Day 11

Wednesday, April 21, 2010. We woke up this morning at about 6am. The sun comes right through our bedroom window starting at about 5:30, so we’re rising pretty early here. The breakfasts here at the hotel are actually quite good, and after some negotiation, are included in our room cost. Breakfast consists of: an omelet with ham, yogurt, cabbage salad (hold the mayo, please!), homemade cheese, bread, juice, and coffee.

Today we got our official paperwork done! Natalia got the letters of “favorable determination” from both the orphanage director AND then Inspector. These documents together could have legally taken up to 17 days to receive, but Natalia got them for us in only 3. She also applied for our court date, which gets the 7-day clock running. We are putting the documents on the overnight train tomorrow, since you can only submit paperwork to the SDA in Kiev on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Nastya will get everything submitted on Friday, and with some luck (and a lot of prayer), we should have our court date late next week. If it doesn’t happen at that time, then we get delayed another week because of the weekend and the holidays (1st week in May), so everyone please pray hard that we get our court date for next week!

We went shopping before visiting the girls for a couple of hours and bought a prepaid cell phone for Aylona so that the girls can all keep in touch. We also picked up some hair accessories for Kristina and Anastasia since they were complaining about hair in their faces. We had a really great time laughing with them later at the orphanage. There isn’t much to do when we visit, so we tend to start making things up, play tic tac toe and hangman on our iPhones, or look at photos. It started raining today, but luckily we had an umbrella with us! (Thanks, Eddy!)

We met the Higgins this evening. They are here to pick up their three girls after returning home for the 10 day waiting period. We weren’t expecting them to get in for another week or so because of all of the mess with the volcano and the airlines. They are a very nice couple from Georgia who were part of the same hosting program that we did.
We had dinner tonight at a place that Natalia found called “Salvador Dali”, which was really very good. They had pictures of Cuba and Old Havana, and the food was excellent. The menus were in English, which is always a treat since we don’t need Natalia to translate it for us. We made it back to the hotel and turned in for the night early.

Day 10

Tuesday, April 20, 2010. Today was quite a long and productive day for Natalia. She had to take a taxi back and forth a couple of times to the birthplace of the girls so that she could get the separation documents notarized, processed, and filed.
While she was gone, we went and hung out with the girls at the orphanage. We did not see Aylona today. The amount of children here is heartbreaking. There are 203 kids, ranging from ages 3 to 16. They are all very curious about us and stare a lot before being ushered away by one of the caretakers.
We met Irina, who is here to pick up her son after her 10 day waiting period. She is from Russia, and her little boy is just a doll! We had dinner at a place called “Eden” with Natalia, Irina, and her facilitator, Sergei. It was a nice place with decent food, and they had one English menu that helped quite a bit.

Day 9

Monday, April 19, 2010. This morning, our appointment at the Inspector’s office was at 9:50am. Natalia prepared us beforehand to be asked some questions, but they didn’t ask us anything. We showed our passports and exchanged our SDA Letter of Permission for the Regional Letter of Permission (to “meet” the girls). It took about 20 minutes, and then we took a taxi with the Inspector and our translator to the orphanage.




waiting outside the Inspector's office


As we arrived at the orphanage and got out of the car, we were nearly knocked down by Kristina. She had been outside with friends and saw us getting out of the car but did not recognize us until she noticed Jerry’s Tommy Bahama shoes. She came running up and attacked us with hugs and kisses. They had not been expecting us until tomorrow and were worried that the volcano may delay our arrival. A little girl ran inside to pull Nastya out of class, and she came running out a few moments later yelling, “Mommy!! Papi I love you!” It was quite the happy reunion.

We all went inside into the Reception area of the Orphanage and waited for our meeting with the Director. We stood around and caught up with each other for about 20 minutes, then the Inspector left. Her job is to stay the first day until she deems that an appropriate contact has been established. For most families that are just meeting their child, this could be all day. Obviously, this wasn’t the case with us and she left almost immediately.

We sat around with the girls for a while before they were ushered out to get medicals done, and we had our meeting with the Orphanage Director. She is a very nice lady, very polite and obviously cares very much about the children. After a long talk with her about the girls’ history, she asked us some questions about ourselves and our family. I think the meeting went very well!

The girls had to get back to class, but we were told that we could come back every day 2-5pm and visit with them. We left for a while and came back later. The girls’ older sister (Alona) was there, so we met her, took some pictures, and showed her pictures of our home and family. We saw Nastya and Kristina’s room (very small, 5 beds to a room, but nice). We left at 5pm and went to the Notary to get paperwork and the clock started. Tomorrow is more of the same.

