The Penultimate Meeting... For This Trip

The penultimate chord of any musical phrase can be the most important chord of all.  It sets up the ending.  (OK, ok, ok…..penultimate = next to last, good?).  If the chord is sour or strange, then it can leave the listener confused until the final chord is played.  Sometimes, there is no second guessing what the final chord is.  But you never know until it is played.

Today was Abraham's and my penultimate playdate.  This would set us up for the last visit for this trip.  For me, I had no doubts prior to the trip that I would love this child and if we had only one trip to come and pick him up, I would be happy.  But, since Bulgaria has a mandatory “try before you buy” policy of doing a first trip and then the second pick up trip later, we know that our first trip must end.

By the way, I think that the two trip policy is good particularly with children who have special needs.  Nothing on paper can give you as accurate a picture of your child's needs as seeing him in person.  Medical reports are often inaccurate, either overstating or understating their needs.  This time I have spent with Abraham will help us to prepare that much better for his arrival this summer.

OK, so now the music begins:

Breakfast, done.  Got dressed… before breakfast, and done.  Ready to go?  Just got to wait for Yavor… Here he comes… ok let’s go!

Today Abraham seemed a little more tired and emotionally worn out than he did at the previous play times.  We started the day in the play room.  He would play with his cups for a little bit and then he got bored and threw them down.  He would try something else (like the toy saxophone that he started to get attached to) and lose interest very quickly.  I tried to engage him, but he didn’t seem to like anything.

Until I gave him a cookie.  When I took a cookie out, I would pat on the chair beside me to tell him where to sit to eat, and he would climb up and sit down.  He would be calm and still as I fed him the pieces of the cookie.  When he was done with the first, he wanted a second.  So, I gave him a second cookie.  But when that one was done, he was ready to climb back down.

No more than five minutes later he wanted to leave the play room.  I asked the social worker who was present if there was another room that we could play in.  I knew that he really wanted to go outside, but the temperature was cold and Abraham had a slightly runny nose so any other play areas would be preferable.

The social worker opened the door and we walked Abraham down the hallway to the next play room.  Abraham was fine until he saw the front entrance.  He then collapsed on the floor in a tantrum.  I tried to console him, but it was of no use.  He did not calm down until he got a piece of bread from one of the staff.  I then scooped him up and made our way to the elevator.

The elevator was small.  Yavor, the social worker, Abraham, and myself were about as much as it could handle at one time.  And this was one of those residential elevators where the elevator car is open on the “door” side and you can see the cross section of the building as you went up.  Kind of creepy looking.

Eventually, we made our way to our new play room on the fourth floor (actually it’s floor "3"; ground floor is numbered "0"). To be honest, this was something that I would have absolutely loved as a kid.  Heck, I wouldn’t’ve minded having one now!

It had a ball pit!  Oh Yeah!

Along with the ball pit, there were various pieces of large foam building-block-like materials and maybe gymnastics type mats and things of that sort.  Abraham seemed excited, but was a little slow in trying things out.  I showed him the ball pit and he kind of liked it, but preferred to resume the game of climbing back and forth over the wall of the ball pit over and over again.

Abraham started getting restless again and heading toward the door.  Then I remembered that I had an ace up my sleeve – bubbles!  Oh, wow!  Did he love that or what.  For a long time I would blow bubbles and he would smile, grin, and giggle as the bubbles would come and fly around him, sometimes landing right on his face.  I was glad to see him happy.

He slowly got tired of it and so I tried to show him the ball pit again.  He seemed more keen to play with the balls this time, but still not as excited as I would have been.  So I jumped in with him to show him how it was done.  And he learned pretty quick then.

He particularly liked falling back onto the balls.  He would go to the edge of the pit with his back to the center and then he would fall back.  Now, unlike most kids I would see, he did not flinch at all when he fell back into the balls – it was like a perfect trust fall from some sort of corporate team building exercise.  He would smile and grin and had a good old time with the balls.

