After church, we took a tram to the Lido down the street from our flat and had a delicious lunch. I can't leave Latvia without eating at Lido at least once more. Olegs, Christina and Liza sat together while the adults sat at a table closeby. I ordered my old favorite of potato pancake with pork shish-ka-bobs and my all time favorite "herring in a coat". Ilga is supposed to have a cookbook for me which has recipes for many of these dishes. Hopefully, the recipes will be easy enough so I can make them taste the same. We'll see.
After lunch, we all (Ilga, Janis, Jamison family & Liza, and my kids) went to the honey store to do a little shopping. I got a few different varieties of honey. There are so many choices to choose from that I still get overwhelmed. The lady in the store was real nice and let me take her picture while she was pouring our honey into jars for us. Janis and Christina also got a kick out of trying on part of the beekeeper outfit that beekeepers wear over their heads. I got some good pictures of that too. The Jamisons saw an advertisement that said Cirque de Soleil was going to be in town so they thought it might be neat to get tickets. We walked to a place at the central station to see if any tickets were available, but it turns out they were sold out. While we were there though, we looked in some other shops and I was able to do some candy shopping. Christina picked out some candies that she likes. She knows just about every variety of candy there is. Whenever she has any money in her pocket, she wants to go spend it on candy. I keep telling her that her teeth will fall out but she's not buying it. LOL!
After we went to the central station, the Jamisons headed back towards their flat and I went with Ilga and Janis back to the Reval hotel on the way back to my flat so we could take the elevator ride back to the top to see if I could get more pictures. Again, it was a beautiful day. I got a few pictures but there was a glare again so I couldn't get all of the angles I wanted.After the elevator ride, the kids decided they wanted to go to the children's home for a few hours. Christina wanted to spend some time with her friends. It's really hitting her that she's leaving and may never see some of them again. Olegs has to stay the night at the children's home because he has school tomorrow. He'll be able to come back on Tuesday evening to spend one last evening with me before we have to say our goodbyes. I don't want to think about that now.
Well, Christina was supposed to be back at the flat at 8:30 p.m. but she showed up early. I was impressed when the doorbell rang at 8:10. I asked "who is it?" and got the reply "it's Christina and Agnese." It took me a minute to process what was happening. She had brought her friend with her to spend the night. This is "old Agnese," by the way. Apparently, they are best friends again. At first, I started to say "no" because I wasn't sure that the children's home was informed of this and the last thing I need is to get into trouble with the director. Christina assured me that they told their teacher and they it was okay. This is a very difficult time for Christina so I caved and said Agnese could spend the night with us. The thing is that each time you meet one of these kids, you find that they each take a part of your heart. It can be very emotional at times because they each have very troubling and sad stories. I don't know all of Agnese's story but I could see such a sadness in her eyes. There are so many children like this and it gets so hard. We're saving one child but there are so many more who need love. It's heavy stuff! I find myself wanting to adopt all of them.
We had a great night together. I had some paint by number sets so I gave Christina and Agnese one to work on while I sat with them and worked on my puzzle. They talked and giggled and it was so sweet to see them enjoy each other's company. At bedtime, Christina asked me to tell them a bedtime story and I made up an adventure to continue the story of the "doggies and kitties" from the night before. It was totally silly and dumb so I'll spare you the details. It made the girls laugh so that was what counted. They also talked me into scratching their backs while I told the story so that was kind of our bonding time together. We had our goodnight prayers and they each prayed for people they wanted to pray for. It was really sweet. It was about 11:00 by this time so I was pooped and went to bed. I heard them laying in bed laughing for awhile longer but I didn't have the heart to tell them to go to sleep. They needed this time together and I hope it helped them both to be able to have this special time...just the two of them.
Tomorrow we'll be saying goodbyes at the children's home. I expect lots of tears to be flowing.
No comments:
Post a Comment