Days in Donetsk - continued

Shopping has been fun, enlightening, hilarious, and very time consuming. I could not have gotten it accomplished without Heather Smith's help and Ryan & Evan's patience. Heather had to shop for two girls (and I only had to shop for one!) and spent a lot of time and effort looking at clothing in the mall stores, normal stores, and the street vendors. Heather found all the best places to shop and let me know where to look. She even kept an eye on Ryan and Evan so I could concentrate on sifting thru racks of clothes to find what I needed. (Heather picks up her 2 girls today and they will take the overnight train back to Kiev.)

So far I've gotten 3 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, coat, scarf, undies, shoes, socks, and a backpack. The backpack was a challenge. Anything in a 'girl' color was tiny. I finally spotted one that wasn't black/brown/maroon and decided to get it because it has lots of extra pockets. The shoes were another challenge. Here's a photo of what I purchased here.

We had brought a few clothing items from home but had planned on a younger girl. We left those small items already at the orphanage. I have some lightweight leggings & T-shirt Maria can sleep in but I might try to find a pair of pjs too. We also have some toys for her that we brought from home.

Below is a picture of the outside of the 'mall' in Donetsk. (taken from the fountains across the street.) It is easy to bypass the mall. It is across the street from the cannon and the fountains.

The mall is multi-level maze of tons of expensive shops. The upper level (level 3 from the elevator but more than 3 floors up) has a childrens clothing/toy store. At the opposite end of this store there is an arcade and pizza place (Cherry Pizza). There is also a grocery store. The grocery store is big and modern and has an entrance from the side street near all the atm machines. The boys like stopping in the playground outside near the parking lot.

This is not far from 'Sun City' restaurant (Aptema, 96a phone # 062-38-104-38). This resaurant has great food, nice prices, an English menu, pizza, chicken, and other foods. This restaurant also has a playground outside !