First visit with Calvin

This morning we packed up everything from Ibis Hotel and met Sveta outside. We had thought to visit Silas this morning, but Sveta said we should go to Vyksa to check out an apartment there – so we left for our three hour drive. I have never been carsick before in my life – but the drive to Vyksa from Nizhny Novgorod makes me super sick. I had thought that watching something on the iPad would help pass the time on the drive, but it made my stomach queasy. Not even an hour into the drive, I had to use the restroom. Sveta stopped at a nice looking restroom. I assumed there was a toilet inside. I was wrong. There was a lovely red port-a-potty outside. So Tyler walked me over to it – the ground here is very slick due to the ice/snow. We opened the door to find frozen poop on the back of the toilet seat. GROSS!!! I was able to sit far forward on the seat so I wouldn’t have to touch the poop. Guys are so lucky, aren’t they? They don’t have to sit down to pee. Anyhow – I thought about taking a picture, but figured that the experience alone won’t be forgotten soon enough.

We arrived in Vyksa and picked up a realtor who showed us the apartment. It’s very nice. The price is $60 per day which is better than the hotel. It has a bedroom, kitchen, & bathroom. Sveta took us grocery shopping so we could have food for the next week. I am ready to be able to make something to eat. Plus we have a refrigerator here. In the hotel we used our windowsill to keep all the food cold. It worked because it was 10 degrees outside! Ha ha! Oh, and Sister Foutz gave me some coconut yogurt. Wow. It's amazing! I love the variety of flavors here.

We went to the orphanage and met with the director. She is such a lovely woman. She reminds me of my mom – short, classy, and very pretty. She said that Calvin has been waiting for us to return. She said that he is a very good boy and speaking a lot.

We visited with Calvin around 4pm. It was clear that he remembered us. He greeted his Papa with a hug and gave his Mama a kiss on the cheek and a hug – neither without being prompted to do so. We had a wonderful playtime together. Calvin is speaking in Russian a lot and repeated many English words that we said, such as “monkey” and “bird”. He is much bigger than we saw him last – very tall! Calvin is intelligent – he understands how things fit together. He put together some Velcro toys and didn’t need any help doing so. He enjoyed the Baby Einstein videos and actually sat in our laps. Last time it was all that we could do to hold him for a second, but now he will sit in our laps – which is wonderful. He is still energetic, but able to calm down. When it was time for him to eat dinner, he said goodbye and cried as he went back to the groupa. It broke my heart! Clearly he didn’t want to leave and I can only imagine his worry that we won’t be back – since it took us 9 months to come back! We told him that we would be back tomorrow. I hope that will comfort him. We bought a chocolate cake to take to his groupa tomorrow – his birthday was almost 2 weeks ago and it is a fun way to celebrate with him.

We do not have WIFI anymore (sob!) but we do have a Megafone internet USB thingy which isn’t working so well. It’s hit or miss to have an internet connection, but mostly miss. I hope to be able to upload pictures, but there’s no telling for sure that it will happen. I will try to post pictures very soon. Calvin is so cute!