Saturday March 29. Happy Birthday Mom.

Hi,

First things first, I want to send a Happy Birthday wish to my mother in New Jersey. 39th birthday, isn't it? We won't say which Anniversary of her 39th Birthday though. Regardless, Happy Birthday Mom!!!! Enjoy the dinner that I am sure my sisters are preparing for you. Let me guess - its probably your favorite. Roast Lamb and potatoes.


It was a beautiful day here in Kiev. Warm enough to remove the lining from my London Fog coat and even then I had to keep the coat unzipped during our walks. Since its the weekend Shirley and I knew there would be no news regarding an SDA appointment so we just relaxed today. We cruised up and down our street and checked out the shops. Then for lunch we came back to the apartment and watched "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" over cheese, crackers and kielbasa. Do we lead exciting lives or what!?!?



We met another American couple, Tonya and Joe http://eastmanadoption.blogspot.com/ , for dinner at TGIFs. They are also here on an international adoption odyssey. We met in blog-land and apparently each of our blogs are being followed by the families of the other; I've already enjoyed receiving personal emails from members of their family. I can't stress enough how much the four of us enjoyed American food and how much we enjoyed being able to converse with each other without needing an interpreter. Just hearing English was great; whenever Joe or Tonya said a word with the letter "V" in it, it was nice to hear the letter "V" instead of the letter "W". Most of all it was nice to be able to relate to someone going through the same experience that we're going through. For three hours we swapped stories on all topics ranging from problems at the airports to SDA disinformation through referrals gone bad. We compared notes on accomodations, orphanages, the craziest traffic, the grossest bathrooms, and laughed out loud about turning white while sitting in the passenger seats of cars going around curves at 90mph. Both Shirley and Tonya enjoyed the fact that they felt totally at ease walking down a street in Kiev without having to put on makeup with a paint roller, or to dress in tight shirts, leather pants, mini skirts or stiletto heels. You name it, we covered it. We also talked about our families and how bringing children into our homes is going to change our lives. It was a fun three hours and its too bad that our apartments are across town from each other. We will be leaving our apartment on Tuesday; the same day that Joe and Tonya will be leaving Kiev altogether. We wish them well; they're in our prayers.



I expect tomorrow to also be a quiet day. Not sure how much there will be to post. Hope our dull lives aren't putting you all to sleep.


Thanks for reading. Take care....

Steve

Friday March 28

Hello everyone,

We received a telephone call early this morning and thought that maybe it could be exciting news regarding an SDA appointment. But it wound up being an eviction order to move to a new apartment. We had less than an hour to pack and be out. Nothing like ample notice, eh? I guess when it is to their advantage, people move fast here in Ukraine. But Shirl and I have become such experts at living on the go, that we were not only packed but sitting around sipping tea when the driver showed up to haul us and our belongings away. What took you so long, Ivan!?!?

Our new apartment is more towards the South but still considered "downtown" Kiev. Anytime we relocate, one of our first priorities has always been to find a grocery store. Here we managed to find something called "Mega Market" that resembles a Walmart. Not only is there an ample grocery supply on the first floor but go to the 2nd floor and we can shop for other neccessities - like replacing our worn out socks. We'll take Mega Market over those little convenience stores that are always running out of stuff or "forgetting" to give you your change (another story for another time).

We are fairly near an opera house and "Republikansky" sports complex. Our street is literally lined with shops. We even have a fresh produce stand sitting right outside of our building; very uplifting since fresh fruit is something the local convenience stores always run out of.

A favorite hobby of Shirley's is window shopping, she always liked the fact that browsing is free. This street has plenty of shops for clothes, purses and shoes; needless to say that this locale will keep her busy.

There is a car dealership that sells Jaguars right here close to our building. Car fanatics would be in 7th heaven right now. Jaguars are beautiful cars but right now I'd settle for our Kia back home.

Within a few hours of moving into our new abode, our facilitator paid us a visit. He has been faithfully going to the SDA every day and camping out in front of their office. Here in Ukraine, the saying "the squeaky wheel gets the oil" is like the Cardinal Rule. Our guy knows how to play the system; he has been doing international adoptions since the 1990s. Unfortunately there is again no news but he continues to be confident that we will have an appointment soon and that the selection of referrals will improve. Shirley is still steamed at being lied to last week by that previous SDA official that sent us on our wild goose chase, then just shrugged her shoulders and smiled when confronted about it. Any government official back home would have been fried after doing what this girl did to us.

Because we were in the mood for pizza we found a nearby Italian restaurant for dinner. They offered menus in either Russian or Italian so we took our chances with the Italian. I never thought that reading Italian would seem so easy but after weeks of trying to decipher Russian hieroglyphics, Italian was a snap. We wanted mushroom pizza but that meant guessing that "funghi" was Italian for mushrooms. Our waitress, although perky and pleasant, spoke vitually no English so there was no point in even asking her. Rather than take a chance we just went for pizza with "salami" (asking for "pepperoni" may bring you a pizza full of banana peppers). Salami was pretty fail-safe. I never realized how many Italian words have been assimilated into the English language.

