Farewall to Ukraine for now

Melissa will eventually blog about this and add more pictures but since it will probably be a few days I will write some notes as I understand it.

I'm not sure what went on this morning... probably picking up some last minute items including the pre-paid phone cards for Snezhana.  Figure about 6mo worth to last until summer hosting or however this turns out.

In the afternoon she went to the train station and met with some of the kids and chaperones.  She gave the stuff for Snezhana to one of her friends "T" that we knew would have time for the exchange at the train station.  "T" hung out for a little while and talked with Dennis which was nice.  Her other friend "O" barely made the train... we had been wondering... and only was around long enough to wave hi.  I assume that Melissa was able to give the little gifts to the kids/chaperones that she intended to.

There was another girl "A" that we are looking to host that Melissa was able to meet.  Melissa took her and some other kids/chaperones to dinner (McD's?).  "A" was smiles and tried talking, even if in Russian.  She did really well with Dennis and both seemed to enjoy their time.  "A" was comfortable enough to accept Melissa's iPod to listen to while they waited... wonder what she thought of all the contemporary Christian music on it.  All in all, pretty good especially this girl has had a long, tiring, and emotional last few days.  "A" was confused about why Melissa was there and it was a while before a translator was by to explain.

The other interesting thing was some conversations "T" and Melissa had with Snezhana.  Most of it was the "normal" topics and went well.  But then she told both "T" and Melissa that "Snezhana no want to go to America"... from further discussion this appears to be in regards to summer hosting.  This is interesting as this is the exact same wording she text'd us on Tuesday morning before Melissa picked Dennis up ("Dennis no want to go to America") which was completely bogus.  This is a 180 degree change from Tuesday night where Snezhana was giving Melissa many long hugs and said she really did want to come to America for summer hosting.

We are pretty certain the text "on behalf of" Dennis was due to biomom pressure from all the yelling/abuse at Snezhana that happened 24hrs before that... I'm pretty certain the "brainwashed" words from Snezhana were too.  There are several things that Snezhana has been using as rhetoric that when she states she will not listen to anyone.  Obviously biomom is being very [harmfully] selfish and she knows that Snezhana coming has a real possibility of getting her to change her mind... seeing Dennis happy & doing well (english, physically, etc), back with a family, etc.  Snezhana's friends and some mutual adult friends are going to try to talk to her and figure out what is going on with her... a honest/true understanding of what is going on might help.

Another thing we found out today... just before everyone left to hosting -- just before we got there --, Snezhana was apparently very happy (remember she thought we were coming but didn't know when) and she tried to give some gifts for us to someone traveling to the US.  Unfortunately they never made the exchange and of course she wasn't happy by the time we arrived... and we never got the gifts from her.  So something happened and changed things dramatically in that very short window.