Praise God for a day of rest! We went to the orphanage this morning at 9:30. We brought gifts and just played with Jonathan and Anastasia. Anastasia responded beautifully, sitting in "momma's" lap once again while Jonathan and "Poppa" played ball. We all four played ball for most of the time after that. We saw a whiny side of Jonathan when he insisted the ball belonged to him. We managed to explain the ball was for both of them and the trucks were his and the doll Anastasias. He didn't like that too much and got pouty, but we were able to bring him out of it quite easily with laughing and tickling. So adorable.

The children had to go to lunch, so we left for the day and spent the rest of the afternoon having lunch at the cafeteria in our hotel and shopping in the open air market about a block away from our hotel in Donetsk. This is our first full day without our guide who went back to Kiev to process documents. It is very interesting to order food from a menu in Russian. You don't really know what you are getting. That is why we like the cafeteria where all the food is sitting out so you can at least see what it looks like. It is still hard to tell what is in it. Mike ordered what looked like a potato salad with olives in it, but it turned out to be really fishy. EW! Our best food experience was the gelatto or ice cream we had today. Not like gelatto we tried once at home, but way better even than our ice cream, which is "fluffly" by comparison. Ukrainian "ice cream" is very dense, rich and creamy. We decided to make it a daily tradition, so maybe we won't lose weight while we're here.

The open air market is very interesting. They sell everything here! Cheese, meat, fresh (?) fish, pastries, toys, underwear, furs, produce...The fish stands are incredible. The fish just sits out in crates or hanging like in the photo above. We have even seen people selling fish from their cars on the side of the road. Sushi anyone? The flowers are also incredible-incredibly beautiful! There is an entire row of flower shop after flower shop, each filled with beautifully arranged, fresh flowers of all kinds. We will ask our guide when we meet up with him again where these flower are grown. We bought a few things and found the shop owners to be very friendly and patient with us. Notice the girl in the photo wearing the fur coat on the left. We would love to take photos of all the elaborate fur coats the women here wear, but it would be quite suspicious to be sure, so we don't do it. The women here typically deck themselves out in gorgeous coats and spike-heeled, long leather boots even to go to the market and in spite of the muddy, uneven walkways.