This afternoon we made telephone contact with another family looking to adopt from Ukraine. We've both been following each others' blogs. They came to Ukraine shortly after we did and have been experiencing the same Ukrainian run-around that we have. They just returned to Kiev and will be here until at least Tuesday. We've located our mutual apartments on a map and they are very close to where our last apartment was; too bad we're still not there. Wouldn't it be exciting if we could get together and share war stories!! We've both had cravings for American food and TGIFs is roughly in between us. I guess that figuring out where to meet is a no brainer.
Since its now the weekend there will be no news regarding an SDA appointment. But I'll try to post daily anyway. Hope all is well out there in blog-land.



Steve

Thursday March 27

Greetings from Ukraine,


Once again there is no additional word regarding our next appointment. As I've said in my posts all week, it would surprise me if we got an appointment this week. While we remain hopeful day by day, my prediction is that a 3rd appointment will occur sometime during the 2nd half of next week. I just hope that the selection of referrals is an improvement.


Shirley is nearly halfway through her book "The Stand" by Stephen King. That is a very thick book. But when people have a lot of time to kill, no book is too thick!


During our daily walk to the St. Michael Church today we got hit with a snow squall. I haven't seen a good snow squall since living in Boston nearly 10 years ago. Snow squalls are pretty interesting; going from sunny to whiteout then back to sunny again in only a matter of minutes. There were groups of kids at the Church on what looked like some type of a field trip. When the squall hit the kids used the snowstorm to "escape" from their teachers and run amok. The teachers had to spend some time after the squall rounding up the escapees. Kids will be kids.


We've been running low on groceries and have yet to find anything resembling a decent grocery store near our new apartment. The closest store is some kind of a liquor store that also sells a limited supply of foodstuffs at an inflated price. Shirley figured that she'd had enough and decided to trek to the grocery store near our former apartment. Trust me, that is one heckuva walk from here. First of all she was sick of the rudeness of these liquor store people and besides, she is going stir crazy and wanting to stretch her legs. It took her some time but she finally returned with a small stock of groceries that should carry us through the weekend.



One "neccessity" that we've been missing out on is cereal. Shirley is a big cereal lover. After some searching, she came across this Russian version of Fruit Loops. Here in Ukraine these kinds of cold cereals are somewhat pricier, at least compared to prices of the other more native foods. This is a small box and is probably good for 4 or 5 bowls of cereal.



Ukrainians eat a lot of oatmeal and this small package to the right is what oatmeal looks like here. This package cost less than $1.20 and God only knows how many bowls of oatmeal we'll get out of it. We have yet to finish our first bag of oatmeal from when we first got to Kiev a few weeks ago. It is so easy to prepare; it takes two minutes to fix a bowl of oatmeal with chopped bananas.



Shirley and I eat a lot of tuna fish at home. We were relieved to see that tuna is plentiful in Ukrainian stores. These are what cans of tuna fish look like here. Shirley bought these some time ago so don't even ask me the price. She did say that it was very reasonable. Just like in English the word "Tuna" begins with the letter "T". But don't ask me to even try pronouncing it.







Thats all for now. As I said, there is nothing new happening her except trying to be domestic and keeping sane. As always, thanks for the comments and the emails.


Steve

Wednesday March 26

Greetings from Ukraine,

No further news regarding our SDA appointment. Not all that surprising since we just "officially" applied yesterday. Our facilitator did say that he is going to be insistent with the SDA regarding the referrals. If there are no files to be shown other than the usual referrals of sickly invalids, then he wants our appointment postponed. While we're going antsy with waiting for a new appointment, we would rather wait then be sent on another wild goose chase.

We did our morning ritual of going to St. Michael Church, offering a prayer(s), lighting a candle(s), and then giving money to the poor on our way out. We did stop into the gift shop and saw some beautiful, hand painted religious icons. Their price tags reflected their quality and ranged from $100 to $200. There were some smaller ones behind a glass display that prevented me from checking out their price; I would guess their prices at somewhere around the $50 mark. For hand painted icons thats actually not a bad price. They were beautiful but in addition to our promise to cut back on expenditures, we simply don't have the luggage space for more things. Needless to say, Shirl and I did not purchase anything. We bought some of our own icons from home for our apartment and earlier in our trip, we did purchase a small icon during our first stay in Kiev a few weeks ago. But that icon is SMALL. Small enough to fit into my jacket pocket if it can't fit into our suitcases.

For the fun of it, Shirley composed a list of the 10 things that we miss most from home and asked me to put them in the blog. In backwards order, they are...

10. Food variety. If you're cooking for yourselves, then get used to eating the same thing day after day. Grocery stores often run out of one product or another. For several days, no eggs. The next several days, no meat. The next several days, no something else. And so on, and so on...

9. Free bags at the grocery store. All grocery stores have a bring-your-own-bag policy. If you don't have any bags, sure they'll let you use theirs. For a fee.

8. Yukon. We MISS our 70LB pup!! Our house/dog sitter back home says that Yukon spends a lot of hours staring out of the windows at the front of the house. Guess he misses us too. He gets lots of hugs at our homecoming!!

