Dear 7th Grade Math Class,

I recently took a trip to London, England for my "sports loaf", a small 10 day break right before Easter break. It was a lot of fun! We went to many museums including the British Museum, where we saw lots of mummies and the Rosetta stone, which is a tool used in translating several languages. We also went on the Eye of London. This is a massive farris wheel that overlooks London and that’s how it got its name. I took about a billion pictures.

After that we went to a rural city called Bath. There was an interesting museum there where we saw the real Roman baths, that’s where the word "bath" got its name I guess. In that particular museum they had a machine that was a hearing tour guide that told you everything about anything. It was really cool. We also went to a weird restaurant called Garfunkles.

Then we took a train to Cardiff, Wales, where we met some old friends, and rented our first car. All of the cars there have the steering wheel on the right side instead of the left so that took some getting used to. After we got our car we went to an outdoor museum on Welsh history. We went inside little huts that were made by the kelts around the 10th century. Then we took a long car ride to our friends’ house. Once we got there we ate dinner at a bar/pub. The food was really good. The next day we took a walk in the woods near our friend’s house.

The day we had to leave Wales we went to a really cool museum on modern physics, where like beach balls floated in mid-air and there were water guns, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Afterwards we said our goodbyes and left Wales.

Once we were back in London we celebrated my mom’s birthday. We were in London for two more days. We visited the Tower of London, a fortress of British kings and queens. We saw the armor of King Henry VIII. After our visit, we took a long plane ride back to Sweden.

I am writing this from Sweden. The time difference of six hours is very tiring or so it seems. I am back in school or "skolan" is the Swedish term. I miss you all very much except for Tony!

=] (joking!)

Sincerely,
Noah Budd

Wow! We've already been in Stockholm for two weeks! Our transitions have been smooth and for the most part, deeeelightful.

We've settled into a spacious three bedroom apartment in a lovely part of the city, Norrmalm, only a five minute walk from the boys' school and about 20 minutes from Doug's office at the Royal Institute of Technology. There is a lovely national park in our back yard with walking/biking trails, beautiful woods and a large lake. The weather has been very warm, with little snow and not much rain. Although our daylight is somewhat limited (around 7-1/2 to 8 hours now), the days have been generally beautiful . . . today we have brilliant sun and no wind, so Kristina and I took an hour-long walk in the park.

Noah and Jack are settled into their school, Rodabergskolan, and appear to be having lots of fun. The academics are quite easy compared to what they're used to. Interestingly, the kids have only three lessons/week in academic subjects (i.e., English, math, social studies, and science). The school day is also abbreviated compared to ours: the kids have one hour for lunch and although every day is different, they usually finish school around 2:00 PM. We're spending 1 to 2 hours in the evening doing math and science, plus a minimum of 1/2 hour reading-- Noah's reading classics at home, currently Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Jack is reading Andrew Clements stories, having finished "Janitor's Boy" last night.

Noah is enjoying meeting new friends and the relative freedom of the Swedish school system as compared to the US. It's fun to watch the creative ways in which "electives" such as music and gym are handled here. For Noah, music involves teams of 7th graders who decide on a performance, practice together, then perform for their peers. Noah and four boys and one girl are practicing Eagles' "Hotel California", which they will perform for the entire 7th grade. Their "band" includes two guitars, piano, voice and drums. Similarly, Noah came home from gym last week complaining that two girls had led the entire class in ballroom dancing lessons -- horrors. Noah and another boy will teach basketball fundamentals to the 7th graders later in the semester.

On Jack's first day at school, we arrived in time for art. The 5th graders were making stained glass creations as part of a Medieval history unit. Aside from having met some really nice kids, Jack is particularly excited about "Clubben", an after school program where kids in 4th-6th grades can do homework, play table tennis, basketball and indoor soccer, etc. Doug and I really appreciate Clubben, as apartment life is quite different than living in a home with a yard where the kids can dash outside at the slightest whim (usually mine) to wear off their energy.

