We're baaaack....

Hi Everyone,

I didn't realize how "popular" that my posts had become until hearing the deluge of complaints for non-postage. I suppose that its about time to update our "fan club" with our current sitution on adoption as well as life in general. It still took awhile to get to this site to be able to post. But anyway...for now at least we're back.

Shirl and I have more or less recovered from our Ukrainian disaster. Or at least put it this way, we've gotten on with our lives. Dwelling over that kind of failure can lead to a standstill and stagnation of life. We're not going there. But at the same time, we can't act as though it never happened. Its just like a funeral; we go through a mourning process and then recover. But even though life goes on, the scars will always be there.

At the end of our last post I indicated that we were considering "childrens' services" wthin Ohio. Since that post Shirley and I have already finishd the required classroom "training" for the "FOSTER TO ADOPT" program in Franklin County, Ohio. To Shirley's surprise, I actually found the training interesting. Many issues were dealt with - a lot of them very pertinent to the issues that adoptive parents need to deal with in international orphans. We also are required to be trained in both CPR and FIRST AID and of course comes (another) the required home study. Afterwards we're put onto a "list" of adoptive households. Then comes....who knows...

"FOSTER TO ADOPT" is not quite the same thing as adoption. In this program, we are required to follow the lines of thinking of the County government which is to achieve the goal of reuniting a child with the biological parent. Only after a certain period of time can the foster parents "adopt" a child that is living in their home. During that period of time, the child can be taken out of the foster home if the County determines that the biological parent is capable of supporting the child. Or at least if the biological parent should be given another chance. Interesting....

Meanwhile we are doing well and are currently on vacation at the Jersey Shore with my family. We've brought our stacks of books and beach chairs and plan on a week of lots of vegetation and no responsibilities. Ain't life great??

We're finally back

God bless America

Home Sweet Home

DELTA AIRLINES got us home from Kiev relatively quick. Everything went like clockwork. Hearing English spoken amongst the people surrounding us for the first time in weeks was like music to our ears. I also couldn't help but notice that unlike processing us for the international flight that left New York, here in Kiev just the boarding part from the gate to the plane started almost 2 hours early. All passengers were herded into a small room in between gate and aircraft and spent nearly 90 minutes standing there. I guess that is how an American-based airline deals with the consistent tardiness of Eastern Europeans. Anyone arriving late.....tough.


We only had one three hour layover in New York. Just as well. We needed most of those three hours to get through passport control, baggage claim, customs, and then finally we had to make it to the gate for our connecting flight. Thankfully we had just a little spare time for a quick Burger King fix (2 fish sandwiches + 2 diet cokes = $15. WELCOME TO NEW YAWK!). The overall travel time from our apartment in Kiev to our house in Ohio was a little less than 16 hours. Thats quick compared to other slightly less expensive flights where there would have been more stops as well as switching airlines. I never went for that and always preferred to stay with the same airline; switching always seemed to increase the chances of lost luggage. But even though we opted for the fastest route possible, 16 hours is still a long ride. Long rides mean lots of time to think.


Our return was bittersweet. Of course we're happy to be back. We miss the familiarity of home and family. We miss American efficiency. We do NOT miss being misled by a xenophobic, anti-American government. Nor do we miss spending $80-$100/night for apartments which if you do the math, comes out to more money than the monthly rent paid for an apartment in Manhatten. But despite the fact that we're happy to be back, our homecoming was empty and painful. When we got home we were greeted by my inlaws. The second they laid eyes on each other, both Shirley and her Mom burst into tears. We went back to our house, were warmly greeted by our dog, had some belated birthday ice cream cake, and were then left alone to unpack our several suitcases and commence downtime for our emotional recovery.


I can only compare what we're feeling to the mourning associated with a funeral. No the pain isn't nearly equivelant to the loss of a loved one - nothing can equate to that. But just as when mourning a death, the sorrow comes in waves. One minute you're at peace and then next you're crying. I can't count how many times during our flight, I'd glance over to my wife to say something only to see her staring out the window with tears streaming down her face. All of the pondering, the 20/20 hindsight and the "what if's" become obsessive. We were robbed of the dream of coming home with a child. We've been at the airport when others have come home with their children from abroad and have shared their happines. And at the risk of sounding selfish, we were ready for our turn. Not just the homecoming at the airport but all of it. My parents have been given three grandsons by my two sisters and I couldn't wait to visit New Jersey and proudly parade their new granddaughter - my daughter - around the family. I knew that she would have been everyone's Princess. For now though, its still only a dream.


