Day 12

Thursday, April 22, 2010. There wasn’t much to do today since it rained most of the day. We had breakfast early, and then went for a little walk. There are some beautiful streets here, lined with trees that are just starting to bloom. There are a lot of apricot trees that are so pretty with their white flowers, and they smell so good!



A little before 2pm, we headed to the train station to send the documents to Kiev. The train station was small, and only a 15-20 minute ride from our hotel. Natalia gave the documents to an officer on one of the cars, and Nastya will pick it up from her when the train arrives in Kiev at 5am tomorrow morning.








We were only able to visit with the girls for about an hour today, but it was nice. They can’t wait to go home. They are very excited and keep asking us about the timeline, when we have court, when we will be allowed to take them out of the orphanage, and when we will finally get to go back as a family.

Larisa invited us over to her home for dinner this evening. We went with Natalia, and met Larisa’s husband and son. They have a nice, quaint apartment here that is within about 5 minutes drive from the orphanage. Larisa must have been cooking all day- she had quite the spread on the table. Her husband broke out the rare, expensive bottle of Russian vodka which was really smooth. We toasted every 5 minutes or so, which is a Ukrainian tradition according to them.

Larisa’s husband has quite a talent with languages, his English is very good! We did not have a communication problem at all. They are an extremely loving, caring family. They showed us photos of their wedding, and of when he was in the Soviet Army. Then we looked at photos that Larisa had taken in California when she was chaperoning the girls on the hosting program. It was a wonderful evening. We feel very honored that they opened their home to us and shared such a fantastic experience.