Battle of the wills

Today we fought a battle of the wills with Katya. We are not sure who won.


It was rainy here and so there wasn't going to be much playing outside and we decided that we would go to the main orphanage building and hang out in a room and have Katya do some English lessons on the Rosetta Stone and then have her and Allie draw, make origami flowers, and other stuff to entertain themselves. Katya had other notions about what she would be doing. She did about one and a half lessons (I only wanted her to do three - she was so close!) and then put her foot down and refused to do anymore. Elena happened to be at the orphanage with the Benson's and Lawrences so we sat her down with Katya and had a little chat. We told Katya how important it was for her to learn English - so that she will be able to talk to us! - and that when she gets to our house she will not always get to do what she wants all the time. Allie doesn't always get to do what she wants, we make her read and write (which to Allie borders on torture!) in exchange for her getting to do fun stuff. All the while, Katya just sat there with her arms crossed and jaw set - she sure can be stubborn. But we can be, too. Just ask Allie, who went almost all of last summer without watching TV at our house because she wouldn't do her "Harriet the Spy" book report.


We told her she couldn't play video games until she did one more lesson and that she could take as long as she wanted to decide to do this lesson but until she did the lesson, she wasn't going to get to play games. Score: Us - 1 Katya - 0.


So, Katya went into the directors office and played video games there . Score: Us - 1 Katya - 1.


When Alex realized that is what she had done, we grabbed Elena again and sat Katya down and told her that her playing video games elsewhere was basically like defying us and if she didn't want to do her one English lesson and wasn't going to be with us that we would go home and she could just stay here. Score: Us - 2 Katya - 1.


Katya said it was fine if we left. Score: Us - 2 Katya - 2.


But on our way out, we made sure that she was no longer allowed to sit in the directors office to play video games, since this is not something that would normally be allowed anyway. So when we left, I believe we were ahead and the intention was to come back when Elena got back from going with the Benson's (and Lawrences?) to sign papers.


But we never heard from Elena and at 5:30 decided to go back over to the orphanage. Katya's mood had improved and she agreed to do English tomorrow from 12:00 - 12:30. It was pretty late and rainy outside so all the kids were inside and we didn't feel like forcing her to do the one English lesson tonight. So we will see tomorrow who won, when we try and get her to do the English lesson she promised...

We ate dinner at the orphanage. It was potato stew with meat in it and bread. My stew did not have any meat in it (thank goodness, because the meat looked really gross!) and the stew wasn't too bad. We made Allie eat all of her's, even though she didn't like it. The drink they served with dinner tasted suspiciously like coffee. Alex thinks it might have been "Postum" or "Ovaltine" because who in their right minds would serve coffee to children?

After dinner, we played cards with the kids. We played a matching game, war, and uno. Alex told them that we would only play uno if they played by our rules because Alex had played uno with a boy on a previous day and when I asked him how it went, he said it was like the game called "You win!". You have probably seen that episode of "Friends" where Chandler wanted to loan Joey money but didn't want Joey to know he was loaning him money so he made up the game called "You win!", where any card that was played meant that Joey won. Their Uno game never ends. When someone wins, they just have that person draw seven more cards and then they just keep playing. For this reason they are not really interested in getting rid of their cards - they are more interested in catching people who have not said "Uno". They got me a couple of times!

We left at about 8:30, which was the latest we had stayed at the orphanage. Allie was very concerned because they locked the door at 8:00 and I think she was afraid that we would not be able to get out!