The Renfro's

Sorry to be so terribly silent for the last week! We arrived in Denver at about 8:55PM on Monday night.  Our travels were relatively uneventful, considering the circumstances.  Our flight out of Kiev was delayed half an hour, but it wasn't a big deal because we had a four hour layover in Paris, where the flight was also delayed about half an hour.  This time, it was a problem because we only had two hours in Atlanta before our flight to Denver.  We knew this would be pushing it with having to go through customs and immigration processing with Nadia. If there were any problems with our luggage or anything, we would be missing our flight.  We landed in Atlanta about half an hour late and practically ran off the plane to "cut" in front of as many people as we could for the passport control line.  Next we had to claim our luggage before going through immigration, and finally, customs.  It seemed like it took forever for our luggage to come.  Luckily, there weren't a lot of people in line for immigration processing, so they processed Nadia's papers and stamped her passport making her a US Citizen rather quickly.  Now we had to go through customs, re-check our luggage, and make a mad dash for the gate (seperate terminal, of course).  We thought for sure that we were going to be the last ones to board the plane and would make it by only minutes, but when we got to the gate we found that the flight had been delayed half an hour.  Well, even with all the delays, we still made it into Denver on time and had a nice welcoming party waiting for us at the airport.  By the time we claimed all our luggage and made our way home, it was about 11PM but Sean and I were the only ones that were wanting to sleep.  Despite our best efforts, Nadia had slept a good six or seven hours on the flights and the boys were just too excited.  Finally, at midnight we called it quits and made everyone go to bed. 

Tuesday, Nadia and Denny were awake long before 6AM (we suspect Nadia had been up most of the night).  The boys stayed home from school and we all hung out and had a wonderful homemade breakfast.  It was a hot day and quite frankly, we were all sick of being hot, so we invited ourselves over to Grandma and Grandpa's house to go swimming.  We all had a really good time.  By late afternoon, we had made our way to Ama and Papa's house to get a few items we needed from them and ate a little dinner while we were at it.  Nadia was so tired, she slept on the way there and slept pretty much the whole time we were there.  She was then up at 3AM the next morning (so was Crystal) and even though we told her to go back to sleep, we suspect she laid in bed playing with her new Barbie that Grandma had bought her until we all finally crawled out of bed. We were all still tired, so we had the boys stay home from school for one more day.

In general, everyone is doing really well.  Nadia is attempting English and mimicking some of our words.  She is at least trying everything we stick in front of her, but still won't eat pizza or macaroni and cheese.  She loves Chinese, corn dogs, corn, eggs and yogurt - so far.  Aleksandr has been a bit indifferent about his new sister, but helpful.  Egor is really trying to help out with Nadia and plays with her and she's really taking a liking to him.   Denny loves her to death, but is also feeling somewhat frustrated with not being able to communicate.  We've had to break up several fights, but they're getting better. 

Sean and I both came home sick with strep.  Sean got it the worst and was laid up in bed on Wednesday and Thursday.  Friday, he had to start back at work again to prepare for working the DNC all week this week.  Basically, he's been working from about noon until 1AM every day until Thursday.  He'll then take another week off just as Crystal will be going back to work. 

Some funny things that have happened since we've been home - Every time we go to the store, Nadia picks out something and asks "Mama, please" for us to buy it, regardless of whether or not she knows what it is.  Nadia really likes the animals, but keeps yelling at them in Russian, it's pretty amusing to watch her expect some kind of response from them.  She has learned that the word 'outside' makes the dogs run for the back door and she thinks it's helarious to repeat and watch them go crazy because she won't let them out (because she wants to do it again).  The boys (and neighborhood kids) keep asking us to translate what Nadia is saying - like we know Russian.  And speaking of neighborhood kids, we're having a heck of a time explaining where she came from and how she came to be the boys' sister (adoption).  Nadia loves condiments, she keeps begging for us to let her eat mayonaise and ketchup plain, and if either are out for the meal, she wants to cover everything on her plate in it.  Last night, Crystal was making a salad, she explained to Nadia what she was making and Nadia got all excited and ran to the fridge to get out the mayonnaise.  In Ukraine, typically a salad consists of chopped up veggies, maybe some meat, all mixed together with a bunch of mayonnaise.  She was quite confused when she was told 'No' and made a 'disgusting' face when it was put on her plate plain with some cesar dressing.  However, she ended up having three helpings. 

We can't even begin to express what it was like to be out of the United States and western civilization for over 6 weeks, but we have learned to appreciate so much of both the Ukrainian culture and our own.  Some of the things we've come to appreciate more:

-home cooking
-public bathrooms
-free bathrooms
-toilet paper
-ability to flush toilet paper
-our bed
-gas less than $6/gallon
-fruit and vegetables that at least look fresh
-washer and dryer (especially the dryer)
-ice in our drinks
-cold drinks
-shower head on the wall (not hand-held)
-deoderant (personal hygeine)
-bueracracy
...the list goes on, you'd be surprised at the little things we take for granted every day.

Some of the things we now appreciate more about Ukraine and it's people and things we will miss:

-hard working people
-some of them are really amazing people and great friends
-great beer
-unique wines
-Georgian imports
-family is family, no matter what
-interesting take on politics
-very, very honest

While this is the end of our trip, it is by far not the end of our journey. We have, many times, had the pleasure of reading other adoptive parents' journeys to find their child or children.  We have always enjoyed following along and understanding their trials and tribulations as well as their joys and successes.  While some have been generally negative, others have been generally positive.  Then there are some, the ones we've enjoyed the most, that truly speak the realities of international adoption in Ukraine - emotional, enlightening, frustrating, exciting and everything in between, but mostly the trip of a lifetime that will never be forgotten.  We hope to have conveyed the latter.  Adoption is a difficult thing to do, perhaps the most difficult thing we have ever and will ever experience, but also the most rewarding. 

Today we’re taking it a bit easy.  We had a couple of requests from the boys to bring things home with us, so we headed out to the open air market to do some shopping.  Long story short, we didn’t do much, as we were all tired and it was just too hot and Nadia was especially not happy about walking around.  We did however; work in a little bribe and went to McDonalds to get a Strawberry Kit-Kat McFlurry.  Didn’t really work too much as a bribe though, as she didn’t seem to even know what McDonalds was.  We were surprised because Egor definitely did and was excited to go. 

Since we don’t have a lot to post about, and our most recent posts have really only been focused on our running around, we thought we’d post a little more on Nadia today.  We know that’s what everyone really wants to know about anyway.  We found out later, after the pizza, that she doesn’t like cheese.  Of course, Sean goes into this big lecture about how everything in America has cheese on it or in it, but she obviously didn’t understand a lick of what he was saying.  We’re guessing that maybe she just hasn’t had it much because the boys were the same way at first.  We’ll find out eventually.  We don’t suspect it’s a lactose issue because she’ll chug milk if given the opportunity!

She has practically begged us to go to the local grocery store.  When we were here three years ago, the only grocery stores we found were small, but this is the first one we’ve seen that is truly about the size of a grocery store back home. And each time we go, she begs us for everything, but three things specifically – fresh fruit (especially peaches), yogurt smoothies, and of course chocolate.  She’s only gotten the first, but we did settle on regular yogurt.  She loves chips, ramen, potatoes, ice cream, roses and anything sparkly. 

She finally seems to be over being terrified and is asking when we get to go to America.  However, I suspect we’ll see that change again once we get home and she realizes that she truly won’t be able to communicate well with anyone. 

She’s enthralled with the television and the fact that she gets to control the remote.  This will also change when we get home, but for now, there isn’t a lot for her to do.  She’s learning our boundaries rather quickly and has remembered a lot of what our translator had told her about hygiene.  We had her explain to Nadia a few things, based on our previous experience with the boys – things like what to do with the toilet paper, procedures for washing our hands, procedures for brushing teeth, not eating food off the ground, and changing clothes every day. 

She does her “morning exercises” regularly.  We’re not really sure what these consisted of (our apartment has two rooms), but she told the doctor that she had done them on the train while we were all sleeping and Crystal’s woken up in the mornings to the apartment shaking. 

She’s already starting to try and speak English and emulating our words.  We’re not pushing it too much, but we are naming foods and clothing and quizzing her a little.  She learned the alphabet at school and how to count to 20, but is a little rusty on both.  She knows the following phrases “good morning”, “good night”, “hello”, “goodbye”, “please”, and “thank you”.

She’s already started in with the whining and the “Mama, Papa pleeeeeeese” (although it alternates from please to pah-zalsta), looking up with her big puppy-dog eyes, her hands in prayer next to her chest.  We’re getting good at not giving into this one, but it’s hard when you can’t explain why.

Tomorrow we expect to just lounge around the apartment and relax.  We’ll get laundry done, pack our bags and rest, as our driver will be here to take us to the airport at 4AM Monday morning.  We’ve seen enough of Kiev and Ukraine for this time around and sweated more than we ever have.

Figures, we just checked the weather for Kiev and it’s going to cool off….on Monday, just in time for us to leave.  Oh, well.  We posted a couple more pictures of the last couple of days.  We can't wait to see everyone once we get home!

Wednesday - Well, so much for the hard work having been done yesterday.  We started off the day at about 10:30 to go pick up Nadia.  When we got to the camp, she came out running.  We went in and changed her into her new clothes (everything she was wearing belongs to the orphanage) and all the children came out to bid her farewell.  They gave her balloons and some of the older ones cried a little.  She gave them hugs and kisses on the cheeks and said "Das-vedanya" (goodbye).  Next we had to drive from the camp to the orphanage where we had to sign papers saying we were taking her.  We met the orphanage director there and  Nadia gave him a big hug.  He teased her some and reassured her that everything would be fine.  He truly seems to care for the children and seems to be an honest man - a far cry from Egor's orphanage director.  He gave us a brief tour of Nadia's living quarters and asked that we send him letters and pictures.  Before we left, he gave Nadia a little statuette of traditional Ukrainian dancers.  It really was very nice.  However, we were there too long and now we were in a hurry again.  It was about 2PM and we needed to get to Luhansk to get Nadia's passport and then find train tickets for that evening. 

When we got to the passport office, they had the passport ready, but weren't willing to hand it over until they had a piece of paper that was missing from the packet we had given them yesterday.  Turns out, someone in Krasnodon screwed up and didn't give us something we needed.  So we needed to get back to Krasnodon and we still didn't have train tickets.  We headed off to the train station to see if we could get some last minute tickets.  Yesterday, our driver had tried to get us tickets and failed, as all the trains were full.  By some luck, there was another train that had just a few tickets left and our driver was able to score them for us.  So, by now it was about 3:30 and we still needed to get back to Krasnodon, get the paper, drive back to Luhansk and get the passport and then to the train station.  It's a 35-40 minute drive between Luhansk and Krasnodon and the train was leaving at about 5:45, so it was gonna be tight.  Our driver and translator decided they would drop us off at a cafe "with an english menu" so that we could eat, while they went back to Krasnodon. 

So, we were dropped off with Nadia at an Italian Restaurant.  The English menu was actually in Italian, not English.  Close enough (kidding here).  Nadia looked terrified, as reality had just sunk in that we can't communicate very well, and we had no idea what she would eat, except ice cream.  So, we set a little bit of a bad precedent.  We did get a couple of salads, if that's what you would call it, really, it was a TON of parsley chopped up with a few tomatoes, cucumbers, some cheese and tuna.  Nadia ate about a quarter of one.  Then we got a Hawaiian pizza.  She took one bite and then wouldn't touch it.  So, against our better judgement, but knowing she needed to have something in her stomach before we set out on a 16 1/2 hour train ride, we went ahead and got her some ice cream.  Well, of course she ate it all.  Once we were finished, we walked across the street to what looked like somewhat of a mall. 

Sure enough, we had walked right smack into a toy store.  Uh, oh.  Her eyes just got huge.  I don't know that she's ever seen this many toys in one place, and honestly, it was the first toy store we've seen since we've been here.  She picked up a book that she wanted that had Barbie hair attached that you could style.  She kept asking us please.  We were really tempted to buy it for her...until we looked at the price.  It was equivilent to almost $28 - for a book! Okay, we had to put our foot down and say no.  But we kept looking around and she wanted all the Barbies and Fairies we saw, but the prices were outrageous (okay, maybe we just don't know because we don't have girls, but really, $40+ for a Barbie!?!?).  Finally, we found a much smaller, cheaper doll that we got her to settle on for about $8. 

However, while we're in the toy store, one of the clerks began trying to speak with us and we just kinda shook our heads and continued walking.  But not Nadia.  No, she had to stop and explain to the woman that we were Americans and we didn't understand what she was saying and she was going to go to America with us.  The woman looked quite confused and started to prod Nadia with questions.  I think the poor woman really thought we kidnapped her or something.  After Nadia began elaborating a little too much with her answers, it was apparent that the woman was now only interested in ending the conversation.  So, we hurried to the checkout and out of the shop.   Shortly after, our driver and translator drove up and we hoped into the car.  Off we went as quickly as we could to the passport office.  Sean and our translator literally ran all the way up to the office to get the passport and ran back down.  We were running pretty tight on making the train, as it was just before 5:30 at this point.  Once we made it to the train station, we all ran, yes - ran in 95 degree heat and 50 pound bags of luggage, to catch the train.  We made it with only a few minutes to spare. 

The train ride itself was uneventful.  Nadia sat and watched out the window most of the time and we all slept relatively well, though not soundly by any means. 

Thursday - This morning the train arrived in Kiev at about 10:40.  Our driver met us at the station.  It was going to be another day of rushing around.  We needed to get to the US Embassy before 11:30 to fill out the paperwork to start the process to get Nadia's Visa.  If we didn't get there in time, we would not be able to get the Visa on Friday and would be stuck in Kiev until at least Tuesday or Wednesday next week.  We made it to the embassy at just past 11:00AM.  Sean went in to start the paperwork and Crystal went with the translator to get a real passport photo of Nadia for the Visa.  It only took a couple of minutes and was right next door.  Crystal then had to go into the embassy to deliver the photo and help Sean with paperwork.  The woman helping us explained that we also needed to pay the embassy visa processing fee of $400.  Wait.  Their website says $380.  We didn't have enough.  So, Crystal had to go track down our translator, who had her purse since it is not allowed in the embassy.  Fifteen minutes later and Crystal was back in the embassy with the extra $20.  Whew!  Turns out the embassy has a short working day tomorrow and we will have our interview at 10:00AM, rather than the usual 2:00PM. 

Next, we were off to the Medical center to get Nadia's medical done.  Again, another fiasco!  We hadn't had time to get or change money, and after the embassy and the driver, we were really running out of cash.  The medical is not $80, it's $85 and payable in US Dollars only.  Because of the extra $20 at the embassy, we were $5 short.  Our translator floated us on this one.  Next, they wanted Nadia to give blood for some tests.  She had this in the orphanage, but they wanted it again. Okay, so now Nadia was getting upset.  We went to the room where they were going to draw the blood.  After several minutes of crying and screaming, she just wouldn't cooperate.  So, they refused to take the blood and sent us upstairs to have them prick her finger and pull it that way.   Now, let us elaborate here.  In order to get enough blood, they pricked her finger with a needle and then used a capillary tube (basically, a really thin straw) to draw blood out, then the nurse blew the blood into a vial.  It was the most unscientific proceedure we've ever seen in a Doctor's office. 

After this ordeal, they were telling us they would have the results at 2PM the next day, Friday.  This was a big problem.  Our visa interview was Friday at 10AM and we had to have those tests to complete her medical, which the embassy required before they would issue her Visa.  So our translator started talking to people about how to get it done sooner.  At one point, they agreed on 10AM the next morning and said we'd just have to be late to the embassy.  Our translator was not liking this answer.  So, she went off and talked to someone else, and for 100 grivna (about $20 - another loan floated by our translator) we could have everything by 4PM today.  Great, problem solved.  Next we went in to see the Doctor and have an actual physical done for Nadia.  The doctor was long winded to say the least, but nice.

While Crystal and Nadia were in with the doctor, Sean went off with the driver to find out about airline tickets and to stop at the DHL office to see about shipping home some of the jam that Egor and Denny's bio family had given us.  Good news and bad news came of this.  Bad news - DHL won't ship the jam.  Period.  So, we will leave some with our facilitator and see what we can pack into our bags for the flight.  Not so good news - no flights this weekend.  Great news - we will be on the first flight Monday morning at 6:30AM and at a reasonable price.  So, Sean came back to the doctor with tickets and was the hero of the day, next to our translator, of course.  We were finally out of there a little before 4PM, but we still had one stop to make.  There was one document that the embassy wanted translated that was not.  Our translator had used our laptop to type up the translation and we needed to stop and print it out.  It only took a few minutes, but then, we were finally on our way to our apartment.

Our facilitator met us at the apartment, which is nice, big, in a great location and air conditioned!  However, it is costing us more than twice what our apartment was before we left for Krasnodon, but at least it's only a few days.  Sean had used the ATM when he went to get airline tickets and the landlady was wanting us to pay up front - in US Dollars.  We only had grivna (why does everyone want dollars in Kiev?!), so we argued and, ultimately, had to pay a crappy exchange rate to the landlady.  We were without money once again, but everyone was paid up. No problem, there's an ATM machine right outside our apartment.  Our facilitator and translator went to leave and Nadia started getting very upset.  She was really scared when she realized we would be on our own until Monday and started crying.  They talked to her for a few minutes, but then left.  We held her for a few minutes after and then diverted her attention to a bubble bath.  Sean went to collect more money and wouldn't you know it, but both our cards were turned off.  So, while giving Nadia a bath (she needed to be seriously scrubbed), Sean spent the better part of 45 minutes trying to get it straightened out with the bank.  Grrrr, I think we're going to be arguing with them over some hefty cell phone bills once we return because we had called them before leaving the states. 

Once we were finally able to get some money, we coordinated with another lady (who is adopting in Donetsk) and her son to meet for dinner.  They were in Kiev on their way back home while her husband stays in region for their 10 day wait.  We met up with them and Nadia had a wonderful time playing with the boy, who's 6 years old.  We ended the night with ice cream and then headed back to the apartment.  We finally all got into bed at about 10:30PM. 

Friday - Today was a cake walk compared to the rest of the week.  We woke up pretty rested and ate some breakfast before heading off to the US Embassy.  We met with the consulate officer around 10AM and we on our way out at 10:30 with Nadia's visa.  We don't mean this in a bad way, but Americans, believe it or not, are in general friendly and it was really very refreshing.  We made our way back to the apartment by taxi and rested a bit before deciding to take Nadia to the zoo.  We have gotten pretty good about navigating our way around Kiev by subway and can read signs pretty well, so we hated to not have her see some of the city before we go. 

The zoo was fun, but we have some boundaries to work on with Nadia once we're home.  We had to constantly call her back to us when she would run off too far and she was terribly bummed that we wouldn't buy her all the "junk" she wanted.  After a couple of hours, we were all exhausted from the heat so we found a place to eat a little lunch.  Now, let me just say that it is unfortunate that Nadia speaks the language and we do not.  She has learned to use this to her full advantage.  She ordered an open-face sandwich with caviar, french fries for everyone, and juice for herself.  Sean and I were able to, with our limited Russian, order open faced sandwiches with salami and cheese and a Sprite.  Later, at the Coffee House with wi-fi access (right by our apartment, yea!), she ordered herself a large piece of cake, a Fanta, and a bowl of strawberries, after Crystal had told her no on the cake.  She will likely not eat her dinner tonight. 

Additionally, we've had several more instances similar to the one with the woman in the toy store at the grocery store and the cafe at the zoo.  All we can do is just laugh now.  All of Ukraine must know we're here by now and that we're here to take Nadia to America.  We hope to do a little souvenior shopping over the weekend, but mostly, just relax.  We're really happy to be back in Kiev, but we'll be even happier to get home.  Our flight into Denver on Monday is scheduled to get in at about 8:50PM.  Perfect, because we'll all be tired and will get to go home and get to bed.  It'll only take a week or two to get back on Denver Time ;-)

Monday - Today didn't quite go as well as we had hoped. Our facilitator is held up in Kiev, so he sent us one of his translators to help us finish up here in Krasnodon and then will meet back up with us in Kiev. We met her at a little after 10:30 and she had already picked up the court decree. Next, we went to Nadia's orphanage and met with the director who provided us with Nadia's birth certificate and other paperwork. Next, back to the city to get notarized copies of the old birth certificate and then get the new birth certificate. However, just like we had been warned, the Vital Records office was closed, but they said they would come in early for us the next morning. Bummer. So at about 2PM, that was it for the day. Our translator asked us if we wanted to go visit Nadia. Go visit Nadia?!?! NO! We wanted to pick her up, we've done enough visiting. But we can't until we get the birth certificate, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. And we just couldn't justify going to visit her and not being able to take her with us. It would probably just confuse her anyway. So, for the rest of the day, we slept and lounged around, being annoyed that we're stuck here another day.

One interesting thing, we were finally sick of ramen and instant potatoes, so we went out to dinner at the cafe next to our hotel. Our translator had work to do and wasn't hungry, so we went alone. The bartender spoke a little bit of English and did his best to help us order. He really did a fantastic job and was very nice. The reason this really sticks out for us is because most people have not been terribly friendly with us. The whole town seems to know who the Americans are and we feel like they're always making fun of us or just think we're stupid. Maybe they're just as frustrated with us that they can't communicate, who knows. Either way, it's becoming really uncomfortable, to the point where we're now avoiding the market across the street and choosing to walk half a mile to the next one (like we have anything else to do anyway).

So anyway, we hope to get more accomplished tomorrow, but it looks like the earliest we will make it to Kiev is probably Thursday.

Tuesday - Well...today kinda sucked. We hit the ground running at 7:30 AM and didn't stop until about 7:00 PM. The day involved a lot of driving, waiting, driving some more, waiting and a few signatures. We got a lot accomplished but ultimately not in time to pick up our daughter. We went to the vital records office first thing but as our translator said "they seem afraid to do their jobs" and it was almost 9:30 before we managed to get the new birth certificate. We then drove about 40 minutes to Luhansk to get the birth certificate "authenticated" and start the process to get her passport. While we were on the way we told our translator that we had not yet taken a passport photo of Nadia, she responded that it was a problem. Fortunately, we still had the photo's the SDA had given us from Nadia's file. A quick stop (well, not that quick really) at a photo shop and some nice "PhotoShop" magic and we were on our way with 4 passport photos. Stops at several notary offices and the passport office in Luhansk and we were back on our way to Krasnodon by about 1PM.

With the "authenticated" birth certificate we were able to get Nadia's Ukrainian equivalent to a social security number, which we needed to get her passport. At this point we had everything we needed to go pick up Nadia, however we can't take her home without a passport and to get that required several more stops. Now this region requires that we get the passport application in Luhansk, submit the application in Krasnodon for approval, and the return the approved application to Luhansk to get the actual passport. Unfortunately it was now after 4:00 and most government offices close at 5:00 or 6:00. In order to have a good chance of getting the passport by tomorrow we had to submit the application back in Luhansk by 6:00. Matters were complicated even further when the lady at the office which prepares the application in Krasnodon decided to change the rules at the last minute and made us drive about 30 minutes back to the orphanage to have the director put his stamp on the application.

After all was said and done, we got the application to Luhansk by 6:05 (thankfully they waited for us) and they gave us an 80% chance it would be ready by tomorrow. At this point it was far too late to pick up Nadia from the camp, all the "important people" we would need to meet with had already left for the day. We were very disappointed but there wasn't much we could do about it. It was pretty amazing how much we actually got done considering all the obstacles in this region. The real hero of the day was our driver, Sergei. He managed to get us everywhere we needed to go quickly, and did a lot to help our translator. Today he was much more than just a driver!

The good news is that all the hard work is done and we'll be picking up Nadia tomorrow morning. If all goes well the passport will be ready in the afternoon and we'll be on a train tomorrow night (wednesday) to Kiev. From there we hope to have Nadia's medical and the visa interview with the embassy to wrap things up by the weekend and be on our way home, the next big challenge is going to be finding airline tickets for less than a small fortune!

Today may be the last day we post for a little while. The internet cafe is closed on the weekends and when Monday comes, we hope to be hitting the ground running (or driving, as the case may be) to get what we need to get Nadia and get home.  We first have to get the court decree from the courthouse and take it to Luhansk to get it "authenticated", then we must drive back to Krasnodon to go to the Vital Records office to get the new birth certificate.  We cannot pick up Nadia until we have the birth certificate, which we will also have to take back to Luhansk to get "authenticated".  With all the driving back and forth, we may not be able to pick her up until Tuesday, but we're hoping for Monday evening.  Once we do pick her up, we will have to drive her from the camp to the orphanage, where the director will release her to us. Then we will have to have her photo taken for her passport, which we must do in Luhansk.  This is where we're a little confused.  It seems that we then need to take application for the passport to Luhansk to get "authenticated" and then back to Krasnodon to actually obtain it.  Basically, this region is a little more difficult than most and there will be a lot of driving back and forth to various offices for the next couple of days, at least.  After requesting the passport, it could take a couple of days to actually obtain it, but we're hoping to get it in one.  If all goes well, we hope to be back in Kiev by Wednesday where we'll then have to have Nadia evaluated by a doctor (required by the U.S. Embassy), and then meet with the U.S. Embassy to request her Visa to the U.S.  The visa can then be picked up the following day, making the time in Kiev at least 2 business days, maybe more. 

Basically, best case scenario is we could be coming home Friday or Saturday, the 15th or 16th, but we're not counting on it just yet. Besides, then there's the matter of getting airline tickets.  We knew it would be a risk, but felt it was ultimately cheaper for us to buy one way tickets here.  That means that we don't have any tickets home and it may be difficult to get a flight with less than a week's notice in the height of summer travel season in Europe. 

Yesterday, we visited Nadia and she was counting down the days, more than we are, until she gets to go to America.  She's been telling all of the kids that she's leaving on the 11th, so we had our driver explain to her that it might not be until the 12th.  Before we left, she counted the days again with him until we'd return to pick her up.  Her excitement seems like it may be a little more nervous now as we get closer.  The reality of the long trip ahead and leaving everything she's ever known is probably starting to sink in a little, as best it can with an 8 year old.  We expect her to be all out scared by the time we get to Kiev.

That's all for now.  Hopefully, the next time we post, our daughter will be with us and we will be well on our way to making the trip home.  We can't wait! It's probably going to be a long weekend, the cafe downstairs was decorated for yet another wedding this morning!

The primary reason for this blog has been to allow our friends and family to follow along with us on our journey and to share in our experiences.  We hope that it has been insightful as well as entertaining, however another purpose for this has been to document the trip for ourselves, our children at home and our new daughter.  Much of what we have written about is not necessarily related to the adoption but more just our personal experiences and cultural observations.  We think it's important and enjoy including these "tidbits" because honestly it's all part of who we are and the story of our family. 

Three of our (now four) children were born in this country, and the fourth has patiently waited at home twice now for Mom and Dad to return with his brothers and sister (thanks Aleksandr).  Perhaps it's an unorthodox way to build a family but we believe it's the path that God has chosen for us, and here we are!  We've developed a bond with this country and culture, and obviously our children have an even stronger one.  While we are homesick, emotionally drained and these long days of boredom and waiting seem to drag on forever, we know in many ways we'll miss it here when we're gone.  The food, the hotel room, the heat and mosquitos, are all trivial complaints in the grand scheme of things and as they say, one day we'll look back and laugh.  Besides, the past weeks we've spent together have been wonderful.  If you really want to test your relationship with someone, go somewhere where no one speaks your language and spend most of 3 weeks in a 20x20 room with that person.  It's been great.

Almost everyday we see something that makes us laugh or a least look twice.  A couple of days ago we were relaxing in the city park just sitting on a bench watching the world go by.  Then these two girls sat down on the bench across from us.  They were probably around 18-20 years old and like most girls their age that we've seen here, looked like they were just in some music video.  Skin tight mini-skirts, 6 inch spike heels and 2 inch fingernails (thanks MTV).  Seriously, they looked like they were on their way to a dance club at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and the atmoshere of the park is more like the hundred acre wood.  We watched and giggled to eachother while they sat there trying to open a bottle and then a can of beer with those nails and no bottle opener.  It seriously took about five minutes and once they managed it, it appeared that one of them mixed her beer with some kind of juice, wierd. 

Then there was the "fresh fish" incident.  The other day I (Sean) went to the market while Crystal was working, to get something to drink.  By now I've been in there about a hundred times and have seen the giant fishtank in the back of the store by the deli.  The tank is similar to those in many U.S. grocery stores where you'll see live lobster or crab.  This tank is different however in that it is full of carp.  Yes, big ugly carp.  Now I'm aware that in many parts of the world carp is considered "good eats" and while I always thought this tank was a little strange, I get it.  I was not prepared though when I went to check out that day and put two bottles on the conveyor belt at the cashier stand.  The lady in front of me was taking forever to pay and while I stood there another lady came up behind me and set a single clear plastic bag on the belt next to my bottles.  Personal space is not-so-important here and she was practically standing in my shoes.  I looked down at her bag and realized that it was moving.  I then looked a little closer and could see the big red lips of that carp gulping air trying to breathe.  It was all I could do not to burst into laughter right there.  I don't know why I found it so funny, I'm sure that even carp is best fresh, but seeing a live fish flopping around on the black belt at the checkout stand was definitely out of my realm of expectation!

Another thing that is somewhat different, there is the constant smell of smoke in the air.  We initially thought that the smell was of burning trash.  While that may be some of it, we've figured out the main  source over the last week.  The region we are in is very agricultural, miles and miles of wheat and suflower fields surround the town.  Nadia's camp is out in the country and we've driven by many fields going back and forth.  Over the last couple of weeks we've seen many of the wheat fields get harvested and now what's left is being burned.  There are huge stretches of charred fields along the way now, I'm sure it's good for the soil but the town has been constantly full of smoke.

Then there was the "traffic stop."  First, a little background on local law enforcement.  The "road police" are different from the "regular police" and while the latter are somewhat respected, the first are not.  Basically the road police sit on the side of the road with a radar gun all day long and pull people over for speeding, they are supposed to respond to traffic accidents too but it's apparently not a high priority.  We've actually seen a number of traffic accidents while we've been here and rarely has a cop been around.  Anyway, one day we were running around completing paperwork and were on a highway.  Suddenly our driver slammed on the brakes but it was too late, a police officer was waving him to pull over with this black and white striped baton.  Our driver pulled over and then backed up on the highway to the officers, they always work in pairs.  He grabbed his license and registration and then jumped out of the car.  He went to the back, opened the trunk, spoke to the officer for a minute and then got back in the car and we were on our way.  The whole incident took easily less than five minutes.  Obviously I was a little curious about what had just happened so I asked our facilitator about it.  He said that it was a pretty standard stop, our driver showed his papers, including 20 Grivna (about $4.34), and that was it.  Did he get a ticket?  No.  Could he have?  Yes, but apparently that takes about 30 minutes to fill out and the driver has to make a written statement of his defense and nobody wants to deal with that.  And what of the 20 Grivna?  Apparently the officers split it and their supervisor gets a share as well.  The truly sad part is that they were satisfied by less than $5, and that the general public accepts this as normal.  I was told that when the current president first took office one of the first things he did was disband the "road police" due to the corruption.  This was a massive failure, there was anarchy on the roads and many people died.  The road police were reinstated, people slowed down and it was business as usual.

To say that it's a different world is an understatement, but in many ways people are the same wherever you go.  One night I had a long conversation with our facilitator, who I consider to be a great man and good friend.  We talked about the Soviet Union and it's ultimate collapse and the effects on Ukraine.  I made the comment that in many ways life doesn't seem so different here than at home, because really, people are people.  The response hit home though and the realization that I, and I'm sure most Americans, take a lot for granted was clear.  He brought up our upcoming Presidential election and made a strong point.  No matter who wins the election in November, ultimately the people will accept the result.  A new President will take office next year and the country will continue to function as it has and nothing will radically change. He then made the point that this type of security is not so guaranteed in his country.  I then asked him if he thought life was better now, than before under communism.  He told me that even with all of the corruption and lack of security, he would not ever want to go back.  His main reason was that he knows that his son will never have to fight in Chechnya for a country that is not his own.  In this respect I was right, no matter where you go there are good people who care about what truly matters, family.

We'll be visiting Nadia today and are counting down the days until we'll be able to take her with us when we leave her camp.  Only 4 more to go!  Take care all and thanks again for all you thoughts and prayers.

The internet has been closed all weekend so we haven't been able to post.  In reality, there isn't much to post about.  We've just been waiting.  A couple of days ago, we did find a nice park with several walking trails not too far away.  There were many benches to sit on and a couple of small restaurants (beer, soda & ice cream stands).  I suspect we'll be spending a lot of time there this week, as we're getting a little tired of the hotel room.  We posted a picture we took of it.

Speaking of the hotel room, living in one for 3 weeks starts to wear on you.  Now, if it was a Holiday Inn or something, we wouldn't be complaining, but it's more like a motel 6, decent but definietly no frills.  The mosquito's in the room are also getting really irritating, Sean goes on a search and destroy mission practically every night.  Unfortunately, every morning it becomes more obvious that the mosquito's are better at this game than he is!  European beds are very stiff, and they've stopped cleaning our room every day (once every 3-4 if we're lucky).  Each weekend there seems to be a wedding, which means a big party in the cafe downstairs.  Even though it is downstairs, the music is played really loudly, which means we get to listen to it all night.  Additionally, it also means a lot of drunk people outside smoking and loud fireworks.  Since it's hot and there's no air conditioner, we don't have much choice but to leave the window open. 

Surprisingly, eating out for every meal starts to get old too, especially since all the restaurants have the same basic menu.  We finally got smart a couple of days ago and bought an electric hot pot thingy.  It was about $20 and we've been filling it with bottled water and heating it up to make soup, coffee, instant mashed potatoes (they're actually really good here), and oatmeal.  It's just like college again!  As bad as it sounds, it's nice to be eating something a little different. 

We went to visit Nadia yesterday.  It had been four days since we were last there, which was the longest since we first visited her.  She was so happy to see us and just spent the first 15 minutes hugging and cuddling with us.  It was very sweet.  However, we are without a translator again and we can sense her frustration with not being able to communicate.  Unfortunately she probably doesn't truly realize the challanges she has ahead of her.  Fortunately for us, we do.  It's interesting when we're playing with her, she'll sometimes just make funny noises.  She's been doing a good job of asking before doing something and addressing us as Mama and Papa.  She's also been doing better about listening when we say no.  We had brought her some coloring and drawing supplies a few times, but she never seems to want to play with them and we're a little concerned that they've been stolen.  Luckily, we still have a stash back at the hotel that we'll save for the plane ride. 

We've been trying to encourage her to start learning and using English, but it's difficult with all the other kids around because she gets distracted playing with them.    There's a couple of boys that hang around us non-stop, one of them is so sweet and held our hands all the way to the river one day (it's a long walk).  Another little boy just has a mouth full of rotten teeth. The kids were all eating peanuts one day and he could hardly eat them, poor thing.  They all want so much attention from us when we're there, it's really heartbreaking to see that they really need it, but at the same time, we really need the time to bond with Nadia and her to us.  We can see that this camp does get a lot of missionaries and we've seen them try to spend some one on one time with the kids. 

Completely off topic, but interestingly, we found out that the river we'd been swiming in that runs behind the camp is the border between Ukraine and Russia. That's how close we are. 

Anyway, don't mean to make this sound like a negative post, just want to give people a feel for what it's like here.  In reality, the 10 day wait isn't that bad because we feel like it's all downhill from here.  Not to say that something couldn't happen with the passport or something, but at least we'll have Nadia at that point and have a better idea of when we'll be coming home. 

Yesterday was a long day for us, but a good one.  We started out by going to the pharmacy and buying a bunch of drugs to make us feel better.  Sean's now getting a sore throat too, so we thought we'd get ahead of the game a little for him and speed things up for Crystal, with some amoxicilian.  Afterwards, we went shopping to buy Nadia a few more clothes.  This turns out to be quite the process here.  No store carries a lot in one size, just a few.  They're all small shops, so we go through this process of asking the clerk if they have this or that in her size and them running to the back and checking and coming back to tell us no.  So, poor girl is just getting whatever they have, like it or not.  And, because we can only get at most maybe one or two shirts and one pair of pants from a store, we have to go to several.  Luckily, this week has been much cooler, mid 70's.  However, we've now run out of places to go, so we may have to try in Luhansk or Kiev on our way back. 

At about 3PM, our driver picked us up at the hotel for court.  He always picks us up way too early.  The courthouse is about 15 minutes away by foot, less than 5 by car.  So, we sat around at the courthouse for over an hour, since the judge was late.  Since the court was so late in the afternoon and the judge had kind of squeezed us into the end of her day, we were expecting a very informal proceeding in her office, but to our surprise, she had us go to the second floor of the courthouse and sit in the court room. She got all dressed in her robe and had a very official proceeding.  So official, that it took about 45 minutes and then she wanted to recess for 30 minutes to come up with her decision.  Part of the reason it took so long, is because she read through our entire dossier and all supporting documentation into the court record.  We thought that's what the preliminary was for - which by the way, most adoptive parents don't take part in. 

Present at the court, beside us and our facilitator, were the following people: the judge and two of her deputies (witnesses), the court recorder, the public prosecutor, the city social worker, and a representative from the orphanage.  We were asked a number of questions by the judge and deputies.  Most were pretty typical, like do you still support your petition to the court?, how have you come to know Nadia?, etc, but one deputy was clearly against adoption and truly couldn't understand why we would be doing this, let alone for a fourth child.  She asked why we wanted to adopt again, why from Ukraine, and what financial gain we were getting from our government.  She asked the last one twice in two different forms.  None of our answers were good enough for her.  Everyone else in the room stated that they supported the adoption and there were no reasons why we shouldn't be able to. 

We were really surprised when the judge then asked for the 30 minute recess.  This made us really nervous because of the deputy that was so against us.  While we were waiting in the hallways, our facilitator, the city social worker and the orphanage representative were all gathered around her and it was quite obvious that they were all trying to convince her that honestly, our intentions were good and she needed to put aside her personal feelings on adoption.  I say "quite obvious" because even though we don't understand most of what they're saying, we do catch words here and there (after a few weeks here, you get a bit of a trained ear) and Ukrainians get very animated when debating or heavily discussing something.  Of course, this made us more nervous, but when we asked our facilitator about it, he said not to worry, the decision is ultimately up to the judge and she has no legal reason to deny it. 

Our facilitator said this is the longest court proceeding he's ever been a part of and it's only the second time in over a hundred adoptions that he's seen the judge get their gown on.  He says that this is only the second adoption from this city, so they are all being very "by the book", understandably so.

So, after about 20 minutes we were called back into the court room and the judge read her decision and granted our petition to adopt Nadia and to change her birth certificate to read us as the parents and her new given name as Nadia Christine Renfro.

Now I know you're all wondering about Nadia's name and why we chose it....here's the scoop.  Our facilitator had told us that we needed to have the name change for her ready when he got back from Kiev.  Our intention was to do as we did with Egor and let Nadia have some input into her "American" name.  It has never been a question in our minds that we would always keep the first name of our adopted children, but they are typically less attached to their middle name and it seems a good place to give them a "new" name if they so desire.  Additionally, middle names here are the name of the person's father.  Many of these kids' files have a certificate in them stating that the father's name was entered on the word of the mother.  Meaning it may or may not be the child's father, it may be the mother's father or current lover, or whatever.

Well, with our facilitator gone to Kiev we just didn't find a way to ask Nadia and I guess we were thinking we would be able to have him ask her before we needed it.  Well, we were wrong.  Last Friday, when he returned, it was one of the first things he needed before submitting the petition to the court.  We were unprepared, so he gave us about an hour to figure it out.  Sean really belives that the middle name should mean something, while Crystal just thinks it should sound nice and that it really doesn't matter.  Anyway, so we tried and tried to come up with something we both liked.  In the end, we narrowed it down to two, one with meaning (a shortened version anyway, of the actual name) and one that just sounded nice.  When our facilitator told us that time was up, we asked him to pick a number between one and ten and whichever of us got closest, got to use their name.  He looked at us really funny at first, but complied.  So this is how Nadia got a middle name that means nothing but sounds nice.  Once our facilitator realized what had just happened, he said that's more of an honor than a godfather has! 

So now, our 10 day wait begins.  We cannot do any adoption related paperwork during this time, we have no translator, and not enough money to afford visiting Nadia but twice.  It's gonna be a long wait, but well worth it.  Today we've posted our picture in front of the courthouse.  In order from left to right is the city social worker (Alexander), Sean, Crystal, our facilitator, the orphanage representative (Luda). Hope you enjoy.

Okay, short notice, but court is today, Thursday, at 4PM.  We would have written earlier, but we've had difficulty getting internet access.  Additionally, Crystal's been sick with Pink Eye and some other throat infection for a couple of days now.  Our poor facilitator practically wants to drag us into the Doctor's Office, but we refuse.  We're just not comfortable seeing a strange doctor in a foreign country through a translator.   We were able to contact our doctor at home that was able to confirm our suspected diagnosis and gave us an idea of what medicines to look for.  The good thing is that you don't need a prescription for anything that's not a narcotic and there are pharmacies on just about every corner.  Here's the update Sean typed up on our laptop in our hotel room yesterday, we'll post again after court tomorrow (if internet access allows, that is):

Wednesday - Good news! We have our final court date scheduled for Thursday July 31, at 4:00 PM (7:00 AM Denver time). After that we will have to wait the mandatory 10 days and then we can pick up the court decree from the courthouse. Since the tenth day falls on a Sunday, we will have to wait until Monday August 11th to get the decree and pick up our daughter Nadia from the Orphanage. The Judge requested that we come into the courthouse yesterday to have a preliminary court hearing. It turned out that she was very busy so she decided talking briefly with our facilitator was good enough for her, and that was it! We are looking forward to thursday and we went to see Nadia today and shared the news with her. She seemed happy but wasn't too overly excited, she had just woken up form a nap and was busy with the ice cream cone that we brought her. Probably a little bit too much sensory input for one little 8 year old girl after nap time! We hung out for a while and played with her, and at one point she went to get her picture bible. She then wanted to show us her favorite story which turned out to be about King Solomon's court. Then before we left we had her try on the new clothes we bought her and they fit perfectly, we posted a picture of her in her new clothes! Unfortunately all of the clothes are labled with weird sizes that make no sense to us, so for those of you asking for her size we'll send you our measurements in an e-mail. It was a good visit and we will go see her again on Sunday.



Still no wi-fi access, they keep telling us it will be fixed tomorrow (of course the first time they said that was three tomorrow's ago). Our facilitator says that Ukrainians like this word "tomorrow" and with it anything is possible...tomorrow. The internet Cafe has also been having technical difficulties as well, so we'll get this posted, hopefully tomorrow ;)



We found a restaurant close to the hotel that seems to be a little better than the other ones we've tried. It's easy to overlook and down in the basement of a rundown apartment building so we walked by it a thousand times without a second thought. It's called "Cafe Oscar" and it's kinda cool, decorated with U.S. moviestar posters and gold Oscar statues. Plus it's got good food, A/C, comfy seats and a big screen TV. No English menu though but we got our facilitator to transcribe some of it for us, as he won't be with us during the 10 day wait. He did the same for another local cafe, so we'll have a little better dining variety while he's gone this time.



A few more interesting tidbits:



1. We found crab flavored Lays Potato chips, yes CRAB! And they taste exactly like you think...nasty!

2. Ukrainian Cola-Beer mix is not nearly as bad as it sounds.

3. There are probably 2 taxi's in this town for every man, woman and child, there are about 5 or 6 parked in front of the grocery store across from our hotel at any given time. Must be a good job even in a saturated market, they seem to do as much talking and smoking as driving. And just like home, POS cars are always faster with a HUGE wing on the trunk.

4. You take your life in your own hands walking through Lenin square where our hotel is located. Imagine an intersection the size of a football field with about 6 streets feeding into it. No traffic controls, no lanes designated, no roundabout and no speed limit. Then throw a town full of crazy taxi drivers, a busy market and a bunch of pedestrians at it and you get the idea.

5. When a Ukrainian hotel brags about having hot water 24 hours a day, make sure you ask if they have COLD water 24 hours a day. Doesn't seem like a big issue until you try to take a shower in scalding water.

6. Our driver speaks very little english but any time we point out something odd or funny to us, or kind of out of the ordinary, he laughs and says "It's normal!"

7. Road crews work the same way apparently all over the world. While waiting for a couple hours at the courthouse one day, we watched 6-8 workers (hard to tell exactly how many, a couple appeared to be contributing citizens) paint yellow lines on a speed bump. It appeared that there was a lot of talking about

work, preparing for work, but not much work actually being accomplished. We figured that in about four hours (we left for a while and came back, they still weren't finished) these 6-8 workers managed to paint a dozen or so, 8 ft. by 1 ft. lines across this speed bump. They also managed to block most of the road with a tractor, a bus and a spray rig trailer, totally jacking traffic. However, they did manage to repaint their spray rig a nice new yellow to match the lines on the road! In the last few days we've seen their work elsewhere, to the tune of about 1 new speed bump per day. Apparently its "Normal!"

8. Ukrainian weddings are really loud and involve a LOT of food and alcohol, and apparenty they last for three days. We're pretty sure it's over now though because no one was singing outside our hotel room last night.

9. You can't go into a market with a backpack on. Unless of course your facilitator asks the security guy if he wants to be personally responsible for the laptop computer inside the backpack, then it becomes ok.

10. If the name on the bottle is "Sexy" and the flavor is "Margarita" stay away - the key ingredient is Vodka and it tastes like mouthwash! The "Hot Night" flavored "Sexy" is pretty good though, it's Pomegranite!

 

We haven't been able to make it to the internet in a few days and when we have, it's been closed (randomly, it would appear, but our driver said this is normal - which he says a lot about anything strange or unusual).  Here's the update for the last couple of days:

Wednesday we went to visit Nadia in the afternoon.  We sat with her for a while and drew some pictures with colored pencils in a notebook we had gotten her.  After she got bored with that we got out some puzzles and played with those and a couple of other children gathered around and helped out.  After awhile, Nadia seemed to get a little bored.  She started to draw a picture of an ice cream cone to relay to us that she wanted to go get ice cream.  We told her no, not because we didn't want to, but because we weren't sure the orphanage would let us take her and without the means to speak through a translator, thought it better to just say no.  Well, she was pretty adament about it, or maybe thought that no meant we didn't understand.  She ran off telling us she would be back.  She was gone for a long time, so finally Sean went to find her.  When he did, it appeared that she had gotten some money from somewhere and had been convincing an older boy and one of the caregivers to go get her ice cream.  Off they went.  We felt so bad, so Crystal convinced our driver (who speaks only very minimal english) to take her to the store.  She came back a while later, ice cream in hand and the older boy and caregiver in the back seat.  We all sat and ate ice cream and then took some photos before leaving.  In all, it was a good day, but it has become more and more evident that what Nadia wants, Nadia gets. 

On Thursday, we took a day trip to meet the boys' birth family.  It was a long day that started at 9AM and ended around 10PM.  The drive was long and hot, 4 1/2 hours there and 3 1/2 hours back.  We had a wonderful visit with their great-aunt and uncle and second cousin.  Our only regret is that we couldn't stay longer.  They are amazing people and it was an amazing journey and we were sad to leave. 

Friday, our facilitator returned from Kiev with the necessary paperwork in hand to take to the local court.  We spent the majority of the day at the court, submitting the petition to adopt Nadia.  Unfortunately, the person whom sets the court date was out of town and will not be back until Monday.  So, our facilitator will go back to the court first thing Monday morning to request a court date.  There is one piece of paper we will need from the SDA still and we won't have it until Wednesday at the earliest, meaning, this is the earliest we can have our court date set for.  Regardless, our facilitator is sure we can have court this week sometime. 

Saturday, we went to visit Nadia again.  We took our swimsuits, but the kids weren't going swimming.  However, Nadia was just sure that the director would let us take her by herself.  Like we said, what Nadia wants, Nadia gets.  So, we went swimming in the river again - which was really a nice relief from the heat - it's been 100 degrees and up the last couple of days (remember, soviet style housing, no air-conditioning, no deoderant, etc...).  Tomorrow we will try to do some shopping for Nadia.  She tells us she likes pink and the look of jeans material.  Once we're more sure of her size, we'll let those of you know who've been asking.  Later in the evening, it finally cooled down and so we had our facilitator order us a pizza from the supermarket (we're so glad he's back) and sat eating it under the foot of Mr. Lenin again.  Each of the nearest restaurants had parties, one of which was a wedding party, and once it was dark, they came out to shoot off fireworks.  There is no permit required here and they can get what we would consider professional grade fireworks at the supermarket.  So, each party had their own set of fireworks and we quickly realized they were going to set them off right in front of us - literally less than 50 feet from us.  When they went off, they were right above our heads and we could feel the ashes landing on us! It was really kind of neat. 

Sunday, it has finally cooled off and was raining all morning and most of the evening.  It's nice that it's cooled off, but not so much that it isn't terribly muggy from all the rain.  When there was a little break in the rain, we went out and bought a few clothes for Nadia.  We figure we'll try them on her later this week to see how well we measured. 

We also found wi-fi access yesterday, but it appears it\'s not working.  We\'ll have to see if we can convince them to fix that, though it's difficult here because everything is everyone else\'s fault first and no one wants to admit any fault - seems part of the cultural aspect.  If we can get it going, it\'ll be much easier for us to get things done. 
 

That's about it.  We're feeling a bit homesick again, but otherwise, doing pretty well.  We posted a couple of pictures also.  As always, we really appreciate hearing from everyone.

Yesterday we went and visited Nadia again. We brought our swimsuits so that we could swim with her and the other kids in the river.  We had a really good time and it was a big relief from the heat - it's been in the mid-90s everyday.  We also took some bubbles for the kids to play with and they really seemed to enjoy that, though it caused some arguments since there wasn't enough for everyone.  Nadia is becoming a little possessive of us, which is probably pretty normal.  She's calling us Mama and Papa on her own (we've been referring to ourselves by name up to this point, as we didn't want to push the issue until after court). It's becoming more difficult for us to leave each time, and visibly so with Nadia as well. 

There really isn't much else for us to report today.  We're super bored and stuck in a hotel with not-so-great food that we're getting sick of fast (some days literally).  We don't have a kitchen, so we can't cook.  We don't have a map, so we can't wander far.  We don't have a translator, so there are few places we can go and things we can do.  We've watched a good portion of the movies we've brought for the whole trip and now we have to try to pace ourselves. 

We spend a lot of time at the grocery store, looking at interesting things to buy and try.  Fanta comes in at least 4 flavors here - orange, apple, lemon, pineapple - and we've tried them all (Crystal wouldn't recommend any but the standard orange).  We've had bacon flavored potato chips, which did in fact taste just like bacon.  We tried Kvas, a Russian soft drink made of rye and tastes like carbonated sweet brown bread.  It wasn't terrible, just different.  We tried a Hazelnut Snickers bar - not great, and pear filled doughnuts - not too bad. 

Anyway, as I'm sure you could tell, we're feeling pretty homesick today and would love a big hamburger or a pizza.  We'd even settle for Taco Bell, that's how desperate we've become.  We know that it's all worth it in the end and we will look back on this experience with fond memories - we're just a little down today. 

We won't go visit Nadia again until Wednesday, so this'll probably be the last post until then.  Thanks to everyone following along - it's really nice to hear from everyone. 

Today we do not have a driver so we will not go visit Nadia.  Instead we are at the internet cafe, and since we have plenty of time, we thought we'd "catch up" the blog a little.  Thus far, our posts have been relatively short and we haven't shared everything we've wanted to because we've been rushed each time we've had the opportunity to post. 

Yesterday, we visited Nadia and our translator was with us (yeah!).  Before getting into our visit with her, we should go into a little more detail about our visit with her on Monday (our first visit).  Our translator had asked her if she knew why we were there.  She said that after she entered the orphanage, no one has ever come to visit her.  She has prayed and asked God to send someone to visit her and we were there because God had sent us.  Such a smart child and an amazing response.  We found out later that day, that she had whispered into the social worker's ear that she liked us an hoped we would take her with us. 

Yesterday, we were taking pictures when we were with her.  She said she wanted to go inside to take a picture of the most important thing, so we gave her the camera to let her be photographer for the day.  She and the other kids loved taking pictures of themselves (many with the tops of their heads cut off ;-) and the things around them.  But we realized after we'd gotten back to the hotel, that her "most important thing" was a mural painted on the wall of Jesus teaching to the children.  Wow, it seems that finding Nadia has not just been an answer to our prayers.  People often comment to us how difficult it must be to choose a child in such a way as we have and asked us how we know we've chosen the "right" child.  We've always realized that it's never been our choice and we have no doubt that we were meant for each other and she was meant for our family.  In a time of such stress and emotion, it's amazing how at peace we are - not something you can reallly explain without experiencing.

Today is our first day without our translator, as he's gone back to Kiev to submit our petition to adopt Nadia to the SDA.  We discussed with him the timing of everything.  He estimated about a week to get back SDA's approval, then we will need to take that to the local court to schedule a court date.  They seem pretty willing to have court quickly, but then we will need to wait the mandatory 10 calendar days before we can officially take custody of Nadia.  At that point we will need to get her birth certificate and passport.  Once we have those documents, we will travel to Kiev for Nadia's medical exam and to get her Visa to the U.S.  Our best case scenario estimate would put us on our way home around Aug. 15.  We wish it could be sooner, but we'll take what we can get.

Now a little humor - some things we've experienced the last few days.  Our hotel room is actually quite nice compared with what we stayed in the last adoption in Donetsk.  It;s obvious that it was recently renovated - everything is pretty modern and new, but it's still the old style shower in which you have to hold the shower by hand.  On our first morning Crystal flooded the bathroom, because, according to Sean, she wasn't being careful.  However, after Sean took his shower, it was worse.  Turns out the shower drain was basically draining right out onto the floor behind the toilet.  Imagine trying to explain this to the hotel staff without knowing Russian and them not knowing English.  We opted to wait for our translator to be available.  Additionally, the bed is NOT modern and western style and not terribly comfortable.  There's no AC, but they gave us a fan yesterday, just in time for the weather to cool down. The hotel does have a cafe inside, and breakfast is included - but again, ordering with the language barrier has been interesting. Fortunately, it's been the same staff each day and they are getting used to dealing with us. 

Interestingly, the hotel is located in sort of a square - Lenin Square (every town has a statue of Lenin - no joke).  There is a grocery store just across the square, which seems to be the local hangout.  Young people with "Lada Hoopties" (tricked out old Soviet cars), as Sean calls them, buy beer at the store and sit under the statue of Lenin and drink in the evenings.  The other night, we had a few beers with our translator under Lenin.  He commented that 25 years ago, he could never have imagined standing under Lenin, drinking beer with Americans.  Ha! The irony was just too much, so we toasted Mr. Lenin.  Shortly thereafter, we were approached by some young boys, attending the local technical college, that spoke some English.  They'd heard us talking and wanted to practice their English with us, which proved to be quite the challenge since they were quite drunk.  What made it hilarious, was that they kept struggling and our translator just stood there smiling and pretended to not speak Russian.  When they finally asked if he was American too and he told them he was Ukrainian - they were confused at first - until he finally quit speaking English and spoke to them in Russian - and we all just laughed hysterically.  Some time later, a teenage girl also walked up to us and spoke English.  She explained that she had just returned from being an exchange student in Michigan for a year.  It was interesting to us how much she sounded like - grammer and everything - a typical American teenager (saying "like" every other word).  It was also rather humorous.

We're going to try and post a few pictures today.  They are as follows:

The Hotel we're staying in

Lenin Square in the town we're in

Nadia

The summer camp where Nadia is staying

Yesterday was our first day with Nadia without a translator.  Oh what fun.  Our facilitator wanted to get started on the paperwork and rather than have us sit around, he sent us to the summer camp to visit her alone.  Getting there was interesting in itself because the driver wasn't sure of the way and didn't speak English and there are NO street or road signs.  A lot of pointing, shrugging and laughing and we were there.  

But once we got there, we didn't recognize any of the caregivers and it was quite fun (not really) trying to explain why we were there.  Finally there came one lady who looked remotely familiar and not long after, Nadia followed with big hugs for us both.  It really didn't go too badly, we colored a lot, looked at pictures, and played some.  

At one point, another little boy came out to visit with Nadia and, although we don't know for sure all that she was telling him, she was pretty animated and we were able to pick out words here and there.  She was explaining to him that SHE was going to America with her new family and she would have 3 brothers. I guess you had to be there to understand how animated and adament she was about this.  Eventually, she told him to go away.  

Our visit was probably a little bit shorter than normal, but it was okay since we really couldn't communicate well.  We all had a good time.  We have found internet in the small town we are staying and we will not be able to visit Nadia much in the coming weeks ($100/day for a driver gets expensive rather quickly), so hopefully we can get caught up with the blog and email. We'll also try to post more photos.  We're on our way to visit Nadia now, so we have to cut it short, but we really appreciate hearing from everyone!

We arrived in Luhansk yesterday morning, about 9:20 and our driver met us at the train station.  We then drove to Krasnadon, about 45 minutes or so away where we first needed to meet with the city inspector/director of social services to get his letter and permission to come with us to the orphanage where Nadia has lived for the last two years.  We waited around at that office for about an hour and a half.  Our facilitator said that they didn't have many adoptions there and so the process was new to them.  Then, it is required that the social worker accompany us to the orphanage, as he must be present when the child is shown to us.  The orphanage was about 20 minutes away from his office in a remote part of Krasnadon.  

Nadia was not actually at the Orphanage, but we had to meet with the director.  He was much younger than we expected and seemed okay.  There was construction being done on the orphanage and so the kids were away at "summer camp".  Our facilitator explains this as really just an "orphanage away from the orphanage".  We were surprised at how he seemed to really care about his job.  He was in work clothes and his hands were dirty from working on the building alongside the workers.  He was very straightforward and gave us the information present in Nadia's file, which really wasn't much more than what we had already learned from the SDA.  After half an hour or so, he said he would call the summer camp to let them know we were on our way.  

We all piled into the car (a Lada) - imagine, five large adults in the sweltering heat, packed like sardines in such a small car with no air conditioning and back windows that didn't roll down - not all ukrainians wear deoderant by the way! 

The summer camp was about 45 minutes to an hour away from the orphanage, truly in the countryside in the middle of no where.  When we met Nadia, she was quite shy, but seemed to warm up rather quickly.  She seemed very smart and has quite the personality!  She seems small for her age, but otherwise very healthy.  Her picture seemed to show brown hair and brown eyes, but we were surprised to find that she has strawberry blond hair!  Her hair is cut very short, like a boy and our facilitator told us that it is a Russian myth that if they keep their hair short while they are young, it will help it to thicken up when they are older.  

We spent the afternoon with her and she showed off her English.  She knows 'hello', 'goodbye', 'yes', 'my name is Nadia' and how to count to 10. Thats it.  However, she seemed genuinely interested in learning more and was very proud of the little bit she did know.  

When we finished our visit, she said goodbye and that she wanted us to come and visit her tomorrow.  We left and drove about 30 minutes into Krasnadon, where we found a hotel to stay in for the night.  

Today, we went back to visit Nadia.  When we arrived, we were surprised that she ran up to us and gave us both big hugs.  The kids were all going swimming "to the beach".  So, we accompanied them on a short walk to the river bank where the kids were allowed to swim, although they seperated them and made the boys and girls alternate swimming so they wouldn't be together in the water (why they did this at 8 -10 years old is beyond us).  Anyway, when it wasn't Nadia's time to swim, she ran off with some of the other kids to a nearby sunflower field.  They all came back with sunflower heads and started pulling the seeds out.  She handed us some to eat.  Hmmmm, okay.  So they were not dry, not salted, and the shell was moist and hairy.  It wasn't bad, Crystal ate a couple and then put the rest in Sean's pocket.  Sean ate them all and we watched all the kids take bites - yes, bites - of the sunflower head and eat it.  Not our type of cuisine.  The kids were all very interested in us and in proving how well they could say "hello" and "my name is ....".  I think we "met" almost all of them.   

When we got back to the orphanage, it was time for Nadia to go to eat lunch and then they have a rest time.  Our facilitator asked us if we wanted to wait there for them to finish or to go back to town and then back to the orphanage this afternoon.  We hated to drive all the way back to town and then all the way back to the orphanage.  While we were debating he said that he didn't want to pressure us at all, but we should go back to town if we wanted to start the paperwork to adopt Nadia. We told him that of course we wanted to adopt her, but we should ask her first and explain to her what this means.  

Just then, she came running out of the building to say one last goodbye.  He asked if we could talk to her then and so we did.  He was very understanding and did very well with her.  He explained that we would like to adopt her and would she like this?  "I do!" she said.  Then he explained to her that it would mean leaving this place and going to america and learning english and having a family.  She said she would like this and she thinks the schools in America are better and that she will work very hard. 

So, there you have it. We have started the paperwork to adopt Nadia this afternoon.  Right now, we are in Luhansk trying to get some of the work done.  This may be our only opportunity for internet for a while, so we wanted to give everyone an update to let them know.  

Check out the photos page for a picture of us at "the beach" with Nadia and please keep us all in your thoughts and prayers for a quick court date and a waiver of the 10 days waiting period.   

Yesterday, we were able to meet up with two other families here from the U.S. trying to adopt.  We had a great time sitting in a beautiful park chatting.  Neither has been very successful in their adoption as of yet, but they're both going back for second appointments.  We wish them the best of luck and successes!

Today, we came to get wi-fi again so that Crystal can get a little more work done before we leave for Luhansk (yes, it's actually spelled with an "h", but pronounced as a hard 'h', closer to a 'g' sound) this afternoon.  Since we don't have a lot to report, we thought we'd update you all on the realities of life here, some culrual experiences and other fun facts. 

First, I want to comment that our apartment hallway stinks.  It really smells like someone has puked - everyday regardless as to whether or not the door outside is left open.  Second, it is really, really gross that we CANNOT (land lady was very persistent) put toilet paper in the toilet - it goes in the trash - you can imagine what the bathroom smells like all the time.  Speaking of bathrooms, yesterday we had to use the public restroom at the park, which by the way, you must pay for - 1 grivna (about $.24).  We know how this works from when we were here last time, but for those of you that don't remember...in each stall is a hole in the ground with a place on either side for your feet.  If you're not careful, it splashes on your feet - I think you know what 'it' is.  And you know where the toilet paper goes (trash basket), and therefore, how it smells.  Yes, there is soap and water to wash your hands with, but I didn't even bother - the soap looked dirtier than the floor. Good thing we had our hand sanitizer.  

For the guys (and some of us girls) - it is ALWAYS Beer-thirty here.  In fact a liter of beer cost about $1 - cheaper than a bottle of water here.  And the great thing is, even though it's cheap - it tastes great.  Public drinking is totally acceptable and all parks have a little stand selling it both by the bottle and on tap.  There are stands all over the streets selling beer and people walking the streets with a bottle in hand.  Not just drunks either (although there are some, of course) - but like people on their way home (or maybe to) work.  This morning we saw a guy walking with a beer at 9:30AM - and it's Sunday. 

The driving is the same as ever and we really thought we were going to get in a wreck - I think the subway and trolly buses are safer :-).  There isn't much parking, so it is perfectly legal to park on the sidewalk (and most people do) and some even just park in the far right lane.  This means that driving involves a lot of weaving in and out.  Driving also seems to involve a lot of honking.  In fact, the only hard and fast rule we can see that they must abide by is stopping for pedestrians in a crosswalk.  Basically, imagine Broadway (or any four lane city street) with much less lights and everyone going 60 -70 miles an hour and stopping within millimeters of each other when there is a light.  I'll say this, it's gotta take skill. 

People aren't unfriendly, they're indifferent.  Don't expect the person in front of you to hold the door open for you or for the clerck at a counter to ask if they can help you - just tell them what you want.  In some ways, I suppose it's somewhat refreshing because it's a very honest culture. People aren't polite just for the sake of being polite, but they're not mean either. 

Everywhere we've eaten has had great food.  They're much healthier than we are and all the food seems to be very fresh.  The markets and grocery stores all sell locally made/grown cheeses, meat, produce, etc. Yesterday we ate at a Georgian restaurant which was very good (unfortunately, also very expensive).  For the most part, the restaurants and markets all sell their food for very cheap.  We haven't spend more than $30 in groceries since we've been here.  We've eaten out only a couple of times and other than last night, it's been about $15 - $20 to eat out. 

Yesterday, I mentioned we sat at the park and just chatted with two other couples.  It was really neat to sit there and watch people.  Young people came with a boombox and started salsa dancing in the park.  Older people elsewhere in the park got together to play the guitar and sing.  Others were playing games of chess in another part of the park.  It was neat to watch, as it's just not something you see back home - people just hanging out with each other.  It's really made us realize how much we don't take time to just relax, and how significant the little things can be.  Life obviously doesn't revolve around television and internet in this place.

Anyway, hope that gave everyone a taste of life here and gives you your cultural 'fix' :-).  We'll try to give another update when we can. 

You know, it's amazing how much we've come to rely on internet access.  We've really come to appreciate a lot more while we're here. 

Since we found Wi-Fi today, we were able to upload some of our pictures from Prague.  I don't know why the pictures are all posting in reverse order, but they are.  I labeled the pictures yesterday starting with number 1, but really, they started on the fourth picture.  Today, I will label them continuing from yesterday and I will go ahead and delete the pictures of the room, to make it easier to follow along. 

15 - Overlooking the city of Prague from the Prague Castle

16 - Prague Castle and Cathedral

17 - Crystal in front of Prague Starbucks (yea!)

18 - The astronomical clock in the "main" square

19 - Astronomical clock and Cathedral - look familiar? (think Disneyland)

20 - Crystal, Maria, and Marina at a local cafe where we ate local Czech cuisine - yummy!

21 - Castle in Karlstejn, outside of Prague

Also, since we've found Wi - Fi, Crystal needs to work.  We bought a card for 24 grivna that allows us internet access at the wi-fi spot.  However, since we cannot read Russian, we have no clue how long it will last us.  But, since we're not rushed today, we thought we update you all a little more than we have been.

I mentioned earlier in the post about how much you come to appreciate while you're here.  Internet access readily available for one, but also many other things.  In our apartment, you must turn on and light the pilot on the hot water heater (which is hanging on the wall in the kitchen) each time you want to use hot water and then remember to turn it off when you leave.  The windows don't block out any noise whatsoever.  It is very run down and not terribly clean (though probably as clean as one could possibly get it).  We must hand wash and dry our clothes.  We can't hardly read anything, and if we want to know what a sign says, we must stop and sound it out like an eight year old.  We must pull out a map everytime we want to go anywhere and then make sure we're not reading it upside down.  Additionally, it's only useful if you can find a freakin' street sign to tell you where you are in the first place.  (Yes, we got lost yesterday and walked probably half a mile or more in the wrong direction - the one time Crystal should have listened to Sean). 

Yesterday, we did also get in touch with a couple of other American families here adopting.  They had appointments on the same day  as us.  One of them we met up with and had dinner last night.  It was really nice to sit and talk to someone other than Sean (he, he - he's looking over my shoulder sighing).  I think today we will try to meet up with another and maybe go to the botanical gardens?  We'll see. 

Though overall, we're really in a good mood and trying to just go with the flow of everything.  But I don't want you all to think this is like a vacation.  It's not necessarily fun.  I can't even begin to explain to you how difficult our appointment with the SDA was.  Sean and I keep questioning ourselves.  How do we know we've picked the right girl?  We turned down the others because of silly reasons that in the grand scheme of things aren't really that big of a deal.  But we had to chose somehow, right?  There was one more girl sitting on the social worker's desk that we didn't get to find out about because we had gone ahead and accepted the one just before her.  Maybe we shouldn't have been so quick to decide and should have waited until they had gone through all the profiles.  All things gone through our head the last couple of days.  It's so difficult to make such a life changing decision, not just for us but also for this girl and our family, in just one hour and feel comfortable with the decision.  It's really heart-wrenching to remember and think about the faces of the girls we didn't choose and wonder if they will ever have a family and knowing that they will never know how close they came.  It's very sad and really hard to deal with.  It'll make you an emotional wreck. 

Anyway, enough for today, Crystal needs to work.  If we have enough internet time left, we will try to update again tomorrow.  We may not have access for awhile after tomorrow, but we really appreciate hearing from everyone.

Today we needed to go back to the SDA to get paperwork for our referral.  Our facilitator (V) was going to send us a driver, but we decided that we could maneuver the Metro (Subway) on our own.  This kind of freaked him out I think, but we were trying to save money and we did a pretty good job on our own in Prague, so we felt pretty confident.  So, with a map in hand (written in cyrillic of course) we set out on our "big" adventure. 

Turns out, V was so stressed out by this that he called us numerous times to make sure we were okay and we were on our way.  We did go one stop too far, but just took the subway back to the stop we needed. However, when we went to exit the subway, there were multiple exits. Without wanting to stop and figure out what all the signs say, we turned and followed the crowd.  Turns out that it was the wrong way and we ended up somewhere we weren't suppose to be.  But no problem, we had a map!  We did indeed figure out where we were and it was a brief walk up the hill and around the corner to get to where we thought we should be. 

We had decided to come early to visit St. Sophia's Cathedral and take some pictures of some of the things we'd seen the last time in the snow.  V had called us (again) to tell us that he had gotten train tickets for Sunday afternoon around 3PM.  We should arrive in Lugansk on Monday at around 9AM and will visit the girl in a small town to the southeast of Lugansk.  We posted some pictures, but we're unable to label them, so here's a description:

1 - St. Andrew's (mentioned in yesterday's post)

2 - Us in front of the SDA

3-9 - photos of the apartment where we are staying

10 - the door/hallway to our apartment

11-12 - the outside of our building (our balcony is the one's with the towels hanging.  I hate it because the floor is rotted and I keep thinking I'm going to fall through)

13 - St. Michael's and the Bogdon statue, pictured from St. Sophia's

14 - St. Sophia's bell tower (entrance)

We also had one's from Prague, but they didn't upload.  We'll try again later. 

Well, that's it for now - thanks for all the prayers and good thoughts!

We arrived in Kiev yesterday afternoon and were greeted by over an hour of waiting to get through immigration and customs.  Couple that with being tired and surrounded by a lot of pushy, stinky people (I think everyone in the airport "had a plane to catch in 20 minutes" and wanted us to let them in).  Our driver met us at the airport and didn't speak a lot of english, but he was really nice and was a history teacher at the university.  So on our way into Kiev from the airport, he gave us the history on every monument we saw.  He took us shopping and then to the apartment.  It's bigger than the one we had in Kiev the first time, on the last trip, but not as nice and in a noisy neighborhood - a stark contrast from Prauge.  We took a walk to see if we could find an internet cafe, but no luck - seems we will not be as lucky as we were the last time.  We were so spoiled!

This morning we woke up to the rain and it is cold and has rained all day (currently, it's early afternoon).  Our facilitator came to pick us up at a little before 8AM, which he then decided was too early, so we sat in the apartment and chatted over coffee and breakfast (some kind of whipped cheese/yogurt with fruit).  Then we left to find a sim card for Sean's cell phone and the internet. The sim card was no problem, but the internet proved to be a challenge.  At first, we couldn't find a wi-fi card, which you must use to purchase internet access.  Once we did, we couldn't find a coffee house with working wi-fi.  Finally, we just decided to go to the SDA and found a post office near by to use the internet.  We were able to do a little bit of quick email before heading down to the appointment.  For those of you that followed our last adoption, we have pictures of the St. Andrew's church in Kiev - it's blue/green with gold domes and stairs up to the front. The SDA is right next door. 

Now for the part you were really waiting for.  Our SDA appointment was at 12 noon today.  It went fairly well.  We were shown profiles for four girls (no more red binders to search through), all in our age range.  All were relatively healthy, except for one.  The hardest part was deciding which one to accept a referral for.  We decided on an 8 year old girl in the Luhansk Region, near Donetsk, to the north, where we were the last time.  We are hoping for everything to move quickly, but it is vacation season here.  We likely won't be able to leave to go to the region and visit the girl until Sunday afternoon, but we're really hoping it's sooner. 

So, in all, we're very excited and nervous - all at the same time.  Our trip has gone well, but I think we're not in the tourist mindset this time, so don't expect many cultural updates, as I doubt the Russian/Ukrainian people change much. 

Our flight went well, but we're total goofs, we were doing a little last minute gift shopping and almost missed the flight out of Denver.  We were the last ones to board the plane and they were waiting on us.  Oops!  But in reality, they were just trying to leave early, which they did accomplish anyway.  Our layover in Atlanta was a little long, but it was okay because we just purchased a day pass for the wi-fi and ate at Qdoba.  Our flight to Prague was long and uneventful, other than not being able to really sleep much.  Oh, and for future reference, international flights and Qdoba...not a good combination!  Amy, you know what we're talking about.  ;)  The flight left Atlanta at 5:30 mountain time, which was a little too early to try and sleep.  But the flight was a little noisy and the person behind us kept shaking the seat.  When we got to Prague, all of our luggage was here (yea!) and our hostess met us at the airport.  We were so glad to see her.  She has been wonderful.

We've been in Prague going on three days now, and we think it's probably the most beautiful city we've ever seen.  We have had the opportunity to visit many of the local tourist sights, Charles Bridge, the astronomical clock, even a castle outside of Prague in Karlstejn.  Yesterday, our hostesses had to work, so we were on our own for the day, we saw a few more sights, took a lot of pictures and had a pretty good time.  Today, they are resting a little and it is raining out, so we are staying in until later in the afternoon.  They say it will rain all week, but we're not too disappointed because the last couple of days were really hot and we're pretty jet-lagged still.  Adjusting to the time difference has been a bit difficult.  Our hostesses have been great and feeding us more than we can eat!  We will post pictures when we can, but as of yet, we have been unable to use our own computer.  This means we are using our hostesses' computer, which is in Russian, so we can't quite figure it out on our own. 

 We'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.  Thanks to all who have been following along and have wished us well, it means a lot to us.  Amy and Travis, sorry we missed you at the airport, our flight wasn't until 10:45.  Take care all!

Well, it's almost time for us to start on our journey.  I promised I would post pictures of the bedroom and so I have.  Check out the photos page.  I'm making this post short and sweet, as we have a ton still to do to prepare - and I'm sure that no matter how much we prepare, we still won't be prepared ;-).

We will be leaving Friday, July 4, bright and early in the morning.  We may not post much while in Prague, but will surely update everyone as soon as we have the opportunity in Kiev.  We will fly into Kiev on July 9, mid-day and will have our appointment on July 10.  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as the time nears, we are very excited and extremely nervous. 

Truely, I really am trying to keep this updated.  There is just so much to do. However, I'm relieved to report that a good portion of my to-do list has been checked off!  We've really gotten a lot done in the last couple of weeks and I'm feeling much less stressed about being ready to travel.  Now that the kids are out of school and we aren't running around doing end-of-year activities, we can really focus on being prepared to travel.

On the other hand, now my stress is focused on work and how much I can, or can't, get done before we leave.  We're in the middle of some major projects and I feel so guilty leaving my co-workers behind with their plates overflowing.  I'm hoping that I can work from overseas some to help relieve them a little.  We'll have to see, but in the meantime, I have to plan as if I won't be able to help out at all. 

We read a few blogs from other adoptive parents today, that are currently in Ukraine.  We were quite relieved to read that it seems the situation has improved.  It seemed all parents were getting relatively healthy referrals within their preferred parameters.  This is really good news, for them and for those of us waiting to travel.  Things were not looking so good a couple of months ago.  We even read of one family that it looks like might be coming home within or right at one month after leaving.  That is super fast these days!  We've been seeing averages of 6-8 weeks, so we've been planning to be gone at least that long.  If you want to read about other family's current experiences, go here:  http://itsagirlseyler.spaces.live.com/

Only 3 1/2 more weeks to go!

Crystal

Okay, so I really didn't realize that so many people were already following our blog.  I've had several requests over the last week to update it.  I logged in this morning and read the messages that have been left for us.  Wow! 

I have not figured out how to respond to guest comments, so we willl respond in our posts. Christine - I have run across your blog before, good luck on your journey!  We will be adopting a little girl, hopefully between the ages of 6 -9, but we are approved for anything under 10 years old.  Thanks to everyone for leaving notes of encouragement.

So we will try to post more often - our goal is weekly, until we leave.  You can probably imagine how increadibly busy we are trying to get ready to leave.  It's amazing the amount of preparation that needs to happen to not only prepare for the trip, but to prepare for being away for up to two months in the summer.  The kids will be out of school for July, but then will probably go back before we make it home.  Sean's mom will be watching the kids, animals, and house while we're away -which is a huge task - but I know other family will jump in and help too.  We're really greatful to everyone for helping out.

This week we secured some extra financing, as we didn't want to use the same line of credit we had used for the previous adoption.  This was the last big thing we needed to figure out before we left, so I'm feeling a little more comfortable now.  We keep adding to our packing list and to our "to do" list, but not getting very much checked off of either of those lists, which makes me nervous, but it's mostly little stuff now.  I'm sure it will mostly all get done, but I have a feeling that June will just fly by.

We hope to finish up the bedroom this weekend, so we'll post a couple of pictures of that when it's completed.  Stay tuned!

Okay, now that we've totally confused you - yes, we are going to Kiev, but not before a little R&R in Prague to visit our very good friend.  We have spent the last couple of weeks searching the internet endlessly for the best airfare we could find.  There was so much to consider.  Do we pay the extra for changable tickets? Do we buy one-way tickets and risk being "stuck" in Kiev and not being able to get a flight out due to vacation season in Europe?  Do we buy restricted round-trip tickets and pay change fees if we need to change them? Is it cheaper to use a consolidator or book through the airline and use our miles?

 Those that know me well, know that I had to research all of these things until I felt comfortable that I had found the best solution....and then search again.  And then, figure out if we could afford to make the Prague stop over.  As it turned out, Prague is only costing us about $200 extra and we figured, what the hay - when will we ever get the opportunity to see Prague again?!  SO...many internet hours later, it's a good thing we don't pay by the minute and we decided that the best way would be to buy one-way airfare to Prague and then Kiev.  We will be leaving Denver on July 4, mid-morning and stay in Prague for 4 days before continuing on to Kiev. 

We're going to try to update more regularly now, but I'm not sure how many people are actually reading...so we'll see how it goes.  This will be one of our primary means of communication while away, however.

Just a little over 2 months to go....

Our dossier was finally submitted to the SDA in Ukraine on March 20, after they opened back up in February and made more changes to the way they do things (big surprise).  Technically, they have 20 business days to approve and give us a date.  Typically, we had seen that, in reality, it was taking up to 40 days for people to hear back.  Well, today was number 20 and our facilitator emailed us today with our appointment date.  We'll be in Ukraine on July 10.  Funny how we tried so hard to expedite the process this time, yet it still ended up being almost exactly one year after we started that we will get to travel. 

There's so much to do now, but we're glad to finally know when we'll be going.

As you can see, we've updated the website once again.  We've done this because our internet provider has changed the way our website works.  Before, I was able to create our website with my own program and just upload it to the site, but I could still edit it remotely when we were away from home (i.e. in Ukraine).  However, with the new layout, it will not work out the same way.  So, it turns out it will be easier to just use the tools they provide.  Less personalized, but it gets the job done.  Please be patient with us while we get it all set back up again!