Some of the wonderful people we met along our walk to the orphanage.

Here is a picture of a man who sat almost every morning outside the apartment. Every morning we would smile and I think he enjoyed the company of sitting on the bench.
This is a picture of one of the staff nurses at the orphanage. She actually spoke some English. I think she had a "crush" on Steven. She would always find him and then giggle. I thought it was so cute. We need to send her this picture because she had told us she wanted a copy. The other picture is of a sweet sweet older lady who we adored. We met her during our walk to the orphanage. She sold pears that fell off her tree. We would give her 25 cents and she would want to give us 6-7 pears. We would only take 2-4 since many were rotten. She would be very offended if you did not take any. She was so sweet after a few times she would "save" some of the better looking pears for us. She looked forward to us passing by and saying hello. The problem was she would talk to us in Russian and we could not understand a word. One day we put the translator on the phone to tell her that we did not understand Russian and tell her why we walked past her house everyday. She said she knew we were headed to the orphanage. On the last day there we bought her a small gift basket and showed her the children. It was very hard for her to understand why we chose these special needs children as oppose to typical children. She felt as if it would be a "burden" but I think she could see by our smiles how happy and blessed we felt. She asked us to write to her but our translator had to remind her that we could not write in Russian. God Bless her. I hope she kept warm this cold winter.