Doug is off to work every day where he is catching up on reading, beginning to learn the thermodynamic modeling program at the Institute and thinking about writing a couple of papers, as part of the usual academic backlog!

Kristina is blossoming, more lovely than ever and smart as a whip. She's got the appetite of a teenager and the disposition of a saint. She loves being with Mama on a non-stop basis, so we're in our own little groove here in Stockholm, with lots of good books and music, a few games, puzzles and toys, the great outdoors and an indoor Montessori gym in our apartment building! She's learning her letters and numbers, enjoys playing with magnets and puzzles, loves to listen to music and books and play educational games on the computer.

As for me, well, I am working out every day, playing with Kristina, keeping house and generally focusing on family stuff at this juncture in my life. And since I've never had "full-time mom, wife and housekeeper" as a job description, the adjustments have been, frankly, non-trivial. I was surprised the other day, for example, that one could spend an entire half-day (four hours) doing nothing but the family's laundry.

Well, that's all of our news for now . . . More about Stockholm, the city and city sights soon. Know that we are well and are enjoying this adventure very much, but miss family and friends! judy

We are making progress with the adoption, however slowly, and hope to be home in the next week. Unfortunately, we will not be able to bring Kristina home with us, as there is a new Ukrainian passport procedure, effective August 21, 2007, that will add a minimum of two weeks to the adoption process (and this doesn't include the 10 day waiting period after our court date next week). We have met several families who been in the Ukraine for 7-9 weeks! And while we are heartbroken at the prospect of having to leave her here for several additional weeks, we are also missing Jack and Noah, very much, and family, friends, and work, etc. Our plan is to return to the States after our court date (hopefully next week). I will return to the Ukraine to bring Kristina home in about a month after the adoption is finalized and Kristina has her Ukrainian passport. is and obtain a Ukrainian passport.

In the meantime, we are getting to know Kristina each day and enjoying every minute together. She continues to delight us with her great energy, curiosity, and delight in small pleasures (e.g., picking unripe plums from a tree and eating the sour fruit with aplomb, brushing the hair of her favorite doll, and climbing on the orphanage play structures).

We've established an afternoon routine, involving a snack, games and exploration around the orphanage camp grounds. Perhaps it is easy to imagine that snack time is the highlight for Mama and Papa, who take great pleasure in watching Kristina eat eggs, fruit, cheese, nuts, and drink fruit juices, although not all at once mind you. It turns out that Kristina is an exacting eater, and one who doesn't wish to miss a crumb. One day she ate a whole apple, seeds, core and all. And while she has learned many words of English, "wipe" was among her first!

We were surprised at how much she seems to enjoy dolls, having picked one up as an afterthought at the toy store last week. In fact, the doll was so poorly made that her hair is in the style of a mohawk, i.e., a shock of hair down the midline of her head, with one row of bangs and another around each ear, and no hair in between. Kristina quickly found the brush and comb, and proceeded to remove whole shocks of the blond mohawk, while attempting repeatedly to put a rubberband in the doll's hair to make a ponytail. At the end of our visit, Doug exhibited a great deal of slight of hand getting the doll back into his backpack, in order to avoid to having it disappear into the orphanage's communal abyss.

The next day when Kristina spotted the doll, she immediately wished to play with it and was happily doing so when her particular group of preschoolers joined us on the playground. To our great surprise, she suddenly struck out at a couple of the kids with the doll as they approached us. We weren't quite sure if she was protecting the doll or us from the kids, although we prefer the latter!

At any rate, we are utterly smitten, enjoying every minute, and cannot wait to bring Kristina home.

We traveled to the big kid's orphanage (ages 3-10) on Monday and waited for the OK to meet Kristina. We learned after the fact that the children have been at "camp" since June 10th, so we traveled about 20 minutes out of town to the orphanage camp to finally meet Kristina. Upon arriving we were greeted by a bunch of kids dressed in summer garb, wearing only swim trunks, hats and flip flops while awaiting lunch in the cafeteria.

