Tuesday April 1

Happy Tuesday,


I was going to open this blog with an announcement that we were coming home with a sibling group consisting of dekatuplets. But the wife-boss axed that April Fools joke right away. Oh well...


It was exactly one month ago today that we first arrived in Ukraine to start our adoption odyssey. For those of you who remember this blog's first in-country post, we seemed to land within a tornado of chaos. After that we were hoping that our adoption would become smooth sailing after a rough beginning. Boy were we wrong! While we're still hopeful (although not holding our breath) that we'll come home with our daughter, it is a little depressing to realize that we are no further along in our adoption process today than we were when we first landed in Kiev on March 1st.


It was a brisk day today in Kiev and the lining had to get zipped back into my London Fog overcoat. That and the pullover hat got some good use during our walks. Our facilitator had other obligations and so could not focus on our case as he has been able to during the previous several days. We expected this and so we spent the day relaxing and touring.


We still have the same apartment in this busy corner of Kiev but we will be leaving for a different apartment tomorrow afternoon (we actually got more than an hour of notice to pack…YAYYY!). We were hoping to catch a show at the Operetta before we left; Shirley checked their schedule and found that "Romeo and Juliet" will be playing at the Opera House all week. It would have been perfect; since a ballet is all dance and no dialogue we actually could have gone to something we could understand without needing an interpreter. We were looking forward to a nice night out and I suppose that we can always cab it from another part of the city. I am sure that we'll be in Kiev through the weekend.


Playing "Musical Apartments" like this is definitely getting on our nerves. As is the case with most major cities in the States, apartments are a hot commodity here in Kiev. Especially in a happenin' section of town like where we are now. It’s a pain in the neck to have to keep relocating but some of these apartments have had reservations made months in advance. We’ll do whatever we have to do. So long as we’re in Kiev, this constant shuffle is the way its going to be.


Shirley and I walked around the city this afternoon for some more exploration. We ran into a place that had “Rock and Roll Café” written on it in Cyrillic letters. It also had a graphic of Mick Jaggar’s tongue; the universal symbol of rock and roll. I suppose that this is the Ukrainian version of the Hard Rock Café. Shirley thought it was so cute and laughed her way across the street, the whole time pronouncing the English phonetics "Pok n Pop". In retrospect I am now sorry that we didn’t go into the place just to check it out and have a drink. It would have been worth at least several indoor pictures.



Right next to the "Pok n Pop" Café is the beautiful Shevchenko Park, named after Taras Hryhorovich Shevchenko, a Ukrainian folk hero. The park is roughly the length and width of a city block. To any other families adopting from Ukraine, when you return to Kiev for your final paperwork I'd recommend taking the kids here if your apartment is close enough. As you can see from the pics, Shevchenko park will keep kids occupied for a long time. Not to mention that it will be a nice spring day outing for yourselves. We passed this park several times during the past week and it always seems to be packed with people. Today’s drizzly cold obviously kept a lot of the crowds indoors which is why the park looks deserted in these pictures. I thought it ironic that this park named after a Ukrainian hero like Shevchenko would be within walking distance of a statue of Vladimir Lenin – the symbol of the communists who were among the worst of the Ukrainian oppressors. Shevchenko was a Ukrainian poet and artist but was also known as a Ukrainian Nationalist whose life of captivity under the Russians became a symbol of oppressed Ukrainians in the Russian Empire. Nowadays Shevchenko represents the liberation of the Ukrainian nation.


Want a quick bite to eat or a quick cup of coffee? How about stopping in at “MISTER SNACK”. Yes - just as I'm sure with most of you readers, the first time that we passed this place we thought that it read “Mister chek”. I figured it to be a place having to do with money; either currency exchange or else a place to cash checks, like what we have back home in the States. But we did a double take when we walked past the windows and saw people sitting at booths, shoveling food into their faces. It took a little time but then we finally realized that “CHEK” is Russian phonetics for the English word “snack”. Wow, were we thrown for a loop. Shirley and I may have three college degrees between the two of us but in this country we’re as illiterate as they come.






We'll keep you posted regarding our progress. Thanks for reading, commenting and emailing. I've also begun setting up links to the blogs of other families that are involved in adoptions, so that you can read their stories as well. Seems like every adoption is its own unique odyssey. But I do want to say that if any of these adopting families do NOT want our blog showing a link to their page, fire me off an email and the link will disappear.



God bless...




Steve