Richard’s Personal Blog

Lots of stuff in basically random order as I jot down my thoughts and recollections before I forget them:

• She wants to be a dentist when she grows up.
• One problem employee (and one less-than-cooperative supervisor) at the Southwest ticket counter delayed me from being able to get through security in time to meet Anna at the gate. Man, I was steamed!
• I believe Anna entered the orphanage just over five years ago.
• Anna has two younger sisters, both in Spain. They were adopted about five years ago (apparently, soon after arriving at the orphanage), effectively splitting up the family. She has had no contact with them since; doesn’t help that they now speak only Spanish, she does not. I believe they are now ages five and eight now.
• She left her pink sweater in Southern California. It’s OK; she’d outgrown it anyway.
• The orphanage is located in a suburb about 15 miles outside of Kiev.
• I am fairly certain that Vera, the children’s escort, is a teacher at their school. To be confirmed.
• While Anna has a fun habit of naming off just about every car that drives by, her absolute favorites are Porsches and Hummers. I arranged with two respective local dealerships to let her spend some time in both before she left. The Hummer dealership owner coincidentally also had come from the Ukraine, and he graciously allowed us unfettered access to a brand-new, dark-blue H2 for several hours after we told him Anna’s story. Unbelievably trusting, he just handed me the keys and sent us on our way — no paperwork, no copies of anything, he never even knew my full name!! To Anna’s absolute delight, we drove around for a while, I let her take a brief (albeit scary!) spin behind the wheel in a wide-open dirt parking lot, we stopped off at the Porsche dealership for a quick top-down test drive, took her to dinner at Applebees, and then (20 driving miles later) returned the Hummer. While we were showing her a good time, the Hummer dealership owner went to a local jeweler and bought Anna a pair of real diamond earrings! I fear for their safety in the orphanage, but without knowing her fate her in the US, there was no way I was going to take them away from her, even for her safe-keeping. Amazing guy!
• A fan of Green Day, Pink, Disney, Hilary Duff, the Olsen girls, Shrek, and the Simpsons — among many other US exports.
• She has both ears, her nose (at age 12), and her tongue (at age 11) pierced.
• She has been to Italy and Egypt. Not sure if her travels were school trips, or related to adoption attempts. When we broke out of Sony Playstation II EyeToy game, we were surprised to hear that she’d played it before — in Italy.
• If she could eat strawberry ice cream every day, I think she would! Strawberry milkshakes don’t count.
• Loves jelly beans, but not necessarily Jelly Bellies.
• Not a fan of chocolate anything.
• Wears size 6½ shoes.
• While a habit we would have attempted to curb had she been ours, Anna likes eating packets of sugar and sugar substitutes. Our few restaurant visits would often result in a pile of empty packet wrappings in the corner. Her first night, she added sugar to her Sprite!
• Squirrels fascinated her, even more than most of the critters we saw at the zoo, meerkats the main exception.
• The school at her orphanage is so good that many of the neighborhood children are schooled there as well; two outside students to every orphan. Apparently, that’s unusual.
• She really hates to have her picture taken.
• Anna loves sunflower seeds. Never a day her pocket wasn’t full of them.
• Her two favorite colors: black and pink
• Someday, she wants to get a tattoo.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Anna.