7. Ice Cubes. What is it about this place and ice cubes? They just aren't any anywhere. All drinks at restaurants are served lukewarm. And I don't care who says what, lukewarm diet coke is gross. You can ask for ice in your drink at a restaurant if you don't mind the locals looking at you like YOU are the freak.

6. Peanut Butter. There are plenty of peanuts, but we've yet to see peanut butter anywhere. And we've looked for it at some pretty sizeable supermarkets in downtown Kiev.

5. Cooking shows. I mean real cooking shows where the chefs actually move around in the kitchen and show you what they're cooking and how they're cooking it. Ukrainian cooking shows are more like a group of women sitting around a table, reading off a list of ingredients for a recipe. Doesn't exactly get you psyched for whatever it is they're cooking today.

4. Coffee mugs. Seems like the coffee here is served in these very small tea cups. They more resemble glorified shot glasses than something to drink coffee from. At 8am I want COFFEE!! If I can't have it in a nice size mug then just bring me the whole urn!!

3. Clothes dryers. They don't exist in this country. Ukrainians wash their clothes in washing machines that leave the clothes soaking wet due to a pretty worthless spin cycle. Then they hang the clothes out to dry. At this time of the year there is no point in hanging them outside. We now have a living room full of drying clothes.

2. Soft towels. Towels that are hung to dry after being washed wind up feeling more like cardboard than towels.

and the final thing that we miss is.....(drum roll please)....

1. Toilet paper. I mean real toilet paper. TP here more resembles the newsprint we used to color on in grade school. And if being like newsprint isn't bad enough, you at least have to remember to carry around your own supply of newsprint wherever you go. Whether its a bathroom in a restaurant, a Church, an apartment, etc etc., chances are the bathroom is out of TP.


Personally I was never much of a David Letterman fan. But his format does well to prove the point.

Hope all is well. God bless....



Steve

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

We're back in Kiev

Hi folks,

Well there have been no developments since our last post. This is just to let you all know that we made it back to Kiev in one piece. Our new apartment is literally within a 2 minute walk of the beautiful St. Michael Church that I've uploaded so many pictures of in previous posts. For sure we'll be there quite often.

There is really nothing new to report about our weekend other than the already obvious news; we rejected the referral for the two sisters. Once we had made our decision there really wasn't a whole lot to do in Khmelnytsky other than wait out the weekend until Monday morning when we could go to the Regional Inspector's office, obtain our neccesary paperwork and then return to Kiev to apply for our 3rd appointment. We did find out an interesting tidbit of info from the Inspector. Now if you remember, the SDA had told us that this referral for the two girls had never been rejected before. According to them we were going to be the first to see them. But according to the Regional Inspector, the two girls had been visited and rejected by families at least 5 times in the past. FIVE. Now I can see if the mistake was by a count of one but five? I smell a rat. In fact, I smell a herd of rats!!

We did have an interesting incident during the ride home today. About halfway to Kiev, our driver apparently got busted for speeding. After being ordered to pull over, a police officer came to the driver side window and showed our driver a radar gun. I think it said something like 146kph. Thats about 90mph. A 20+ minute argument ensued with both police officers looking like they were getting pretty irate with having their authority challenged by some guy who acted like he couldn't care less; our driver actually looked like he was laughing and mocking at the cops which I am sure didnt ease their tempers. Some of the "trialogue" got a little redundant - like when the three men would spend several consecutive seconds yelling "...nyet....Da.. ..nyet....Da.. ..nyet...Da..." - it reminded me of arguments between little kids when they rant "...did not....did to...did not...did to...did not...did to...". At one point they got our driver out of the car and took him to the police car. It looked like he was talking to someone on the phone. But the driver came back, started the car and drove off, acting as if the whole thing was more of a nuisance than anything else. In retrospect I wish that I'd've used my camcorder to record at least part the conversation and then have someone translate it to me. I would have loved to have been able to follow along. Judging from the voice tones, I am sure that at times the "poetry" got quite colorful!!

For the next two days, Shirley and I will actually have a nice apartment close to the center of the city. We have no idea how much this is going to cost us. Our facilitator knows that our resources are dwindling so I don't think he would set us up in a place with the price tag of a penthouse.


For dinner Shirley and I walked to a nearby McDonalds. Normally back home we don't go anywhere near the place. But we are so homesick and tired of being jerked around by this country, that we found McDs to be very "therapeutic".


And thats all there is to tell now. We were supposed to meet with our facilitator after we got back to Kiev but at the time of this writing it is nearly 9pm local time. Past us old folks' bed time. I am sure that all paperwork can be submitted early in the morning. Then we start another wait for another appointment. We were promised that this time the wait should be more like 1 week. I hope so. One way or the other we just want this to end.


To all of our "new" friends out there in blog-land, thank you for introducing yourselves and following our story. We've been following most of yours as well. To all of our family and old friends, thank you for your undying love, prayers and support. We couldn't get through this quagmire without it!!


God bless you all....



Steve