This morning we stopped in to check the warehouse as we had a lot of rain last night.  We found a few leaks, nothing serious but we covered up the areas with the drips using some large bags that Nina found for us.

Then we were off to the orphanage where I had a chance to get a look inside the chicken barn that we built last spring.  The hens were in fine form doing their job.  They looked good and appeared happy, healthy and comfortable:

As we were going in, one of the staff members was coming out with a load of fresh eggs.  They are averaging 90 eggs per day, which is more than an egg a day for the children!  What a great success this project is.

But the real highlight of our day was the opportunity to rent a bus a take the children to Mogilev for an outing.  As mentioned previously, this is spring break in Belarus and many of the children are at relatives for the week, so we only needed one bus.  Here are the children on the bus, Kristina, from the yearbook committee, is capturing the moment for next years edition:

The theater was very nice and located on a beautiful “walking street” that is closed to traffic.

All of the children received popcorn and a drink:

and since it was a 3D movie, we all got to wear these very attractive glasses!

The movie we saw was “The Lorax”, but of course it was in Russian so the Canadians had to take our laugh cues from the children!  After the movie the next stop was a museum:

The kids were well behaved and attentive at the museum as well.

All in all a really great day with the kids.  We are still keeping our fingers crossed that we will have our boxes released before the weekend so we can keep the momentum going!

Eric McKenzie

PS:  For those interested in a cost comparison, here is a little bonus that I posted on our Facebook Page.  These groceries (4 bags worth) that we picked up at the local grocers cost us 195,860 Rubles … approximately $24.00 Canadian.  Salaries here range from roughly $200 – $500 per month.