Well, while this was almost the highlight of my trip, I am sad to say that there are only a couple of pictures of our adventures. The day started early again with breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Then 6 of us loaded into Tonja’s car again and we were off! Off to visit an orphanage in Sofia!
When we arrived, we were met by Valentina (President of the Sofia Parent Group), Frank , Phil, Becky, Tonja, Amy, Bessie, Angela, Shelley, Heather (who joined us for the weekend then) and myself. It think that is it.
I was sad that we were not allowed to take any pictures besides in the room where we met the interim director, a nurse and a social worker. Here is the group and the tiny room where we spent a couple hours talking.
We talked a lot about the care the children receive at this orphanage. They also have a daycare here for kids with special needs. It was interesting to say the least. We were then taken on a very specific orphanage tour. There were (from their words) over 100 children in this orphanage. We saw maybe 15 of these kids.
We did get to see three new babies that are there. I got to hold a little guy who is just over 7 months old. I was in love! Oh he was precious. Another little girl was a couple months younger and just the cutest thing ever! The other little girl was in need of heart surgery, but in the couple minutes we got to interact with her, she was full of smiles etc. I would have never guessed that she was scheduled for heart surgery in a little over a month! It was hard to gauge what the level of care was when there weren’t visitors, however the kids looked like they were well taken care of for the most part. Understaffing is a problem in places like this especially. So many kids, so few workers. But all in all it was a productive day. I vowed that when I knew these 3 babies were available for adoption, that I would find them homes so they don’t have to spend any longer there than they have to! Hopefully we will find out that these kids are registered or are going to be registered very very soon and I can start to advocate for these three littles.
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