As I mentioned in my Kharkiv Air Pollution blog, I met my daughter, Natasha, in a hospital room that she shared with 4 other orphans. They were from 4 different orphanages. I visited Natasha and her roommates at the hospital for about 7 days. *


Luda was the oldest in the room at 16 years of age. Here is her picture. She was beautiful inside and outside. She mothered the 12 year old, 10 year old, 8 year old and 3 year old children in the hospital room.


For example, she always made sure that Natasha (she was the 3 years old and my-daughter-to-be) put on her shoes after waking up from nap time. And Luda was knitting socks for a friend.


After my fourth visit with Natasha, Natasha refused to eat dinner. She was sad that I had left. Luda is the one who talked her into eating the stew.


Here is a picture of everyone in Natasha's hospital room plus 2 children from another hospital room. When I visited, the entire floor seemed to buzz and the children who could visit us (physically able to move), did visit. So typically I had to feed snacks to 7 to 12 children during a visit.





Notice the girl in the grey shirt is putting "bunny ears" behind my daughter's head... I am single and traveled with my mother and an old friend from high school. The friend taught every child in the room that making "bunny ears" is funny. So most of my adoption photos have some child doing "bunny ears". :)

The little girl in the red and yellow dress (and yes she has a bruise on her face... this is a story for another blog) is Natasha. Luda is in the back of the picture but you only see the top half of her head.


Luda talked to me (she spoke a little English and we had a dictionary) about going to trade school. She would have to leave the orphanage in the next few months. Education was very, very, very important to her. She communicated that she needed to attend a trade school or life wouldn't be good.


She thought that she could get into trade school, but there was the problem of finding housing and food.

Blog continues here.

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* I adopted my darling daughter from Ukraine in 2000.