Finally, a Computer!

Hi Folks,

By now you are probably wondering what has become of us these past few days.  It all boils down to location, location, location.  We moved to a new place.  At first we were told a house by the Black Sea.  It ended up being an apt. in a bad neighborhood.  It was a long walk from the center of Odessa, which is very nice.  We had no access to internet, the tv didn't work,  and we felt so cut off from everything.  The only highlight to Sat. and Sun. was that we were finally able to visit with Maria.  We spent about 2 1/2 hours with her each day.  She seemed very glad to see us.  Our assessment of her personality so far is she's outgoing, friendly, spunky (oh no!) and bright.  We were led to believe that she hadn't been to school much.  We were pleasantly surprised to find that she reads and writes well in Russian.  Brynn was reading with her and said she is fluent in Russian-yippee! We did encounter our first problem with her.  We let her listen to our iPod-she loves music!  She kept asking if she could keep it and we said, "No."  When we were getting ready to leave, we had her give it back to us.  She started to pout.  But that was it-no crying or tantrums!!!!!  It was funny because one of the workers saw that she was pouting as we were leaving and assumed it was because she was sad we were going.  Little did she know.  We were not able to visit with her today so are hoping she will miss us and think about how we won't give her anything she wants.  She kept saying that because she said please we should give it to her.  Oh, she has so much to learn.  Any other time she was doing something and we asked her to stop, she did it immediately.  She also shared very well with Viktor.  All in all, I think we can work with it.