We knew Kristina right away because she was the child with clothes on, having been quickly decked out by the orphanage staff for our first visit. Although shy at first, she warmed up to us quickly, treating us to sidelong glances and then bursting into smiles. Oddly enough we arrived in Odessa with only one children's book (Clifford Makes a Friend) and not a single toy, having accidentally left our bag of goodies on the airplane weeks before. We quickly improvised with a paper airplane and some digging in the sand. Kristina was quite taken with the airplane, which she and Doug flew a number of times to her great delight.

Throughout our visit, we were learning some of the details about Kristina from her caregivers. One thing we noticed right away is that she appeared small in comparison to the other kids. This is part of the legacy of her early childhood, having crawled out of her apartment and into the street at 18 months to seek respite from the neglect and poor nutrition of her birth home. (My first thought upon hearing this was, 'the girl who lived'.)

The orphanage psychologist had nothing but positive things to report about Kristina, in terms of her development, interactions with children and caregivers, appetite, etc. Meanwhile Kristina was playing happily, all the while appearing to listen to what the psychologist was saying about her.

We had to wait until Tuesday to talk with the orphanage doctor. In the meantime Yana, our facilitator/interpretor, assisted us in contacting a doctor who could conduct an independent health evaluation of Kristina. Dr. Yuri agreed to meet us at the orphanage the next day for a physical and cognitive evaluation. He used a number of games and activities to evaluate Kristina's cognitive skills and then discussed her physical health with the orphanage doctor and performed a physical exam.

Based on the Denver II and other indices, Kristina appears to be doing well in terms of her cognitive development with delays in speech, which is very common for children in orphanages. Otherwise her cognitive skills were generally very good, so this confirmed our initial impressions. Physically she is healthy, according to the doctors, but is very small for her age, no doubt the result of her early development. Based on her growth over the last 18 months, she appears to be catching up having grown 10 cm (4 inches) and gained 7 pounds.

We met with her again later that afternoon, played together and then went home to discuss our thoughts and impressions. Needless to say, this has been a difficult process. We are very taken with Kristina, and have decided to move forward with the adoption. One of our favorite orphanage staff walked with us today as we were leaving and prompted Kristina to wave goodbye to mama and papa!

One last vignette about Kristina: At the end of our play date yesterday afternoon she rejoined her group in the orphanage. As on Monday, she was dressed in a darling outfit for our visit, as opposed to the usual swimsuit, hat and flipflops. We watched her from the distance as she rejoined her group, at which time she realized that one of her buddies was wearing her hat. Immediately Kristina, the smallest child in her group, made it clear that she wanted her hat back. We left prior to the resolution of the skirmish, but peeked over the hedge a few minutes later to see how things had turned out, at which time Kristina was happily playing WITH her hat in its usual position, placed backwards upon her head.

This is our girl . . .

We met with the SDA today to discuss our plans for returning to the Ukraine in September. They were very accommodating, having indicated that the adoption agency will work with us on the timing of our return, given the long distance and travel time between the US and Ukraine. We learned that there ~20 families that have had first appointments, and who are also waiting for second appointments.

Then Valentina, the Psychologist, asked us if we had interesting dreams last night, because they had unexpectedly received a file for a "healthy", 3-1/2 year old girl. We were not expecting this at all, as the meeting was strictly to discuss our return to the Ukraine for a second appointment in September. We had even booked our return for Saturday, so this was the farthest thing from our minds. After spending a few minutes learning a bit more about Kristina and her history, we left the office and talked over this unexpected situation. Masha was very surprised that Kristina's dossier indicated no delays, and actually provided "healthy" as a diagnosis, which is unusual from what we can understand.

The long and short of it is that we have decided to travel to the Odessa region on Monday to meet Kristina. SOOO we are nervous and excited, now that our adoption story has taken an unexpected turn . . . More soon!

Judy and Doug