Joseph Basile Oleg (‘Alyeshka’) Farina Liuzza

a few photos from our trip

(click on the image for a larger view)

Our trip to Ukraine was amazing and exhausting in more ways than we can begin to describe -- in the weeks ahead, if there’s any time at all in between feeding, changing, and watching him explore the house, we'll try to sit down and sort out our travelogue in more detail. For now, though, here are a few photos of our new son, Joseph Alyeshka. He was born April 23 (Shakespeare’s birthday, and the feast of St George), 1998; he was about two months premature and spent the first eleven months of his life in a hospital in Dzhankoy (a city of about 48000 people in eastern Crimea). We don’t know much about this period of his life. In March of 1999 he came to the Children’s Home in Simferopol (in central Crimea) and stayed there for 16 months, until we were lucky enough to find him (we received our approval for the adoption on July 25, our anniversary). Joseph Alyeshka now lives in New Orleans and can be reached via his parents’ email at rliuzza@utk.edu or emfarina@bellsouth.net

one of our first meetings outside

a closeup photo

balancing a cup on his head

eating lunch with his group

lunch with Zoya, his ‘mama’

our second or third meeting

playing with Tupperware -we had lots of improvised toys

stacking blocks (made from coffee packets)

playing with his group outside

On the trip home: after dinner
in our hotel room

after his first bath, which he loved

our first night in Kiev

on the way to the airport - Ellen
taught him to growl

going away from the orphanage

Looking back: his group - eight or ten kids

with his group in a big playpen

Lena, one of the caretakers,
blowing bubbles

drinking juice on the grounds of
the orphanage

Yulia (our faciliatator) and Taras
(the orphanage lawyer) in court

On a Saturday excursion to Yalta

a street in Simferopol, Ukraine
near the apartment where we stayed

For more recent photos of Joseph (September-November 2000), click here

another group of children outside

a group of children out for a stroll