Day 4 - Rila Monestary

The Rila Monastery is the largest and most famous Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria.  I had been wanting to go to the monastery for a long time, so I was excited to find out that we would be staying in a village that was less than 30 kilometers away.  I was even more excited when our attendant suggested a trip to this beautiful place.

On Tuesday the weather was great, so we decided it would be a good day to visit.  Our group consisted of us, our attendant, the social worker, little brother, foster mother and foster father.  As we drove up the mountain we saw more and more snow on the ground.  

The main church was amazing.  Everything was so detailed.  We could have spent so much more time there.  While we were there Little Brother's foster mother explained that he had been named after the saint who founded the monastery.  Before leaving the church, she asked us to all light a candle together for him. 

We walked around the grounds for a bit longer and took everything in.  We also stopped by the gift shop to purchase a few postcards of the inside of the church before heading back down the mountain for lunch. 

We stopped at a cute little restaurant near the river and enjoyed a traditional Bulgarian meal.  While we waited for our lunch Little Brother enjoyed checking out the stuffed animals that were mounted on the wall and checking himself out in the mirror.  His foster mother ordered him a meatball and some French fries, but he preferred Jason's chicken dish over his own meal.

After lunch we said our goodbyes and headed back to the village.  On the way we talked about our plan for the rest of the week.

We arrived back in time for our daily Skype session with Nikolas.  After that we took a walk around the city center and also down to the small church down the road.  We always felt comfortable when we were out, and the people we met were very friendly.  We definitely enjoyed the slower pace of village life.

As normal, we had our nightly dinner in the hotel restaurant with our attendant followed by relaxing upstairs before bed.

Day 3 - Meeting Little Brother

We met our attendant downstairs at 8:30am and shared a plate of freshly made banitsa before heading over to the social worker's office.  The office is located in the one office building that is located in the city center.  It is a small room located on the top floor of the building.  We took care of some paperwork, picked up the social worker and drove over to Little Brother's foster home. 

We were greeted at the door by his foster mother.  She invited us in for some juice and snacks, and we sat and talked about Little Brother until he got comfortable with us being there.  We then joined him in the bedroom and spent a couple of hours playing with him.  We could tell right away that he's a clever little boy.  He's very energetic and has a sweet giggle.  His favorite toys are cars, balls, my iPhone, and the television remote.  Towards the end of the visit he let his foster mother know that he was hungry.  After a quick lunch he grabbed his blanket and fell right asleep.  We dropped the social worker off at her office and returned to the hotel.

In the afternoon we took a walk to the small grocery store in town to pick up some soda and juice to take back to the hotel.  We also picked up some souvenirs at another small store in the town center.  There are a couple of souvenir shops in town, but neither seemed to be open during our visit.  Perhaps will check back this summer when we return to bring Little Brother home. 

That evening we enjoyed a quiet dinner downstairs in the restaurant and then went back upstairs to get some sleep.

Days 1 and 2 - Getting There

We left Indianapolis on Saturday afternoon and flew to Sofia via Washington DC and Vienna.  Katie from Adoption Airfare booked us some great flights on United and Austrian Air.  All of the flights were on time with short, easy connections. 

We arrived in Sofia at 12:50pm on Sunday and were met by our attendant.  He drove us to Kocherinovo, which is a small village located in the southwestern part of Bulgaria.  It's known as "The Town of Storks".  We were able to spot many nests on top of buildings and are excited to watch for storks when we return this summer.  This part of the country is absolutely beautiful.

We checked into the Hotel Mishel, which is a small guest house that has six rooms.  It's owned by a very nice couple that we got to know throughout the week.  Our room was comfortable and we enjoyed having a small terrace.

After getting unpacked we were able to Skpye with Nikolas at home.  We were very thankful to have a reliable internet connection all week.

We enjoyed a nice meal in the small dining room at the hotel before an early bedtime.  

Here's a website that includes a lot of neat information about Kocherinovo: http://www.sputnik-bg.net/en/index.htm.

Referral!!

We received a referral in mid-January and just returned home last night from meeting our little guy.  He's am amazing little boy and we had such a positive experience going to visit him.  He's going to be a great son and little brother.  I didn't take the laptop with me when we travelled, so I wasn't able to post blog updates during our trip.  I'll be working on them over the next couple of weeks, so be sure to watch for them! 

All About Kindergarten

We're still here and doing well, but there just hasn't been much time to update the blog lately.  In fact, I started this post back in November and am just now sitting down to finish it.  I've got several update posts that I want to write, so I'll do my best to put together more frequent posts. 

Nikolas started kindergarten in late July.  He loves school and is doing better than we expected.  He has a team of seven wonderful teachers/therapists/aides that work with him each week to help him learn.  He has a classroom teacher, a special education teacher, two classroom aides, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and a physical therapist. His teachers have great things to say about him and the progress that he is making.  He loves school and looks forward to going every day.

He was diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) last spring, and he has made so much progress with his speech since starting school.  Extra speech therapy and being in a classroom with lots of chatty five and six year olds have done wonders for his vocabulary, sentence structure and pronunciation.  We have high hopes that he'll beat CAS soon and be able to be consistently understood by everyone. 

Nikolas is learning to read in kindergarten.  He knows all of his letters and most of his letter sounds.  He does really well with his sight words and knows every single one he has learned since starting school.  He is starting to blend letters to be able to read basic words, but he struggles with being able to write words on his own.

He started kindergarten not being able to write a single letter on his own.  He can now write his first name and about half of his last name.  His handwriting isn't the neatest, but he works hard.

Math has been a challenge.  He does okay with patterns and he can count until 15 before he starts missing numbers.  He does fairly well with identifying two-digit numbers.  One of his goals is to be able to count to 100 by the end of the school year.  We're working on it, but he's not a big fan of math.

His social skills are pretty good.  When he started preschool, one of his goals was for him to initiate interactions with his peers.  He has no issues with that now and has turned into a very social little boy.  He has friends at school and seems to play well with them. 

One of his major struggles at school is his behavior.  Nikolas likes to be in charge of every situation, and when someone tells him to do something that he doesn't want to do, he gets a little too vocal.  His teacher uses a card system where everyone starts on green each morning and moves to yellow, orange or red throughout the day if they misbehave.  Nikolas likes all colors and his behavior chart looks more like a rainbow than it should.  The majority of his yellow, orange and red cards were earned simply because his teacher asked him not to do something, and he ended up flipping out over it.  Part of his problem is that his maturity level is not quite up to the level of his peers.  He acts more like a 3-4 year old than a 5 1/2 year old.  We are considering having him go through a second year of kindergarten so he can catch up to his peers a little more in that area.  (He doesn't turn six until May, so he's one of the younger kids in his class.)

He goes to school with a good attitude every morning and works hard most of the time.  He wants to do well, and he's always proud to show off his work when he's done a good job or earned a green card for good behavior.  School is hard work, but he doesn't give up!