Orphanage and the Ballet Day (December Part I)

        I was pretty much gone all day from home. I went with a Rotarian named Tatiana and her to help her deliver some things to the orphanage. First I went with Tatiana and the new Brazilian exchange student, Fernando, to a man's apartment, where the guy was donating a ton of toys.
     He was from Portland, OR. What in the world? He went to Lincoln High School! He had quite a bit of Russian, as he had A.) been living in Russia for the last two years, B.) studied it in high school and in college, and  C.)was an exchange student to Russia in High school. He is here on business, expanding his lumber company or something. I guess he hasn't really been living in Oregon all that much, as he lived in China two years before Russia and somehow met his wife there, who is from Taiwan. That woman sounds extremely interesting and intelligent. She was in China teaching English, as she has a perfect American English Dialect.

<<Fun Fact: it is usual and almost traditional for Australians and New Zealanders to go to China and teach English for one or two years before starting college. China's students want to learn American English, not British.>>


He and she have had two little girls together, and have moved back to Oregon (or in the process, he goes back there in a couple months I think), so I don't ever get to meet her. She is in OR with their two girls, ages 4 and 6. So he was donating all of the kid stuff that they aren't going to ship back to the US because they just don't need it. It was pretty amazing to see all that was accumulated over a rather short period of time! I don't know how we managed to fit a ton of toys, clothes, a bike, and a scooter,  into a car no bigger than a Ford Focus. 

After some confusion and a few phone calls, we finally got to the children's house. I helped carry the stuff into one of the offices on the second floor of the building. It wasn't the home I went to for America day. In fact, it was for special needs children (more on that later). After carrying all of the stuff in, we sat at a table (awkwardly) and drank tea and ate sweets. Then my fellow Oregonian (even more awkwardly) showed the office ladies what he brought them. There was a lot of stuff, so he just went over the highlights.
We then took some of the toys into a class, where I was really surprised to see the special needs kids. I just didn't know that was the kind of orphanage we were going to. It seemed to me that Down Syndrome was the common one, but there were others with physical issues or other mental issues. We also visited an art class, where there was a young man with severe physical handicaps painting. It was amazing to see, because he was doing a great job. Tatiana talked to him for a long time. We then went back to the car and subsequently to the Oregonian's apartment building, where he left the car running, ran up, and brought me back a nice, lovely jar of peanut butter! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! He made my day right then and there. Then we all went back to Tatiana's house, where I stayed much too long. I had to be home by 5 to go to the ballet, but was half an hour late because I quite frankly lost track of time.

Of course, Julia and I made it just in time and the ballet was excellent. It was beyond anything. Beyond. You know how the last one felt short to me? This one felt way shorter! The lead chick was far and away the best. The guy that played the nutcracker okay, but she totally became her character. She carried you away on her adventure and all of her dancing seemed like effortless expression. Like she was telling us the story personally and it wasn't really dancing. It just was awesome!