Monday was spent with Elena in trains, cars, and subways. We had to return to the SDA in Kiev to get our official paperwork to see Ruslan. The weather here is getting very hot, and it was sort of a miserable day walking around Kiev. It was a lot of traveling and sitting to sign our names a couple times, but everything went okay. We traveled back with Oleg and Oksana in their car. We stopped and ate dinner at 11:30 p.m. in Kremenchuk, which of course made us start to wonder and think about Bogdan. He is most likely at summer camp right now and wouldn't have been at the orphanage anyway.

Yesterday (Tuesday) started out rough and ended up pretty good. Ruslan was pouting again. In fact, he disappeared, and we didn't bother to try to find him. We went and played with water balloons with a group of other kids. In fact, we felt so bad about the way things were going, we were about ready to walk away from it all and told Lena so. Eventually we were able to sit down with Ruslan and Oksana and had a real heart-to-heart talk. We are trying to understand a little bit about what Ruslan is feeling, and we also explained to him a few things about how a family works. Ruslan has lost his family twice, in a way. His mother lost her rights, but he still had hope because she would visit him occasionally. Then we understand she became more interested in her boyfriend than Ruslan, and the visiting had stopped even before she died. Then Ruslan's aunt started to visit him and told him she would take him out of the orphanage, so he again had hope of a family. Then she had a baby and said she didn't have room for him, so he again lost hope. He has tried to run away a couple times. He has said he very much wants a family. We understand these children just don't know where they fit in or how to act. Anyway, after the talk, things got back to where they were the first two days, and he spent the rest of the day with us.

I wanted to tell of a heart-breaking scene yesterday. We walked into the T.V. room, and Zhenia, the other little boy we considered, was standing looking out the window with his back to the room. He was just sobbing. We walked over to him, and Lena asked him what was wrong. He said one of the older boys had hit him. He was just standing there looking out the window and sobbing. He had no one to go to who would make it better, no one to go confront the older boy, no one to hug and kiss him and tell him everything would be okay. We patted him on the back and gave him a squeeze, but how can that fix a broken heart? I thought about him all day. I know he is coming to Utah in the fall. I hope and pray he will be able to find a family. He's going to grow up to be the football or soccer hero of some high school somewhere. We can just tell it.

I know there are bullies here. I'm hearing more and more about the meanness that can go on with some of the older kids, even some of the girls. Being here is kind of emotionally draining.

The culture of Ukraine is so different. You can't get someone to smile if your life depended on it. You walk down the streets, your eyes meet someone else's eyes, you give them a smile, and they look at you with a deadpan expression. I'm telling you deadpan. It's as if they were dead inside. We asked Lena about this, and she said, "Why would you smile if you're not happy?"

We walk everywhere with the Bensons, to the orphanage, the grocery store, the park. We carry tons of bottled water with us because you can't drink the water here because of Chernobyl. The water has chemicals and is radioactive, they say. The LDS missionaries also warned us about it. We get stared down everywhere we go, and we hear people saying "Americans." Sometimes they laugh. I guess our tennis shoes are funny? The women here, especially in Kiev, dress like they're going to a cocktail party instead of work: high heels, fancy dresses, make-up, hair done. There are a lot of beautiful, thin women here. We understand people looking for models come here to find them. We read that eighty percent of the men smoke here, and we believe it. EVERYBODY is smoking nonstop. We see kids who look like they're ten smoking. There is trash everywhere, and nobody cares. I haven't seen a garbage truck yet. A woman goes through the dumpster here and separates out the plastic and cans and burns the rest.

It gets light here at about 3:30 a.m., which makes for difficult sleeping. It's strange. You hear the crows start to caw, look at your watch, and it's 4:00 a.m. Aaaaahh!

Well, it's time to walk to the orphanage. We're slowly getting this city all figured out. There are no street signs at the intersections, and every street looks the same: old apartment buildings that look about 600 years old and trash everywhere. Sorry, but that's what it looks like to me.

But the countryside between here and Kiev is absolutely beautiful, and we enjoyed the train ride in the daytime on Monday.

Off for another emotional roller coaster ride.