Before and After Pictures

Today at camp, several stylists came in to cut the children's hair. I had a translator ask him if he wanted a haircut (yes!) and if he wanted it shorter (yes!). He didn't seem to enjoy the experience all that much, but he really liked it at the end when he saw himself in the mirror! They even put some gel in it which he thought was very cool! I hope you love the transformation as much as we do! (Hopefully you figure out that the picture with Teagan is the "before" picture!) :-)





There were other fun and interesting activities today: For the English lesson, the children learned how to say different types of foods like apple, grapes, bread, chocolate, oranges, pear, carrot, pepper, etc. He caught on how to say "soup" very quickly, much to my surprise, until I learned that is how they say it in the Ukraine too! :-)

Some of the children from the church performed the story of David for the Ukrainian kids. Using one of the translators, it seemed to go over well. Vanya watched with interest. We did find out he's not big on singing or dancing. Several songs and dances were performed, and he showed absolutely no interest in participating. He watched though, so I guess that's something.

After lunch, the adults from the church got out a big parachute with lots of balls. He thought that was very neat, and was an eager participant. One of my favorite pictures is when he popped his head out of the middle and grinned at me!



Today's highlight was taking the kids to a llama farm. It's a very small world: turns out I know the people who own it (I just didn't know they raise and show llamas!) I'm not sure I mentioned this before, but when Ivan's not sure of something, he likes to watch it done first. I told the owners this, and sure enough, once he saw the other kids leading the llamas around, he jumped right in to do it himself. He really liked feeding the llamas out of his hand. After they spent some time petting and feeding the llamas, we went into the garage to make llama picture frames out of foam. To finish out the afternoon, our hosts had made frosted sugar cookies in the shape of llamas! This whole afternoon was a fantastic experience.

You may be asking yourself, "where are the pictures from this fantastic event?" Well, I do not have any; I left my camera battery at the church to charge. Luckily, someone was able to call the church to let me back in afterwards to get it. Good thing since we won't be back there until Monday!!!! However, all is not lost: one of the other hosting moms took some picture of Ivan for me, so as soon as she sends them to me, I will post them. Just be patient. . . :-)