Host family and earthquakes
We became a host family for a child from Ukraine. There is a group that brings children from the Ukraine for adoption in the U.S. We are not looking to adopt a child but wanted to help by giving a child a place to stay while hopefully finding a family of their own. We have a girl named Anna and she is 13 years old. We were fortunate enough to celebrate her birthday with her while she is staying with us. There is a huge language barrier as she doesn’t speak English but we are able to muddle through most things. There is an interpreter on call if we need help and we had her over for dinner so she could help communicate about food and likes and dislikes. We don’t feel that she has been eating very much and not drinking hardly anything. We wanted to make sure that Anna knew she could eat what she wanted and have more if she liked. We might be over-obsessing about her because sometimes she seems so sad. We think that at times she seems so sad, she is just tired. It’s still that jet lag thing. I hope she finds a family to adopt her as her sisters were adopted by someone in Spain and the last time she saw them was when they were at the orphanage with her.
Overall I think this will be a good experience for her and for our entire family. It gives us and our kids a chance to get to know what it is like for some kids in other countries.
The night that the interpreter (whom is also a child that was adopted from the Ukraine 4 years ago) was here for dinner we had an earthquake that measured 5.6 magnitude. Fortunately and unfortunately Anna was already asleep. The interpreter Inna had never experienced an earthquake since she has been here so to see her reaction was a bit amusing. There were no aftershocks that we could feel and the whole quake lasted about 15 seconds.