Rob and I got word yesterday that we could call the kids at 9:00 this morning (4:00 p.m. Latvian time). FINALLY!!! We prepared a list of things we wanted to tell them and questions to ask. Then we purchased a prepaid calling card PIN online in order to save some in international long distance charges. A friend of ours told us about this website where you can purchase discounted long distance calling card PINs online and have them emailed to you. This will work fine for now but we're hoping the children's home will eventually get Skype which is an online service that allows you to make international calls for FREE from your computer. You just need to download the software and hook up a microphone (and optional digital videocam) to your computer. It will make things much easier once that gets set up.
Anyway, back to our phone call. We had no idea what to expect since we hadn’t talked to Olegs & Kristine in weeks. We didn’t know if they’d be real quiet and shy again or if they’d be talkative, etc. It was decided that I’d do the talking at first since I’d at least figured out how to ask for them to be put on the phone. Rob and I were so excited we were almost giddy!
When 9:00 came around, Rob and I each got on an extension and I dialed the number. We planned to ask for Kristine first and then talk to Olegs. The phone rang about 3 times and this voice answered in English…"Hello." It was unbelievable that we were talking to someone way across the globe in Latvia!! I said "Labdien, Kristine Ludzu" which means "Good Afternoon, Kristine please." The voice on the phone said "no, Olegs" so I assumed that they were telling us we’d have to talk to Olegs first so I said "okay, we talk to Olegs." Well it turns out that I was speaking to Olegs!!! He had answered the phone!! I thought I was speaking to some young girl in the office. LOL! We had a good laugh about that and then Olegs began talking up a storm!! He sounded so excited and happy to talk to us!! We were impressed that he was even speaking more English to us. He had obviously been practicing. We told him how impressed and proud we were of his English skills and he politely said "thank you."
Olegs told us that Kristine wasn’t able to make the call and that we should try again at a different time. We think he said we are supposed to try again tomorrow morning but we’re not sure. Some things were a little hard to understand. We’ll just go ahead and call again in the morning and hopefully we can get her on the phone. We asked Olegs if he had been playing Uno and he said he played with his friends who he described as “crazy.” LOL! He said camp was okay but we couldn’t quite make out what kinds of activities they did at camp. He said they played cards but I’m not sure what else. It didn’t really matter what we talked about. It was just SO good to have our little man on the other end of the line. He is so precious!!
Rob and I kept telling Olegs how much we missed him and loved him. It melted our hearts when he replied in English..."me too." We told him that Winston and the kitties missed him too and he laughed. We had some great laughs about some of the funny things that happened while they were here. We asked him if he’d had any lemons and he chuckled (remembering our outing at Red Top Mountain when he ate the lemons, rind and all, and made himself sick in the process).
Now that the kids are back from camp, we want to set up a time to call each week so we can talk to them. If we can just hear their voices periodically, it will go a long way towards helping us get through this long wait that’s ahead of us! Rob and I keep replaying this morning’s call in our minds. We’ll be on cloud nine for the next couple of days for sure!!
No comments:
Post a Comment