Update from Sunday

Today is Sunday. We took a taxi to pick Anya up at the hospital again. Today she was not waiting outside, so Nadiya and I went inside to find her. The nurses asked Nadiya for the letter from the orphanage that gives us permission to take Anya and her passport for identification purposes; this makes me feel a little better. The hospital inside is much cleaner and nicer than it appears outside. The nurses seem very kind. They ask Anya who I am she tells them I am her mom, this warms my heart. There are two younger girls, apparently patients also hanging around eating apples. After leaving the hospital we take Anya to this place called the Market Place where she wants for us to buy her new shoes. The ones she has are very old, and falling apart, they are the ones she got in America last march. As we are walking from the place the taxi drops us to this Market place, we stop at several shoes stores along the way, and Anya declines to buy shoes each one because she is worried that it is too expensive. We try to convince her otherwise, but she is insistent on the Market Place. So we arrive at this Market place it is like a large outdoor flea market, very crowded, people everywhere. They sell everything you could imagine from candy and food to clothing, shoes, toys CD’s and DVD’s. We search for shoes at several of the stands nothing is right, then she finds the jeans, she really likes them but no, too expensive for her taste. So we move on and try on coats, she chooses a nice one that fits and is also warm enough to serve the purpose. We finally convince her not to worry about the price, because it is way cheaper than we would pay in America. After the first purchase she has got the hang of it. She looks, asks Nadiya and I our opinions and if she gets the double “da(yes)” then she calls out “Papa” and whatever the amount is in Ghryvna he hands her the money. We continue on like this for an hour and a half, she gets shoes, shirts, undergarments, and finally she goes back for the Jeans she now has decided that Papa will pay the price. Anya announces that is enough for today and we leave the market place. Papa is happy he survived. We are almost out of time she is due back at the hospital to have lunch, I ask if she would rather have lunch with us, she says she has no objections to that. So we walk a bit and find a sign in English Pizza and Chicken. It is a fast food type restaurant that sells KFC type food and Pizza. It was pretty good. The pizza was more American style than the one we had at Extreme Park. During lunch we talk more about Anya’s memory of her life before the orphanage and ask if she would like to try to find her parents before she leaves Ukraine. She does not want to find the mother or father but would like to take us to the place she used to live to find old friends whom she wants to say goodbye to. She also tells us about her aunt whom she also wants to find. We tell her anyone or anyplace we can take her too, we will do and that she just needs to tell us where. Anya wants to know what her new name will be. We had decided yesterday to just choose the name rather than ask her first, so we already filled the paperwork with her new name with the attorney. We decided on “Anya Rain Garrett” Nadiya tells Anya and writes it down for her. She is not happy at first; she wants the middle name to be Christine. We begin to think maybe we should have brought the list of names we were considering and ask her to choose. So we ask Nadiya to tell what Rain means, she is not impressed with the literal meaning, and want to know if she is somehow associated with the rain? I explain that we just liked the name; it is more uncommon than Christine, and then that when we arrived in Ukraine it rained a lot for many days, so I became more convinced that Rain was the right name. Then Matt tells her his take on it. He says when the rain falls to the earth it brings refreshment, and new life. This is what he thinks that Anya will be beginning a refreshing new life with a new family and that reminds him of the rain. She seems to like this explanation better, after a bit she decides it is OK. That she does not mind Rain so much, and even tells Nadiya that as we are the parent’s maybe we know better than her! We like this one! We agree that she will think it over for the night and we will decide tomorrow if we should change this paperwork or not. Maybe she will be Anya Rain Christine Garrett? I think not. After lunch we need to get her back to the hospital for the evening. This time Matt & I both walk her up the little path to the door, it is easier. Not so long hugs, and just a smile and Tomorrow. We have agreed to call her about 9am and make arrangements to pick her up she is supposed to be discharged from the hospital and maybe get to spend the whole day with us