Last day at orphanage

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Hey y'all, it's an entry from both Adrienne and Wendy together!

We just left the orphanage for the last time. As you can imagine, we are both very sad, but we had a wonderful sendoff. The director allowed us to visit each of the groups we worked with over the past 3 weeks. We were able to get lots of hugs and cuddles, see some silly dances, and feel like a rock star each time we entered a room. Who could ask for more? We ended the day with Group 5, the group we started with (this is the group with Down's Syndrome), which seemed an appropriate way to close this part of our adventure. It was hardest to walk away from this bunch, and they probably got more hugs from us than they thought was necessary, but we needed every one.

We really appreciate the comments you have made in our blog, and we can't wait to post photos so you can put names with faces. Your kind words mean a lot to us, but please know we aren't looking for praise when we tell our story. When we planned this trip, we were looking for an opportunity to grow personally while becoming immersed in a culture that was completely different from our own. We believe we have accomplished this -- in some ways more than we could imagine! We hope that many years from now, these children have a vague recollection of receiving kindness from some weird American ladies, but ultimately this part of the adventure was about stepping outside of ourselves and not about receiving kudos. But again, thanks for your kind words and encouragement; it has meant a great deal to us.

So we have a lot to process right now. It's hard to imagine that tomorrow we won't be traipsing back to the orphanage to see these wonderful children. In the meantime, we will go home and do a bucket or two of laundry in hopes that our clothes will be dry by the time we pack (two days from now) for the next leg of our trip. If it's Saturday, it's Istanbul! Love to you all, and thank you! We'll be posting again soon...we need to share some Moldovan idiosyncracies that have thrown us for a loop, and have quite a list of these strangenesses (to us) we plan to share with you -- for grins.

Love to all, Wendy and Adrienne

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