Shirley and I have by no means given up hope for children. We have had discussions with both America World as well as other Agencies concerning adoptions from countries that aren't Ukraine but for the time being we have no desire to look into anything international. We have checked out other options though. Since coming home we've already contacted children's services in different counties across Ohio as well as a few neighboring states. Their workers sounded thrilled and even surprised that we're willing to consider children - other than infants - that need to be placed. Mostly healthy children or children with minor issues; children that we would have gladly accepted had we seen these types of referrals in Ukraine. The children services people are ready to help us with procedures and paperwork. They are very appreciative and encouraging and although we plan to stay in downtime mode for at least the foreseeable future, this is definitely one option that we'll be exploring. I know that I am making the children's services path seem easy; social worker friends of ours have warned us that this road can also get a little bumpy. But compared to the quagmire that we've just been through, anything by comparison will seem like a Church picnic. I am still determined to parade my daugher through our Greek ghetto in New Jersey. That will one day become a reality!


Despite the sad ending to our experience, I still can't help but have a little fun with you all. In case anyone can't tell after the past 6 weeks worth of posts, I am a camera buff. I am always clicking away because I love preserving memories. In fact let me put it this way, when it comes to the camera I am a pest. I've loved the camera since taking my first picture. It was back in 19?? when my Mom was pregnant with my youngest sister who is now age....(ahem...I'd better not say). Anyhow, to those still in Ukraine finalizing their adoptions, I thought that I'd post a few pics of home to remind you of what will be waiting for you after the big homecoming. Here is a pic of the washer and dryer at our house. Yes...A DRYER!! Remember them? To anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, Ukrainians don't believe in dryers. They believe in washing clothes and then hanging the wash out to dry. At this time of the year, there is no place to hang clothes except in the living room. And the low quality spin cycle of most washers there means that your dripping clothes are going to be decorating the living room for quite a while - at least a day. Of course one option is to just not wash clothes. I have a feeling that this is the option many choose to go with. It only took a few days for Shirley to notice that people were wearing the same thing day in and day out. I guess when you think about it, not washing clothes is the economical way to go.

Here are a few other pics of some familiar sites. McDonalds, KFC and Wendy's (Wendy's originated in Ohio, so I had to include that one in the KFC pic). And lets not forget good ole Tim Hortons. The best hot coffee around. Beats the battery acid that we were drinking for 5+ weeks (even I had to put cream in it). And yes, Tim Horton's donuts are always fresh. Not like those week-old buttered rolls that can be thrown through a wall. If you're from a part of the USA that has no Tim Hortons, you could say that they're Ohio's version of Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme. Regardless, its good stuff.

Again, thanks for all of the comments left on the blog. Thanks for all of your compassion. Thanks for the personal emails. Thanks, thanks and thanks. I can't thank you all enough. You've been great with all of the support. And I will continue to post as well as to read the blogs of others.


Be well and God bless...





Steve

Thursday April 10

Hi all,


I hadn't realized that so many days had passed since my last post; it took a distress call from my mother in law pleading "please write something - our phone is ringing off the hook" that reminded me I was overdue. I apologize for keeping everyone in the dark.




To give you a complete picture of what happened on Monday, I'll actually need to go back to Friday and fill you in on some details. Some of this may seem redundant but I'm just going to tell the whole story. On Friday afternoon our facilitator had a meeting with the SDA who told him that they intended to deny us a 3rd appointment. This was to adhere to some law passed back in October 2007 stating that no foreign family could be granted more than two SDA appointments for an international adoption. Despite the fact that many families have been granted 3rd appointments since October 2007 - the current backlog of those looking for new appointments is now so great that commencing law enforcement on this particular ruling NOW seems like a convenient quick fix for the SDA.




Later on Friday our facilitator came to our apartment (yes, just as we were having cake for my birthday) to fill us in on the SDA decision. He also suggested that we go home, update our dossier and come back "when things got better". Our reaction was immediate; no chance! We made it clear that when we go home, we go home for good. Judging from the expression on his face he obviously didn't expect this to be our answer. He tried convincing us otherwise but we weren't buying it. For one thing we don't believe that "things" will ever get better here; the Ukrainian system is in a self-induced spiral and these people have only themselves to blame. Besides, we've gotten nothing but jerked around by this country from Day #1 and at this point we're sick of being here. The thought of having to actually come back turns our stomaches. He finally gave up with the "go home and come back later" idea and then proposed that we meet with the SDA ourselves. They have open hours on Monday at 11am-1pm. This time slot is for parties with issues or questions.




