The wisdom of retail therapy

It is a rainy Tuesday here in Kiev. As I'd indicated in past posts, at this point there is nothing to do but begin our wait for our third appointment.

Our apartment is located near the center of Kiev. Unlike our previous apartment located on a quiet side street, this apartment is on a very BUSY street. If we need to cross to the other side of the street, there is no such thing as waiting for traffic to clear. Its a matter of waiting for traffic to come to a complete standstill and then squeezing our overfed American bodies in between the cars. Dangerous? Maybe. But necessity is the mother of innovation (my sayings are creative, aren't they?).



Dr. Shirley has created an antidote for high anxiety. It is called "Retail Therapy" and certain to combat the kind of suffering that we are experiencing as we speak.






We thought of this antidote back in Khmelnytsky. When we first got to the Khmelnytsky orphanage, the first thing Shirley noticed were the fancy Dolce and Gabbana handbags that the orphanage workers were carrying. Shirley is pretty good at spotting fakes and this handbag looked like the real McCoy. Naturally that made her think "what kind of money do these orphanage employees make" and "where can I apply for a job"? It wasn't long after our visit when the mystery was solved. Shirl came across a shop that sold these Dolce and Gabbanas by the hundreds. Their $30 price tags are missing too many zeros to be genuine D&Gs. But these were by far the best fakes Shirl had ever seen. They looked authentic, right down to their Dolce and Gabbana label and number. Any handbag with a counterfeit label and number like this would be illegal to sell in The States. But they're plentiful here. The point is, for those of you who are in the same boat as us and are sitting in Kiev wondering what to do while weathering Ukrainian red tape, head out and buy all of your friends and family back home, a collection of Dolce and Gabbana handbags. You'll be the most popular girl on the block!!





Other than a brief but gleeful shopping spree, our day was just as eventless as the next several days are bound to be. We paid our homage to the St. Michael Church where we lit candles, offered prayers and gave money to the poor; I still love the fact that - upon receiving our gift - the first reaction of the Ukrainian homeless people is to offer Thanks to God for their humble gift from us. The Church is less than a 5 minute walk from our apartment so in all likelihood we'll be going there every morning. That Church visit was followed by some minor grocery shopping. We also managed to get our high speed internet back. Its a relief to know that we don't have to spend the next several days either jury rigging a phone line or going to a high point in our building to try to pirate someone else's wireless internet.

Shirley started reading a book. "The Stand" by Stephen King. Even the small mass market paperback is well over 2 inches thick. At least that will keep her busy for the next few nights.

We're wishing the best to our friends in blog-land who are either waiting for their next appointments at home or tangled into some kind of bureaucratic situation here in Ukraine. All of these people have their own unique story to tell. And I am afraid to say that it seems as though those of us who are doing our adoptions this month, are not having happy endings.

We would also like to wish those from the Eastern Orthodox Church, a happy March 25th. In the Greek Orthodox Church, March 25th is a very significant day. The commemmoration is twofold. First of all, March 25th is Greek Independance Day. After nearly 400 years of suffering under Muslim rule, March 25, 1821 is the day that the Greeks won their independance from the Ottoman Turks. Greeks were once again free to be Greeks which included worship in their Christian Churches without Radical Islamists persecuting the Greek "infidels" (doesn't sound like much has changed). But more important, March 25th is what the Orthodox Church refers to as "The Annunciation". Falling exactly 9 months before Christmas, March 25th is the day that the Virgin Mary was visited by the Archangel Gabriel and given the news that she is to give birth to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Lk 1; 26-38). Our Church in Columbus is named after this event so you could say that today is our Parish's nameday (http://www.greekcathedral.com/). The Greek name for this holiday is "Evangelismos". So we would like to wish a happy nameday for anyone with the baptismal names of Evan, Evangelos, Evangeline and Evelyn. I know that there are many other male and female English variations of Evangelismos but there is no way to list them all here. So bombarding me with "correction" emails isn't neccesary at this time. Regardless, Happy March 25th to everyone!!!

As always, thanks for all blog comments, emails and phone calls. Its always nice to know that we're not alone.

God bless....
Steve