We then had a cookie or two, and then he started to get upset.  Abraham would go to the door and kick at it to show that he wanted to leave the room.  I had the realization that the poor kid had cookies and bread, but not a drop to drink.  I get thirsty pretty quickly, so I asked if it would be possible to get some water for Abraham.

The social worker came back with some water for Abraham.  He took a couple of sips and then got really upset.  When offered the cup again, he grabbed it and flung it behind him.  The water flew after it.  

We took him out into the hall to see if we could figure out where Abraham wanted to go, and he lead us back to the elevator.  We went down to the ground floor, and then he took us towards the front door.  We couldn’t go out, so we went back into the play room on the ground floor.

Abraham was very upset and was crying and fussing about wanting to not be in the play room.  It took a while, but he soon realized that he was not going to get his way by crying and fussing and he eventually calmed down.  Yavor made the quite astute observation that Abraham reacts like a typical kid; he could reason well.

For most of the rest of the play time, Abraham sullenly played his waiter game, but with a new addition.  A couple of days ago, I finished my hotel snacks that I kept in a little blue nut container.  I brought it with for the visit and showed it to him like it was a drum.  Abraham decided that it was not a drum but some sort of serving vessel for his little cups.  It was very good to see him playing with nontraditional toys. 

And then, as quick as it began, the visit ended.  It was a little tougher saying good-bye to Abraham today knowing that tomorrow will be shorter and the last one for many months.

When we left, I wanted to get some photos of the orphanage and of the play yard so that we could have these pictures available to him when he gets older and might want to see where he spent the first years of his life.  As I was taking photos of the play yard, I heard a commotion on the orphanage side of the fence.  Apparently, they don’t like having pictures taken of the place.  Yavor spoke to them to calm them down while I finished up, and then we were off.

Along the way, we passed the hospital.  According to the reports we have, this is the most probable birthplace of Abraham, so I took some pictures.  It looked old and soviet; a great place for a Stephen King miniseries to take place.

Without the second daily visit, we had more “free” time in the afternoon.  We went to lunch at the same place and this time I had the fried chicken with corn flakes – a traditional Bulgarian meal, which came highly recommended by Yavor.  It tasted really good, but I have to admit that I was a little taken aback by the idea at first because I think that I automatically though of frosted flakes, not corn flakes!  Now that would be one for American fair food!

Fried chicken with cornflakes and a side of sirene cheese covered fries

After lunch we picked up some chocolate and then headed out for a little sight-seeing.  There was a particularly interesting Bulgarian national heritage spot that we could drive to that looked really interesting.  The road was windy with plenty of hairpin turns to keep me glued to the door.

Now there was another reason that I wanted to go to this spot – geocaching!  In case you don’t know, geocaching is like a treasure hunt where you can hide things and find things (AKA caches) by using GPS coordinates.  I didn’t have a GPS device handy, but I did my homework with Google Earth and was able to see where the cache was hidden.

Now, just because you know the coordinates doesn’t mean that you will get it right away.  Usually it takes several minutes even for the easiest ones.  Considering that I did not want to waste too much of Yavor’s time looking for the cache, I used the supplied hint and prayed for St. Anthony to help me find it.  And….

We found it!  Yavor seemed impressed that I found it so quickly.  And to be honest, so was I.  It was one of the quickest finds I've ever made.  Thank you, St. Anthony!  Now once you find a cache, you have to log your visit in the little log book, and usually there are many trinkets in there that you can take.  But if you take something, then you have to leave something.  I found some Asian currency, maybe Chinese, that was in there.  So I put in 2 leva and I took the Chinese money. 

Back at the hotel, I skyped with Sam and the kids, took a nap, studied for a little bit, and then went out for supper.  There was no concert so it made for an early night.  Tomorrow is an early visit and I have to get my bags packed, so it was good to get some sleep.

St. Christopher, pray for us!

God bless!

Sean