Ludmilla's Christmas Cactus

Ludmilla was the receptionist/door-keeper for Orphanage #15 and she took care of the beautiful plants in the front window.

She was particularly proud of her Christmas cactus that was in bloom.

My new friend Ludmilla!

Snow From the Orphanage Window

New Year's Friends

Holiday Costumes

Part of the New Year tradition in Russia is to dress up in funny costumes or your formal best.  Our kids got in on the fun.

Welcome 2010

Back at Orphanage #15 it was time to ring in the New Year.  Starting about 10:00 p.m. the orphanage staff, Valentina and her granddaughters, members from the First United Methodist Church of Tomsk and our team celebrated with lots of good food, games, and lots of champagne, cognac, Coke Lite and vodka.

Going In The Snow

It wasn't the ladies who had to make a rest stop ten minutes after we left Moryakovka.  No, it was our two young men (who shall go nameless here!).  The driver found a place to pull off and our guide, Elena (the pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Tomsk) walked the boys back to a building where they had a little shelter to do what they had to do.

Leaving Moryakovka

I got some good snow pictures as we left the orphanage.

Puppet Show

Rev. Chris Arveson always puts together an original puppet show for us to present to the children.  He makes the puppets, develops the backdrops, records the audio, and then teaches us how to work the puppets after we get to the orphanage where we're staying.  This year he produced "Peter and the Wolf", using the famous music and narration known to school children all over the world.  My puppet was the red firebird who distracted the wolf so Peter could capture him.

Beautiful Children of Moryakovka

During the program I sat by a beautiful young lady named Svetya.

Moryakovka Party

We had a great time partying with the kids at Moryakovka.  They sang and danced around the tree till Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden made their appearance and then we played all kinds of games.  As one of the teenagers in our group said, "They know how to have fun!"

Andre

While most of the group went on a tour of the orphanage, Michelle and I waited in the party room and flirted with Andre.  He was everyone's favorite!

Moryakovka

On the morning of Thursday, Dec. 31 (New Year's Eve!) we had a great breakfast, including baked egg whites (really good!) and hopped on the bus for the hour long trip to Moryakovka Orphanage.  The snow along the road was absolutely beautiful!  It was at least two feet deep along the side of the road and clinging to the pine trees in the surrounding forest.  I found it interesting that all the roads are scraped but no salt or other chemicals are used to clear them.  The snow is very dry and squeaky - not very good for snowballs!

Presents!

All those presents you gave me for the kids were put to good use!  We used an extra bedroom at Orphanage #15 as a staging area to pack all that lovely stuff into plastic bags and mark them by gender and age.  In the pictures above Barry Moll, Brandon Moll, Michelle Clark and Katy Wrona work hard at loading bags while some of us were practicing the puppet show.  Some of the gifts stayed at #15, but the rest were packed back into boxes and bas and stowed on the bus to go with us to all the other orphanages we visited.  I'll be posting other pics of the kids receiving their stuff.

Here's a note of appreciation to U-Haul for making very tough boxes.  For less than $10, I bought three boxes that I loaded with stuff, reinforced with duct tape, and shipped 10,000 to bring smiles to Russian kids.  Those boxes were restuffed with sorted bags, retaped and hauled all around the Tomsk region as we visited various orphanages.  Those are really sturdy boxes!

Touring Tomsk

We went on a bus tour of Tomsk later in the evening.  Tomsk is a city of over 500,000 people and despite the cold weather (-17 C that day) and deep snow (two to three feet on the ground that won't melt off till the end of March) people were out going about their business just like we do on a normal work day here.  This is the town square that shows up on the weathercam of Tomsk that is on the WVVIM site.  There are giant statues of Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden and several ice sculptures.