If you remember from our weekend posts, Shirley and I were at peace with whatever the outcome was going to be. What I never said in the posts was that barring a miracle, our Ukrainian adoption project was now dead in the water. But we also knew that we weren't going down without a fight. So we psyched ourselves up for war on Monday morning.




We arrived at the SDA on Monday and despite getting there 30 minutes before 11am, there were still 4 groups of people in line ahead of us. The meetings got started by about 11:15 which is actually "early" here. The first four groups were in and out of that office in 20 minutes and then came our turn. 30 minutes later we were still in that office arguing our case. That SDA lady wasn't budging on her position but neither were we. Eventually she said something to the effect that "she will look into it further and have a final decision made by the end of the day". In other words, her mind had already been made up and now she was trying to shoo us out of her office and get to the next person in line. But it was still another 15 minutes or so before we left. I guess Ukrainians aren't used to dealing with a stubborn German woman and a stubborn Greek gorilla.




I still run details of that meeting through my head. It really was a farce; I suspected the SDA had dug itself into such a deep hole - that their only solution was to try to get as many families like us flushed out of their country as possible. What was somewhat irritating was that a lot of the facts presented by the SDA lady were twisted around to make it look as though everything was our fault. The one part of the meeting that most stands out in my mind is when this woman looked Shirley straight in the eye and told her that she isn't prepared for - nor does she know how to deal with - health issues. Remember, Shirley is an RN (Registered Nurse) with 20 years experience. Who did this lady think she was talking to? Some idiot? For a moment I honestly thought that my normally even-keeled wife was going to blow a fuse. The entire accusation was so ridiculous - it would have been like Shirley telling the SDA official how to be the perfect bureaucrat. It became difficult to take anything that came out of this lady's mouth seriously. If it weren't for how sad this was becoming, the whole scene would have been comical. I'll never forget it for as long as I live.




Unsurprisingly, the "final decision" came late Monday afternoon. As expected, we were denied a 3rd appointment. We actually felt relief; the SDA could no longer play god with our lives. The first thing that I wanted to do was to call DELTA AIR, change our flight reservations and blow Dodge ASAP. Yes - after 5 long, useless weeks in an alien land we were finally going home. But we would also be going home empty handed and childless. 200,000 orphans in Ukraine and we were going home childless. No matter how well we make the best of it, the reality is devastating because we've been robbed of a dream. When Shirley and I bought our home back in June 2005, it came with a backyard swingset (the previous owners had 4 kids). How heartbreaking it is to see that after 3 years, the swingset is still not being used. We are sure that there is a reason for all of this. Although we don't know what it is (and trust me, we've tried to figure it out), there is no choice but to accept His will. Anyway, I am looking foreward to being in my own house, surrounded by honest people. I've had my fill of the political types that believe in their own fiction and excel at talking in circles (Please God - after living through all of this - help me to somehow survive our presidential election).




After setting up some arrangements, we'll be back in our own home by the weekend at the latest. GREAT!! If nothing else, I miss my dog Yukon!!




All those reading this blog that are still slugging it out with their adoptions, we truly wish you all the best. As I've said to several families, I hope to see many pics of your homecomings and raising families over the course of many months and years. We are excited for and want to wish the best of luck to Joe and Tonya (http://eastmanadoption.blogspot.com/) and Ruslan and Inna (http://stolyarov.blogspot.com/) whom we've had the pleasure of connecting with while in Ukraine. There are so many more of you that have made contact with us in one way or another. Mentioning every single name in this blog is impossible; there are simply too many to list here. But you know who you are. If any of you ever find yourselves in Central Ohio, give us a call. Our house is your house. I mean that!!!!!!!




I intend to keep making posts to this blog in the near future. After a little downtime at home, we're going to start exploring other options regarding children and I'll keep everyone updated. In case you're also one of the unlucky families who fared as well as we did in Ukraine, I'll let you know which of these other options can work, and how.




Thanks again for reading. And I again apologize for taking so long to post. Didn't realize the passage of time. Hope to chat with many of you on the sidelines. Bye for now and God bless...







Steve

Sunday April 6

Happy Sunday everybody,


This has been a quiet weekend. I’ll even go as far as saying that it was pretty stress free. Although we still do not know what is going to transpire during Monday’s meeting with the SDA, Shirley and I are more relaxed and at peace with ourselves than we’ve been in a long time.


