Our missionary friend Esther sent us photos of some of Olia's friends from the orphanage. She just came back from visiting Ukraine. Olia enjoyed looking at the photos and seeing her friends.  We looked at the photos right before we went to bed.  We started chatting about her friends and her life at the internat. The exciting thing for Olia was to see the girls with hair!  Apparently, the staff does not cut the girls' hair once they reach third grade.  Before third grade, the girls have haircuts that look like boys haircuts.  It was hard to tell if the younger children were boys or girls because they all had similar haircuts when we were there.  On the background of one picture of her friends is a rather large bulletin board.  The pictures must have been taken inside one of the classrooms.  Olia told me that the top of the board had a special list.  On this paper were a list of possible infractions and consequences.  Olia told me that usually, when one child broke the rules, everyone was punished.  She told me that the kids often had to do push-ups for punishments.  She said they had to do hundreds(I'm sure that is an exaggeration).  She also told me that they had to stand with their arms up in the air and that if they lowered their arms, they got spanked.  She said the teacher had a flexible plastic animal(she thinks it was a dinosaur) and the kids were spanked with the animal's tail.  Apparently corporal punishment is permitted in schools in Ukraine.

   Today Olia has to work on a school project on Marion Anderson.  She has to write a report and then write a rap song about Marion.  I am going to adapt the project so that it is her work at her reading/writing level. She is not capable of doing the entire project, it is quite lengthy, but I do want her to do what she is capable of doing.

   Last night we watched some of the Bring It On movies on TV.  All of them are about cheerleaders.  Olia keeps telling me that she wants to be a cheerleader.  I hope she changes her mind in high school.  I don't like the idea of girls cheering for boys.  The cheerleaders at our high school are all girls and they only cheer at football games and the boy's basketball games.