Valya

No pictures for this posting. Sorry. I thought I should send an update on Valya the orphanage graduate who I have pictures of on my blog. Some of you have asked. We took her to Ekaterinburg Friday to the oncologist. We picked her up at 5 am. She dressed her 15 month old in three layers of clothes with no diapers. We started the three hour journey to Ekat and the little one Anya began to get car sick, or something. She was gagging and looked pale. She whimpered frequently and clung to her Mom.
We got Valya to the hospital by 8 am but there were already 20 people in line to see the doctor before her. It is first come first serve and covers the whole Sverdlovsk region. She had to wait 5 hours for her apointment. We left her there and took the baby to the nearest store and bought diapers. I thought we had gambled long enough on that one. She was so frightened of us, but she didn't cry she just whimpered and put her head down against her chest and tried to pull her shoulders forward to protect herself from us. Then we bought her a banana and some juice and took her to play on the climbing toys at the mall. She seemed to perk up after that and began to warm up to Alexi and I. Shortly after the banana though it started. She had diahrea that went through the diaper, and two layers of clothes. I sent Alexi off to locate new tights and changed her at the mall children's toilet. I took her back to the car and she immediately pooped again. I carried her upstairs again to the toilet and changed her again. This happened four times. She began to spike a fever and collapsed in my arms into a deep troubled sleep. Alexi suggested we go get her some medicine so he did that while I held the baby in the car. We started her on the medicine and took turns running errands while one or the other held the baby and kept her sleeping in the car.
When we finally got the call from Valya that she had been seen and tested we picked her up at 4pm. She told us she had been diagnosed with cancer and will need to come back to the hospital in Ekat for another week in August. She was stoic. She has nowhere to leave the baby. We handed her back her baby and told her she was sick. She told us she was probably just teething. I gave her instructions on a good diet she should keep her on for a few days until her tummy settled. We gave her the medicine, but with in a few minutes she was sharing her bag of BBQ chips with the baby anyway. It started raining buckets and we inched home through rush hour traffic arriving back at her house about 8 pm. When we carried her things back into her apartment we opened the door and smoke literally poured out at us. Her apartment was black with smoke. My eyes started to burn and I looked at the baby. Her eyes were red too. I looked at Valyas face. I could tell it was the straw that broke the camels back. We had paid for this to get fixed three months ago and the man who fixed the problem swears he did it right and she just doesn't know how to start a fire. However, she wasn't even there to start a fire. It was the neighbors downstairs. I was speechless as to what to do next. Alexi tried to investigate while we opened the tiny window openings we could find in her windows. I told Alexi to call the head of the orphanage charity we work with. He said he would call the guy again and get it sorted. We asked her if there was somewhere she could go for the night. She said she had a neighbor she thought would take her in. So we left her walking away from her house in the direction of the neighbor in the rain with a sick baby over one arm. That baby looked over her shoulder at me as she walked away and with her eyes just spoke to me and distinctly said, well, here we go again. Another nightmare.
This place can make you crazy. Afterwards I went home, turned on my music full blast and listened to La Fortuna the first piece in Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. It seemed fitting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEllLECo4OM&feature=related

Ural Boeing Grand Opening

Wow, that was fun! I am so proud of Gary. He was so happy at the grand opening for UBM he was practically dancing. It was an amazingly complicated process to make sure that Russian protocol was observed correctly and the Moscow office could tap into the program via live feed. While we were cutting the ribbon here in Salda they were cutting another ribbon in Moscow. Then later in the day the Moscow office met with Putin and brought some completed Titanium parts to his office for him to handle. The venture was presented to Obama as a model that the Russians would like to see duplicated elsewhere in the country. The media were everywhere and it has been covered in all the russian newspapers and on the News. I am sure it will be the highlight of Gary's career. Today was his birthday and the team had a party for him at the office. They gave him a beautiful hand painted russian plate and thanked him for his service. They are all very proud to have been part of such a successful opening and have been floating on air ever since. Now the hard part comes, he actually has to start the business of machining the parts and shipping them out of here. It is completely different process but maybe now that the company is better known they will have fewer problems with shipping agents and customs. Such fun!