Update with pictures

Alright, so I am having some technical difficulties.  The pictures are all out of order and my writing somehow became a link. Please enjoy and forgive me for being so scrambled on this post.  I tried to post pictures that were different from Carmen's blog.  It is really hard to narrow them down.  We have over a thousand!  If anyone is interested, I can post more or send them to you personally.  Or if you are local we can look at them over coffee.  :o)

This is a precious little girl that was in the infirmary of the orphanage.  We didn't get to spend much time with her because she became upset with the strangers around.

We adore this little guy.  He has also been at the orphanage all the trips we have taken.  Here we were demonstrating some massage techniques.

I couldn't resist the stereotypical Russian hat this time.  I have passed them up several times, but it was freezing and I got a great deal on it...$12  :o)

Sorry but I had to share part of the scary bathrooms on the 15 hour train.  You can't really tell, but the floors were pretty bad, there was no soap or water and the toilet opened to the tracks to flush.  Ha!  The next picture is Kym getting prepared to go in.  She had the pants tucked in, the toilet paper and a germ-X wipe ready to go.  It was a very comical moment, yet it was really helpful to be that prepared.

This was our team with a few of the doctors in the hospital and a couple of the orphaned babies.  They were so precious.

This is a little boy we have seen every trip, but this time they were very pround to show us how they had worked with him.  He is now able to walk in a walker with some control.  hee hee!

This was us packing our ten bags.  They were full of donations and our personal items all fit into our backpacks.  At the end of the trip we had completely emptied all ten bags!  What a fun thing to be able to do.

We have been home for two weeks tomorrow and I am just getting around to blogging...yikes!  I definitely don't win the blogger award.  I have to say that this trip to Ukraine was the best one so far (as far as a therapy trip).  The team was great together and all the people we worked with in Ukraine were so receptive to us and our suggestions.  We are hoping to slowly fill a crate to ship to Ukraine in the future so that we can take larger therapy supplies and be able to offer them to the hospital, orphanages, and families.  We also trained the director of therapies at the orphanage we visited how to cast for braces (AFOs) so hopefully we can continue to help them get braces for each child that needs them as well as update them as they outgrow the previous braces!  All of the people we met were especially interested in the information Carmen, our speech-pathologist, had to offer.  It was completely new to them and they wanted more.  Working with the hospital, we will be able to help orphans as infants to prevent some of the delays as well as families with children with special needs.  They really don't have any support over there.  So the future is looking really bright for upcoming trips.  (I am sorry if I am repeating myself from former posts.)