God cares for orphans, Part 4

In an example of a best-case scenario, one of my English students has found a home in a Christian family.

You may remember Lolita, 10, from earlier posts. She has now been adopted by an American woman. Lolita met her new mom through a hosting program that brings kids to the U.S. to stay in families during Christmas and summer vacation periods. This gives them a chance to get to know each other a little bit before pursuing adoption. Now that the adoption has been completed, Lolita’s mom reports that they are doing fine and that Lolita is enjoying school. Praise the Lord!

Many kids are being adopted through this program. Let’s pray that the children would receive the true Spirit of Adoption as they are being loved and given a home by families who are following the Lord.

This seems like a good opportunity to share about a dream I had a few years ago.

I was walking down a main street and came upon a rally of some sort. People were marching with banners that said “Abba.” I looked around and spotted some orphans I knew, from Lolita’s orphanage. They were cheering for “Abba” along with everyone else. I was a bit concerned, assuming that they didn’t know what they were shouting about. I approached the children and asked, “Do you know who Abba is?” “Yes,” they chorused. “He is God, our Father.”

I was surprised at their depth of knowledge. Upon waking, I wondered how much of the Truth was absorbed by the kids at summer camp when we shared the Gospel with them daily. I wonder how many of them know the Father and are able to cry out to Him as they wait for families.

Kids say funny things

Misha, touching my hands: "Where's your ring?"

Me: "What ring?"

Misha: "Your ring! The ring that everyone has!"

Me: "Misha, I'm not married."

Misha: "WHAT?! Lolita, Liz is NOT MARRIED!"

Lolita: "WHAT?!"

Misha: "How OLD are you?"

Me: "24."

Misha: "TWENTY FOUR?!"

Lolita: "Liz, you MUST get married!"

You heard it from the kids. :)

Crazy kids

I got to the orphanage yesterday and the teenage boys approached me mumbling something in "English." Apparently they had heard it on the radio or something and wanted a translation, but I couldn't understand a word they were saying.

"But you supposedly know English!" they laughed.
"That's not English!" I said.

My hesitation led them to believe that I simply didn't want to reveal the true meaning of the words. I probably should have just made something up.

Lolita was alone today and we worked on her "passport." It's a little book with biographical information, which the kids can use to collect stickers. Lolita is getting adopted soon, though, by a Christian family from the U.S. The court date is supposedly in a few weeks. She went on our hosting program a year or two ago. Since then, her orphanage hasn't been very cooperative, especially as far as Americans are concerned. It's too bad because the kids there are fairly needy. Perhaps once our Russian hosting program gets off the ground, the orphanage will be more open to working with us.



Then Zina came in and tortured Lolita for a few minutes while we finished up the lesson. I still haven't figured where Zina was all that time. I asked her where she was and she said "I was out." I said "For a whole year?" and she just giggled.

I went on to the next group, where we finished up passports as well. Every single child, upon being given the gluestick, immediately took the cap off and sniffed the glue numerous times.

Kids

I went to see my favorites again! I was a little late so I crossed paths with some kids I hadn't seen for awhile. Then I had fun times with the youngers.

For some reason Misha and Lolita are obsessed with wearing my clothing. Here's a picture of their antics (sorry for poor quality). That's Lolita wearing my coat and Misha wearing my hat and purse. Today they actually planned it out and off down the hallway wearing my clothes. I lured them back with the stickers they had already earned for doing their lesson.

Another day we had a visit from Superman.

We do get some work done in the midst of all that.

Evidently we need to work on handwriting.

Flashcards.

Sometimes they look so sweet and innocent. This is Galya. She's eight!

I had a lesson with the older boys too. They're fun. Today we learned the construction "I'm going to....(do something.)" Their answers were "I'm going to...sleep, eat, and do my homework." I confused them all with irregular verbs. Poor kids.

Tomorrow I get to see my other favorites! :)

Introductions, part 2

It's time to continue with my list of favorite blogs and why I read them. Read part 1 here.

The following are a few sites in Russian that I personally recommend. They provide an opportunity to get a taste of Russian culture from the perspective of Christians who live there.

1) Mimohodom is the website of my church in St. Petersburg. Features include movie and book reviews, articles on matters concering the church, observations about society, and helpful links.

2) Andrey is one of the contributors to mimohodom, and has his own blog, where he writes book reviews, discusses philosophical and theological questions, and recommends interesting tools for personal discipline.

Here are a few sites maintained by adoptive parents:

2) Jill is the adoptive mom of Lolita, one of my former students at the orphanage, and blogs about Lolita's new life in the U.S.

1) I forget how Annie and I found each other's blogs. We must have a mutual blogging friend or something. Anyway, Annie is a Catholic mom who blogs about her adopted Russian children.

3) I'm just adding this blog now. Tim was a Young Life leader and they are in the process of adopting two little boys from Haiti. They could use your prayers!

And finally, here are some blogs that aren't related to me personally, but are fun to read.

1) Amy is the mother of six children, but that's not all she writes about. Along with entertaining anecdotes of her family's move to a farm, she provides a fresh outlook on many moral issues that Christians face today.

