Communication

I want to write a little more about communication. A couple days ago I posted that both Tatiana and I are progressing in our ability to communicate. Even with this progress we have a long way to go and language and communication seems to be our largest hurdle at this point ( aside from getting home!). I imagine that for Tatiana the days are filled with the mothers voice from Charlie Brown..."wa wa wa wa". For us the most difficult time is transitioning between activities...when I would normally give her a warning that we would be moving on to someithing else in a few minutes she hears "wa wa wa" and then a couple minutes later I am taking her to another activity or getting her out of the bathtub etc. Depending on how tired she is she will either go with the flow or resist and a couple times has borken down in tears. The fact that I have tried to maintain a "schedule" to our days has helped some I am sure but life will be easier for her once she understands mor of the things I am saying to her.

Our ten day waiting period is now over and our facilitators are working to get all of the paper work that we need completed. It is good to have another step in the process completed. It is Tuesday here and we will leave Irkutsk, if all goes as planned, on Saturday morning to fly to Moscow. Yes, I am still counting the days! I am missing Kevin, Caleb and Jared more and more and have used my phone card to call home more as the time has gone by! Tomorrow I hope to have Olga come over to do some translating for Tatiana and I. I am busy making a list of things I want to ask Tatiana and things I want to tell her. ---Melanie