The weather was peculiar and Ohio-ish this weekend. It started off sunny, warm and very spring like. For the first time I saw people rollerblading through the streets of Kiev. I even saw what looked like a handful of young sunbathers although I kinda felt sorry for them. As paste-white as their skin was, my guess is that they’d probably be on fire with sunburn by nightfall (that’s OK, I did the same thing during my younger years). Shortly thereafter the thunderheads rolled in. First the rain started and then came the lightning and thunder. In no time the city sounded as if it was being pounded by artillery. We took shelter in our apartment but noticed that despite the weather the natives moved freely about outside. So we opted to venture out as well.


We took a walk to the nearby St. Vladimir Church (notice the black sky in the background). Our guide book indicated that the Church held daily services at 8am and 5pm. We got there right around the start of the afternoon service. The Church itself is beautiful on the outside and very spacious on the inside. The Church interior is splashed with Orthodox iconography; on all walls as well as the ceilings high above. Orthodox iconography is beautiful and plays a dual purpose. In addition to being decorative artwork they also have a story to tell, usually passages from Scripture. During the majority of Christian history, laypeople were illiterate and unable to read or write. Seeing a highly detailed icon of a Scriptural passage (The Good Samaritan, Jesus’ Baptism, The Resurrection, etc) would be like reading the details of the Bible passage itself. Since today virtually all of us can read and write, we can’t really relate to the early Christian experience. In ancient times, the only methods of Bible Study were either to have an educated somebody read to them, or else to study Christian icons on the walls of the early Churches. The latter was by far more common.


As we approached the St. Vladimir Church, a procession of Church Hierarchs walked by while chanting hymns. It made me think that we chose to go to the Church during some kind of a visitation; possibly a Ukrainian Bishop. The Clerics in the procession were dressed to kill. I was doubtful that the vestments that I saw them wearing were the same ones they'd wear for a normal Church service. The interior was full of people. I tried to get a picture inside the Church but it was pretty dark in there; the interior was mostly lit only by candle light. We lit our candles and stayed for a good part of the Church service. It was very relaxing and refocusing; its always a good thing to step back on occasion and refocus our priorities.


On our way home we walked through the nearby Botanical Gardens. At this time of the year it looked more or less dead and devoid of life although green is beginning to return at ground level. I am sure that come summertime there will be green everywhere. You can see the walkways and paths through the entire area. The Botanical Garden is huge - larger than Shevchenko Park which is just up the street. I’d recommend The Botanical Gardens as another place to bring kids when their legs need stretching. Or if you want a nice peaceful walk on your own.


As may of you know, we will be attending a meeting tomorrow where we’ll be discussing our situation with the SDA. As I mentioned earlier in this post, we don’t know what is going to happen but regardless of the outcome Shirley and I have decided to be at peace with the result. Saturday marked our fifth week here in Ukraine and we are still no closer to completing an adoption than we were when we arrived in Kiev on March 1. It has been an eye-opening experience and not one that I would recommend. If nothing else, it makes me appreciate the USA; that big, beautiful country that my Greek peasant family came to call home nearly a century ago. I have been abroad several times and no matter where I travel, I always appreciate "home" that much more when come back. Ours is the best country in the world!! Granted it is not perfect -no kingdom on Earth is - and any earthly kingdom that professes to be perfect should be avoided. But show me anyplace better than America! Lets put it this way, you may think you're SHOWING me a better place, but you'll never convince me of it.


Thanks again to everyone for reading our blog. Thanks for posting comments and sending emails. Thanks for the phone calls. Not sure when I'll be able to post again but keep checking in and I'll get something out here eventually. God bless......



Steve

Saturday April 5 - the weekend is here

Greetings from Kiev,



Yesterday at about 7pm our facilitator came to our apartment to fill us in on an earlier meeting that he had with the SDA. He also added that on Monday at about noon we're to go to the SDA for a meeting regarding our case. Please note that this is NOT an appointment, only a meeting. There will therefore be no news to report until Monday afternoon at the earliest regarding an appointment. Possibly longer, depending on how quickly the SDA moves.


For whom it may concern - my birthday pizza dinner was nice last night. We found a small pizzeria near the apartment. We had eaten at this particular pizza chain before back when we were in Khmelnytsky around March 21st for our 2nd appointment. So we knew that they had decent pizza and were very reasonable priced. We couldn't decide if we wanted pizza with salami or pizza with "fungh" (mushrooms). So we opted for one of each. It cost about $7 for both. There was no way that Shirley and I could eat both pizzas. Of course that meant plenty of leftovers. Looks like we will be eating my birthday dinner throughout the weekend, or at least through today.



