Whoa. Look what I found.

So, following up on my last post, I was poking around on the Russian search engine yandex.ru.  I thought I'd try to find something more about the Kotlas Baby House, and maybe even find a few pictures that I could add to our album.

And I did indeed find some more information about the Kotlas Baby Home.  In fact, I found an article from last year (dated May 27, so almost exactly a year ago), published in the Kotlas Evening News.  Here it is in Russian, and here's the English translation.  It's about the influx of children into the Kotlas Baby House, how they get there, and how they are adopted.  The article is interesting as it shows some of the Russian perspective on orphan children.

But really, the most interesting part of the article was the accompanying picture.  I thought that little Denis in the foreground looked familiar, like we might have seen him before.  But take a look at the slightly out-of-focus child in the background:

The Russian caption says, "Little Denis, who lives in the Baby Home"

Yup.  That's Elena.  Compare to this picture, taken at the end of April 2011 (so something like 4 weeks earlier than the above picture).

It's not every day you stumble across a picture of your daughter published somewhere on the Internet.

ADDENDUM:


I also found this video, taken at the Kotlas orphanage. It's from 2012, so well after Elena departed.  Correction: The video was posted in 2012, but we recently ID'd the kids as being groupmates of another, older child, so it looks like the video was taken sometime in 2010.

The title is "Ilyina Oksana - Speckled Hen," and I think it's meant to demonstrate educational methods at the orphanage.  The lesson plan centers around a chicken, and includes (I think) identifying parts of the chicken, a little art project, song and dance, and some textural stimuli.  (I'd know more if I spoke Russian.)

But what's really cool about it is that it's taken in the room Elena lived in (I checked: the decals on the wall are exactly the same as in pictures we have). Compare the background (and the yellow dress on the dark-haired girl) to the picture below: