we waited

and waited and waited. we went out only to get water and groceries. we were back in half an hour. the rest of the day was sitting in this tiny apartment that is no bigger than my kitchen/dining room. we were waiting for word that our documents had arrived and they would be picking us up for sda apppt. except the sda doesnt have any appointments left for the day. which means we spent the ENTIRE day here doing NOTHING for NOTHING! we had planned tomorrow to go to Cherobyl museum. but now tomorrow we will go to sda and wait around for papers that MUST BE FILED on friday in order to get court next Thursday. WHY does this have to be so complicated??? it is bordering on the fidiculous how much paper work and how this crazy process goes. each thing is successive and you can do NOTHING in sync. each thing must wait for the last. we are ready to be home. we have been here since June 9. pushing a month! this was supposed to take two weeks. we are so tired and frustrated. but we are still hanging on hope that Jaeger and Andre will be part of our family.

Things I forgot to mention

first thing is HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY MOM! Love you Mom!

one of the things we noticed is that the longer we are here the more we find ourselves missing a certain word in our vocabulary. so we will try to say something to one another and find we cant think of the word we want. I imagine this is what its like for the kids as they are learning English, they dont know enough English to tell what they want, but the word in their native language escapes them, thus making them unable to communicate their needs. Imagine how frustrating that would be!

anotehr this is that grammar rules are different here. and people who speak broken English(the people we deal with the most) mix up tenses or word order. I find myself asking things like "why you not do this?"

Buildings here are much different than home. there is not a smoke detector in our entire apartment. none in the hall that I am aware of. there are open wires and fuse boxes in hallways, hanging light fixtures are common. things that would just never pass muster at home are very commonplace here. The place we live right now is on the 5th floor. there is no light on the stairs between floors 2 and 3 and the lights on the other floors are very dim and do not carry down the stairwell. even in the daytime it is very dark to take the stairs. the elevator does not always go to floor 5. sometimes it only goes to 4 and you have to walk the rest. sometimes at floor 5 you call the elevator and it only comes to 4 and you have to walk down to it. sometimes you get in and it goes straight up to 5 no problem but you have to be prepared in case it doesnt because you never know when it will or wont. the apartment itself is small but very nice. the hallways are dark dingy dirty and in some cases downright scary!

the center line is routinely used to make another lane when driving. we walk everywhere we go unless its official business then there is usually a car that picks us up. we would not make it far if we had to drive here! One of our drivers told us that women have only begun to drive here after many years of only men drivers. they refer to them as a monkey with a hand grenade, not sure if I mentioned this before. this same driver has told us many interesting facts about this country. including how to make borcht! he speaks great English(not perfect but we can easily communicate about most topics) and he tells us of his little girl. she is 1. he also told us basswood tree flowers and leaves are used to make tea. never heard of that before.

the news from Lake Wobegone

up at the very crack of dawn to jump in a car and shake and bake our way to Ptown for the day. saw the kids. They were a little standoffish but not overly so. Vasa still cried when we left. The girls want to know WHEN are we going to America! and when can we get our ears pierced? and do you have lots of earrings in America? little do they know that we have LOTs OF EARRINGS just at our HOUSE! they are so cute. so we got the paperwork all done for Diana, it will be signed tomorrow as they cant sign it the day they recieve it for some reason. the social worker who needs to sign it has been the nicest lady to us in this adoption and the last. she is always very kind and speaks softly and smiles and us and tells us its all going to be ok. it will turn out good. I have no worries at all that she will sign. She is the one pushing so hard for us to seperate the siblings. We also filed for appt with sda. which SHOULD happen tomorrow. we will have to pay a cab(again) to bring the documents from Ptown to SunnyK and then go to SDA and have appt where we asked specifically for TWO kids with special needs. If they only give us one someone is going to be heartbroken. a lot of someones.

the plan is to get Sda tomorrow, get official papers thurs. go back to Ptown Friday and stay until court the next week and return home that weekend.

We taught the kids their names today. Natasha tried very hard to say it correctly. Diana loved it but then for a moment thought no she wants to stay Diana. I explained to them that they now had TWO names and she could still be Diana, but now she would be Diana Claire. Natasha Jordan liked her name too. Vasiliy we had planned to call Jacob but since it is also Eric's nephews name, same last name, and Eric really didnt like that name as much as some others we chose to opt for something similar. Jaeger Vasiliy loved yelling his name as he went high on the swing. Andrey we plan to call A.J. (Andre Jonathon). he is the perfect A.J. so cute and little and you just want to grab him up when he smiles at you.

Some friends of our dear friends the Urbans have invited us to come along tonight for dessert at their house. sounds like fun! and We could never pass up ice cream! But first at some point dinner.

and here is a photo to keep it fun. this is the girls when they were younger. Our friend Dima took this photo.

Pirogovo

you have to go there. its gorgous! we had a great time there. We took a cab out there and walked for hours looking at windmills and ancient churches and old thatched huts that were once the way of life. We wanted to buy a table runner and asked a vendor (a very old lady) how much hers was. she of course told us in Russian. when I told her Ya ne ponymayu she asked something and then at the same time as I said it she said Engliski? we had a good laugh. and she wrote down how much it was. so we paid her for it and I said Spaceba and she laughed and said nyet! Danka Shoen! and then we laughed and laughed and then she finangled us into buying a wooden spoon for our cafe (coffee)so we wont hurt our teeth when we drink our cafe. she wanted us to buy two but we only bought one. then we had some Kvas. it was strange but not bad. it smelled like bread, tastes kind of like beer. After we hiked all the way up the carpathian mountains(ok not really, just the huge hill that the Carpathia exhibit was on) we headed for the exit. When we got there Eric used his STELLAR language skills to find us a bus that took us nearly home(insert eye roll). but the bus ride was interesting and only cost 2 grivna each. thats about 50 cents total. much cheaper than the 8 dollar cab ride we paid for to get there. All our friends are busy tonight and we are exhausted so we just stopped and had some Ukrainian food and came home to veg in air conditioning and rest our blistered feet. It was about 90 degrees out there today and HUMID! so I have blisters on my arches of my feet. Eric fared better in his flip flops. The roads we walked on were cobblestone and sand. some parts were cobbled and others were sand and some parts were cobbles surrounded by sand. so it was rather rough terrain much of the way. but the high heels were out in full force! hope you enjoy some pictures of our day.

photos of yesterdays adventure

and today we are off to Pirogovo

Dasha

Dasha is the sweetest little girl about 4 or 5. she is in our kids groupoo. I dont know if she has any diagnosis but she is the sweetest little girl. if we didnt already have a fight on our hands for the other 4 I would be fighting for little Dasha. Every day she gives me the sweetest hugs around the neck. she is not in your face like some of the others. she likes attention but doesnt DEMAND it. she likes to play but doesnt enjoy brutalising others during her play. because she is one of the smaller ones she gets brutalised sometimes. she is so gentle and sweet. she smiles and comes running with a hug when we come. (I think we hug everyone in the orphanage when we arrive!) she has dark hair and BLUE eyes. she is very petite. but she has captured my heart. doesnt anyone want a Dasha of their own? she is so precious. I dont think that she thinks we are HER mama and papa but she sure does love hugs and kisses if we are handing them out. someone come get pretty little Dasha. she is such a love. If I thought I could convince my husband I would come back for her myself! but after this experience I am pretty sure he wont be on board with that!

WHEW!

left our apartment about 1230-1 and returned home about 10. whew! what a day! its saturday so of course nothing adoption related was happening. so we set out to see some more city. we went to the Great Gates of Kiev. it was really exciting! we got kicked out of a university because apparently we looked like we didnt belong. We also got shooed away from a shopping center we JUST EXITED because we stopped and leaned on teh wall and I looked at a blister on my foot. We had to ask ourselves if I was a tall leggy blonde in a short skirt and high heels if they would have shooed us. We walked through a really nice park/botanical garden behind the university. they let us in there lol. I will post photos of great gates tomorrow.

We met up with Urbans, Lorrains, and Whites for dinner. we had a great visit during dinner. then we walked down to Kreschatik street and some got ice cream. we sat around on a bench chatting and laughing and have such a great time. soon it was almost 10 and no one wanted to go home but it was starting to get dusk and no one wanted to be walking home in the dark so we reluctantly said goodbye.