First, I want to show a picture from Ukraine of Dima's old boxing coach with newly purchased boxing gloves that was graciously donated from the Altoona Surgery Center. Here is a picture:
Dima's last week of track went really well. He improved his time almost every meet except for two, one was rainy and the other he seemed tired for once. He has amazing strength! He qualified to run the 3200m at the Middle Distance Championships last Friday. He had a great run and beat his best time by about 18 seconds as he finished in 12:09!!! Here is a video of his finish:
The following day, Dima wanted to run a local 10K and finished 1st in his age group! Yesterday he ran in our local 5k race that my work puts on, the YMCA Curve Race and finished in 20:17!! Big increase from his first 5k in April where he finished around 26 minutes!!! I think he found something that he really enjoys and is good at! It seems effortless for him.
As as school is going, I think Dima has the summer bug. We have to keep on him about his school work, which I am sure every other parent is going through this time of year. He is very close to not making honor roll so we explained to him that he needs to keep working these next couple of weeks and then he will be able to enjoy summer. He actually seems bummed that school with be over as I think he will miss being around friends he has made in school.
Dima has learned how to ride a bike for the first time. It was a pretty cool experience for us all since he has had many firsts before he has come to America. As I was watching him learn how to ride a bike, I was sad that he never got a chance to ride a bike before, but at the same time I was happy we were able to be there with him. The first ride didn't go as well as we'd thought. Dusty had to run along with him holding his seat for about an hour!! The next day he was so excited to go out. Dusty had to work so I took him to a grassy area to help him. I hurt my back so I wasn't able to hold on like Dusty did. When I told Dima that, he looked at me like....do I have to do this on my own??? I kept telling him he was going to be fine and only had to help him for a little bit while he got used to starting on his own. Next thing I know, he is riding on his own and catching on. It was one of the coolest experiences to see him progress so quickly. Now he loves to have the freedom to ride around and gets better and better each day. He says he doesn't want a "professional" bike like Dusty and I have, but he also said he didn't want to run at one point either.
The only issue we are having currently with the whole adoption now is with Immigration. Talking to other parents that have adopted, we discovered that the parents with a 14 old or older received a letter from Immigration about their child needing to take an oath due to an act that was passed a few years ago. Well, Dima has received no such letter and Dusty has called different offices and continues to get directed to other offices as they have no idea what we are talking about. We are frustrated as we don't want to find out years later that we needed to do this and have any issues down the road. We will continue to figure this out on our own as we know it's hopeless to ask our adoption facilitator that we used because he's already received our money. Other than this, we are just dealing with the typical teen mood swings, but they are not bad at all. His English is coming along so well in 6 months.
We look forward to the next few weeks of planned events and our big trip to Arizona to see his Aunt Lisa again and to meet his cousin, Aunt and Uncle's for the first time. We are all very excited for the trip!!!
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