2) Recipezaar is my favorite cooking website because it has lots of photos, is easily-navigable, and shows ratings. I always sort by the highest rated recipes and then I feel like I'm getting something that has been well-tested. This brownie recipe is definitely a winner.

3) Boundless Webzine is a Christian singles' website sponsored by Focus on the Family. You can find articles about many current events, along with the inevitable questions that young Christians face. There are interesting discussions on the blog page, although you have to wait for comment moderation.

4) Young Ladies Christian Fellowship is self-explanatory, but they basically exist to encourage young ladies. However, they are careful with what they publish and the site is refreshingly free of the idle talk that sometimes infiltrates women's fellowship.

5) Biblical Womanhood is mostly about homemaking and child-rearing. Its author, Crystal, is always sharing ideas about staying organized, saving money, fostering spiritual discipline, and managing toddlers, all for the glory of God. I can't always relate to all her posts, but I'm storing up ideas for later!

So those are the blogs I read. Let me know if you have any recommendations or if you have a blog that I've somehow missed.

Disobedient children and confusing Russian men

It was a strange day.

When I arrived at the orphanage, the girls came running down the hallway energetically like little puppies. “I’m Galya!” “I’m Katya!” they giggled.

Immediately there was a fight over who would sit where. I had designed a very simple board game. Roll the die, move a few spaces, and identify a word in English by drawing a card. Within a few minutes, the three other kids were making fun of Galya. They threw her playing piece on the floor. Then they couldn’t find it, so I gave her mine. Finally Galya ran from the room sobbing, as the other kids yelled “you’re psycho!”

I couldn’t help but feel sad. Kids are often mean to each other, but usually those offended can run to mommy, and Galya has no mommy to run to.

I couldn’t find Galya to calm her down, so I reluctantly returned to the remaining students. Misha had an outburst about every two minutes, when it was not his turn. He shouted and slammed his hand on the table, sending things flying.

At the end, I gave them each a vocabulary check-up and rewarded them with one sticker each. I let them choose the stickers themselves, handing over the sheet of stickers as I test the next person. It’s a simple test of their ability to be honest and follow directions. Katya took 2 or 3 stickers. I ripped off the extra ones that she had taken and crumpled them up. She hadn’t passed the test.

I was frustrated and late for the next lesson. I tried to gather my things, but as usual the kids had stolen them. I had carefully hidden my afternoon snack (substitute for lunch), wrapping it in a separate bag to keep it from the kids. Misha found it anyway and announced that I had food that I was hiding. They danced around, refusing to give me my things until I gave them sweets. Suddenly the counselor from the next group walked in. “We are waiting for you,” she said. Katya was wearing my clothing, Lolita had my purse, and Misha had opened my umbrella and was prancing around the room with it. They relinquished my belongings at last and I took off in a hurry.

I got to the next group. They too were running around and jumping on and off the furniture. A few kids were wrestling on the couch. The kids who were supposed to come to English class came in and I tried to turn the light on. They told me that it didn’t work. We lit a lamp and gathered around a little table, reviewing the words from the previous lesson. They remembered everything well, but kids were coming and going constantly and there was shouting.

I began to reminisce about what these children had been like a few years ago, when we knew them at camp. Certain characteristics that had seemed almost humorous when they were little now seemed to be causing problems in adolescence. Katya had been sweet and subdued. Now she seemed almost listless and completely lacking confidence. She gave up halfway through every activity, saying that she didn’t want to participate. Misha was also calm yet distracted, wandering around in his jacket and inspecting things in the room; turning on the tv at one point. Roma, with his curly head of hair, had a long history of behavior problems. As a little child, he would run up and embrace people almost violently. Now he was less physical, but shouted inappropriate phrases incessantly. I used to worry about him since he was the only African-Russian child in the orphanage, but their little group seems tight-knit, since they only have each other. The kids had learned American swears somewhere, and shouted them constantly, but Roma especially. He smiled slyly as he swore and displayed his middle finger.

We tried the board game again with this group. Despite the shouting they remembered words faster and there weren’t as many tears. But the board game didn’t work here either. At ten and eleven years old, they could not seem to wait their turn or be honest about the number of spaces they should go. They constantly squirmed and flailed their arms, knocking the pieces all over. When another was answering a question, they shouted out of turn. The game had lost its point. I turned to take out the next activity and found my materials missing. I must have left them in the first group in my haste. I quickly improvised and invented another activity. Then finally it was time to go. I gave stickers to a few, who took them calmly and not greedily. They continued to ask me about certain English words as I left. There was a desire to learn, at least.

I headed outside. The bus was not there yet and I was glad, because I could finally eat a few crackers.

A man approached me, also waiting for the bus. He asked me about the buses and I observed that there was one approaching, maybe the one that we were waiting for.

“Bon appetit,” he said, in reference to my snack.

“Thank you.”

“No time to eat?”

“I was with the kids.”

“You’re hardly more than a kid yourself!” I didn’t take offense at this comment, he being elderly.

The man continued to talk and ask questions. I was frustrated because I didn’t know how to answer a stranger appropriately, and I knew that I would probably misunderstand at some point and then we would have to discuss my being a foreigner. As we got on the bus, I realized that it was a long way to the city, with virtually no stops. Forty minutes stuck in conversation with a strange man! What to do? Stop talking for the sake of decency or remain talking in hopes of witnessing about Christ? I’m sure that I don’t understand Russian men and their intentions, and try to avoid such circumstances, but here I was stuck on a bus with nowhere to escape to. Although I wasn’t extremely bothered, I wondered about the man’s motives. Was he:

1) Drunk?
2) Lonely?
3) Selling something?
4) A spy?
5) Just looking for a conversation partner?

Part of why the conversation seemed strange is that he asked questions that I would hardly dare to ask my closest friends in the States, let alone a stranger in Russia. “What did you study?” “Where do you live (apartment or room)?” “Where is your family?” “Do they visit?” “What do you do for fun?” “What kind of transportation pass do you buy?” “Do they feed you in the orphanage?”

When it came out that I was a foreigner, he said something about “it being obvious.” And I said “What?” "Don't you know what I'm talking about?" he asked. "No." “Are you a believer?” “Yes.” For a moment I thought that he was a Christian too, but the questions that followed showed that he knew little about Christianity.

“Do you believe in ______ of the soul?” Not understanding fully, I said yes. But he went on to talk about souls being passed on to animals and trees and from person to person. And I had to withdraw my agreement.

“Actually, my faith is a different kind.”
“Aren’t you a Christian?
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I believe in the Holy Spirit, but not in the kind of ‘spiritual’ activity that you are talking about.”
Later, he asked me how I dealt with difficulties in life.
“The Lord helps me.”
“But He can’t always help.”
“Of course He can.”

After the bus ride, I got on the metro, and the man followed me. He took out a catalog of Chinese health products. That was it, he must be selling something. But he did not make an offer. I was a little nervous because he had asked what station I was going to, and I couldn’t very well run away. But after a few stops he got off, and was gone.

A study in metamorphosis

Misha was different at the beginning of the school year. He hugged and kissed me. He repeated everything I said in English, whether it was a part of the lesson or not. He dressed up in his Superman costume, especially for me. When I was getting ready to go, he would put on my coat and hat and run around while I chased him.

The farewell to the school year went a little differently. For the last few weeks, he had not come to class. He cried when pressured. Sometimes he came into the room and would watch with a scowl. Just before I left, he would beg for candy.

This time, he was slumped in a chair watching tv. He wouldn’t respond to my questions. For a few seconds his eyes became bright long enough to say, “Give me a piece of gum!” I was dismayed. “Misha, why don’t you want to do English? Do you get tired?” That was a mistake, because it prompted his next ingenious response: “The doctor said I shouldn’t.” “If you’re too sick to do English, then you shouldn’t be watching television. And you shouldn’t eat candy,” I said, not willing to baby him.

Nothing helped.

“So that’s it? You’re not going to come to class? Will you come next year?”

A nod. “Give me a piece of gum.”

“No.”

“But you promised!”

“I didn’t promise. And you didn’t earn it, anyway.”

“You promised! I don’t want to ever see you again!”

What’s the problem? Institutionalization? Adolescence? Attachment disorder? Adoption anxiety?

Outside, I found Lolita, a girl from Misha’s group. “Let’s have English class!” she said. “Guess what, I found my textbook! It was in the playroom, underneath everything.”

“Great.”

We went inside to have a lesson. In the background, an old man began to express his views to a colleague. “If you ask any American nowadays, they will say that the U.S. won WWII….”

Dilemma

I decided to teach the 3rd graders cursive. I thought they could handle it, and I didn't want them to be deprived, even though I'm pretty bad at writing in cursive myself.

Let's review how the first two cursive sessions went. Here are some visual aids.

In Week 1, the kids got tired after tracing the entire alphabet in cursive, so I let them stop at M in their notebooks.

In Exhibit A below, Katya managed to skip 4 letters between F and K, which I then added for her.

In Week 2, the kids claimed that it would be too difficult to write 13 more letters in cursive. So I let them do three more, N, O, P.

Katya spent most of the lesson crawing around under the table, but first made a fairly decent N, O, P.

Lolita did fairly well in Week 1. In Week 2, she wrote N, but then got confused and looked at the wrong line, writing K. After I directed her to the correct line, she wrote O and P in reverse order.
















Galya also did well in Week 1. In Week 2, she made a beautiful N and then got tired.
















Misha gets an A for effort. Unfortunately, he was absent for Week 2 and went to Karate class instead.

So I 'm thinking about abandoning the cursive idea, but I'm not sure. In Russian class we learned cursive right away. But is it really needed in English? Only if you're going to be writing letters. Obviously for native speakers it's important, but should I enforce it in ESL? The kids are getting by okay with the print. On the other hand, maybe it will be difficult for them if it becomes necessary to learn cursive later and they're only familiar with print.

Sigh.