirt and a necklace. Probably not the right way to handle things but we don’t have a lot of time and we want to make Julianna’s last few days in the orphanage as painless as possible. In reality we’re past the 10 day waiting period but Nastya won’t be here until Monday so we must wait.
When we arrived back at the hotel Alona R and guardians were waiting for us. We spent the two hour break between orphanage visits in the hotel room with them. Granny had arranged that Alona R would join us for the second visit to the orphanage. This isn’t really how we wanted them to meet but it was out of our control. Alona R had never been to the orphanage before and she was very scared to go there so I’m not sure what Granny was thinking. The visit was awkward but they’re both really nice girls and I’m sure it will work out in the long run.



We hooked up with G & G again after the visit and drove to this fetid pond area. We didn’t know it but this was close to where the milk cows are pastured during the day and we were waiting for them to walk back to the village. During the wait I ate enough bugs to qualify as an appetizer for dinner and donated enough blood to earn some cookies and juice. It was really cool to see the whole herd of cows walking back to the village. Nobody was leading them, they just seemed to know where to go. We followed in the car and then Jillian, Alona and I got out and followed Rosa and Meilka home with Alona giving them an occasional swat to keep them going.




G & G were busy with the animals so I had Alona give me a tour describing everything while I videotaped her. I’m too citified to know what all the vegetables are and I was curious. In the process of taping I managed to run a tree branch into my eye so I’ll have to edit that part out to maintain a “G” rating. They fed us some strawberries from the garden that were probably the best I’ve ever had.



We went to their apartment and after a lot of preparation they fed us a great meal. It’s amazing how hard they work. Once again they wanted us all to spend the night but fortunately Jillian was swelling up so bad from her bug bites that we could say we needed to get back to the hotel to give her some medicine. We got back to the hotel around 11:30 PM for some much needed rest.