Day 8

Sunday, April 18, 2010. We awoke at 5am today so that we could have breakfast and finish packing. We were downstairs and checked out by 6:50 as we saw Natalia and her husband Artom drive up. Boy, these people are punctual!

We were loaded up and on the road by exactly 7am. Driving along, we saw some beautiful countryside. Most of it is farmland, with husbands, wives, and children all tending to the fields by hand. The soil looks very rich, so dark in some areas that it is almost black, and so red in other areas that it looks to be enriched with copper or iron. Natalia was telling us along the way that during Imperialistic Germany, they used to take Ukrainian soil by the truckload to Germany since it is so rich in nutrients.

Some of the houses are very poor, little more than shacks. Others are quite nice by Ukraine’s standards. We have seen hundreds of Soviet-style housing areas, some with outlines of the hammer and sickle on the walls that were partially erased. Underground bunkers line the road every 20 km or so. The roads are quite rough, covered in potholes, and boy does the ride feel like an E-ticket at Disneyland!



As we got closer to Severodonetsk, the land started to change. It became a little bit more hilly and much more industrial. There are factories everywhere- everything from chemical plants to salt mines. Some of them are even surrounded by huge fences with barbed wire and guard towers. We are told that this is because the Soviets used to bring prisoners in to work.



We arrived in Severodonetsk after about 10.5 hrs of driving and checked into our hotel. We paid for a “deluxe” room with a king-sized bed for 450 UKH (100 UKH = appx $12.5 USD). Our breakfast is supposed to be included. We ran into a little issue since we got only 1 bath towel and one hand towel. They told us, “One bed, one towel!” We told them that we had a deluxe room with two people, but they didn’t budge until about 10 minutes of our translator arguing with them. We ran into the same issue with breakfast, “One bed, one breakfast!”. We ended up paying 10 UKH more (about $1.50 USD) and being able to get an extra set of towels and an extra breakfast. This place makes a Motel 6 look like Heaven!

Day 7

Saturday, April 17, 2010. We awoke today with a call from Nastya saying that the Kiev airport is closed and may be cancelling flights due to the volcanic ash cloud coming our way. She is checking all day and will let us know by 6pm if we are delayed or cancelled. It is kind of a drizzly and cold day, so we stayed in room most of the day. We did venture out about 2:30pm for some lunch at the sushi restaurant next door. The “sake” was quite, eh… interesting, and the fish was obviously frozen and defrosted several times before serving. I think the Ukrainians saw sushi restaurants on TV someplace and tried to imitate them, and not very well. *Note to self: do not eat sushi in Ukraine again.



We got the call about 6pm that our flight was delayed until midnight, but that we were entitled to a full refund of the tickets because of the delay. Not wanting to fly at midnight, we decided to get a driver to take us the 10.5 hours to Severodonetsk in the morning. We got a call from Natalia, our in-region translator, who said that she would pick us up at 7am sharp. We ordered in a light dinner again, and got to bed a little early so that we could get a good rest before our journey in the morning.

Day 6

Friday, April 16, 2010. Today, we met up with Nastya and the Nichols and did a little bit of sightseeing. We went to the Monastery of Caves, which was very beautiful and interesting.
















We had lunch at a little place in the park that served traditional Ukrainian food. Luckily, they had a picture menu and we had Nastya with us for any questions. We grabbed a taxi to the SDA and were there by 3pm. Unfortunately, we were waiting outside in the cold until they opened the gates at 4:30, but we met an interesting couple from Ft Wayne while standing in line. We picked up our Letter of Permission and Dossier with no problems. The packet is a little bit primitive by our standards- they are all original documents, and instead of staples or clips holding them together, it is all hand sewn through the middle. They tell us this is to make sure that nothing is altered, added, or taken out. We went back to our hotel, took a nap, and then ordered dinner to our room. It was a relaxing but productive day.

Day 5

Thursday, April 15, 2010. This morning, we had our appointment at 9am at the Adoption Center. They asked us a few questions, such as why we want to adopt the girls, how we met them, and a little bit about our family. We explained about the Hosting Program and how we fell in love with the girls. We showed them a picture of the family all together (only missing Louis), which I think the lady really enjoyed seeing. She told us to return tomorrow between 3 and 5pm in order to pick up our Referral letter which grants us permission to see the girls in the orphanage on Monday.


Kiev