We like the fact that B's name (since she chose to keep her first name) has the initial BG which are the initials of her birth country. After discussing three options for middle names with her at one of our earlier visits, we checked in with her today to find out if she like any of them or if we needed to start over. She was very decisive and had chosen one that means "strong". It also starts with "B", so now her initials will be BBG. Like with her first name, we will wait until everything is finalized before sharing her middle name (unless we make a mistake like we did last night!)
We had two visits with B today and had a nice time learning a bit more about some of her likes and dislikes and also having her ask us some more questions. For instance, she wanted to know if the Twin Cities had any sky scrapers. We have no idea what prompted that question, but it was neat to be able to tell her that yes they do and then to be able to come back after lunch with some skyline views of the two cities to show her.
One of the things that is very clear is that she can not even comprehend what the possibilities are for her when she comes home. In Bulgaria, her future is very limited and as such, her outlook on the future is very limited and as a result of that, she also lacks motivation. However, as we talk with her and our translator and the child protection officer talks with her, I think she may be beginning to get a glimpse of what is possible...a very small glimpse. Today on the topic of learning English, she essentially said that she had some materials and some exposure to it, but there was really no reason for her to learn it. She said that now that she will be coming to America she will be more motivated to learn. In reality, there are really only two things that seem to be of concern to her about coming to America. One is that she will not know the language and the other is that she wants to be sure she can continue to talk to and possibly visit her friend who was adopted and now lives in Virginia. Other than that, she seems like this is an adventure that she wants to tackle.
In our afternoon visit today, we spent a little bit of time playing Colorku (Sudoku with colors) on the iPad with her. We had a lot of fun with it because she was trying to use some English and we were trying to use some Bulgarian as we tried to figure out which colors went where. We can most certainly say that she has her colors down in English a lot better than we have our colors down in Bulgarian. I get the sense that she knows a bit of English and that as she gets more comfortable we will see more of it come out. Her ability to communicate in Bulgarian seems to be perfect, which bodes well for her being able to pick up English. As our translator said, it will be much easier for her to learn English than for us to learn Bulgarian.
We also had a chance to FaceTime with the kids at home today when we met with B. Even though the group home does not have WIFI, our translator was able to set up her iPhone as a hot spot that we could connect our iPad to in order to talk with our kids. Crazy. Each of our kids was able to tell B something or ask her a question and she helped them learn how to say "my name is____" in Bulgarian. B decided that she would save her questions for the kids until she was home with them. That seems to be a response of hers to a number of things...basically she is coming and it will get sorted out down the road.
Just like on previous visits, B could not get enough of Gloria. It has been really nice having Gloria along with us (even if it means we don't sleep quite as well at night or get to walk the city as much) because she helps to transition over some of the awkward moments of silence. B does not have a lot of questions for us and when you ask her questions, the answers are not typically very lengthy, so it is keeping us on our toes to be trying to generate topics of conversation.
We have one last visit with her on Wednesday morning and then we head back to Sofia.
One last fun note. Back at home, people have commented that they think B and Leah have a similar smile. Today, B shared that she had been sharing the photo book that Andrea's mom put together for B and that her friends also commented to her that they thought Leah had a similar smile to B. Kind of a neat connection.
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