As chaotic as the traffic is in Kiev, it becomes exponentially worse during rush hour which is when we headed home from dinner. The main streets are so clogged; they become essentially parking lots. And don't even try getting out of a side street onto a main street because even when the lights change, there is still traffic blocking the intersection. I simply had to post a couple of pics from Kievian rush hour. When the green "walk" light is lit, it is still neccesary to step around cars blocking the intersection. If you look at the 2nd pic and find the green walk light, just above it you will see a number that I think said 36 (you may have to click on the pic to blow it up). That number is your countdown; you have that many seconds to cross the street. And when that green number gets to zero, you'd better be clear or you may wind up with tire tracks across your feet!





Leave it to my beautiful wife to surprise me with a birthday cake when we got back to the apartment. It was a delicious whipped cream walnut/almond combination - next to ice cream cake anything with nuts reigns supreme! It was a good thing that I had a decent amount of pizza for dinner. Even though I don't have a sweet-tooth, I am a nut for nuts and could have easily eaten the whole dessert by myself. What I loved even more was the price. The cost of the cake was about 8 hrivnas; about $1.60 for the whole thing (less than a cost of a slice of cake at this internet cafe). At first Shirl was embarassed to tell me how much (or should I say, how little) the cake cost but she keeps forgetting that when it comes to money I am a cheapskate's cheapskate. The small cost of that cake made it all the better. Here are a couple of cake pics including the cutter doing a taste-test. And there are cake leftovers too. Guess we don't need to go anywhere else for food this weekend.


Since its the weekend we'll probably take it easy. Not entirely sure what we'll be doing but whatever it is, I'll be posting about it.


As always thanks for the morale support. God bless..


Steve

Friday April 4

Hello everybody,



Currenty the local time is about 3:30pm and our facilitator has yet to check in. We weren't expecting to hear anything about an appointment for this afternoon although knowing that we'd have something lined up for next week would have been nice. At this moment Shirley is carrying our phone and is elsewhere so its always possible that she's gotten a phone call that I am not aware of. But in all likelihood it looks as though we're going to be starting another week not knowing what direction we're headed.


When we are finally called in for our appointment, our intention is to be courteous but firm with the SDA. We certainly don't want to be rude but on the other hand we've been given a greater than average run around. Having accomplished nothing after being here for an entire month is a little difficult to stomach, especially when none of it is through any fault of our own. We have simply come too far to quit now without at least a fighting chance of taking home a little girl. I know that the SDA has good files and they know that they have good files. I also know that Shirley was meant to be a Mom.


As if playing the SDA guessing game isn't enough hassle, this being without internet is really for the birds. Not only do we use the net for blog and email but also for other personal "business". We're limited to 1-2 hours online per day at a Cafe. Personal business easily takes up most of that.


Well I suppose the cat is out of the bag. Yes today is Steve's birthday. We didn't do any sightseeing or touring today so there are no interesting pictures to post. Shirley wants to take me out for a nice birthday dinner and I opted for....you guessed it....pizza. A slice of ice cream cake would have been nice for afterwards but I've noticed that ice cream in general seems to be a rare commodity here. Maybe it has to do with the fact that these people do enough freezing during their winter. Thats OK. I'll just settle for an extra slice of pizza.


Hope everyone is doing well back home. Shirley and I are hanging in there. We appreciate all of the comments and personal emails. Keep 'em coming - its great for morale.


Steve

Thursday April 3rd

Greetings from Ukraine,



I apologize for not posting since Monday. Yesterday our internet wireless modem died on us without cause or warning. Our facilitator promised that either yesterday afternoon or today he would have the modem fixed or replaced and returned to us. It is now nearly dinnertime and still no modem, so Shirley and I opted to find an internet café for dinner and while at it, check email and post to the blog. We found this particular one fairly close; it was empty when we got here and now its jammed. At least for right now we have limited internet access until we get our wireless modem back.
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No word yet about a new appointment. Our facilitator said that today the SDA was very busy with meetings. He even said that the SDA employees were spread so thin, he couldn't see how anyone could have had an appointment today. Needless to say he was unfortunately unable to do any of his daily pestering. But as Scarlett O'Hara once said, "tomorrow is another day".


Yesterday we were moved out of our apartment by our facilitator before noon. Our new apartment is fairly close to our last one – maybe a mile or so away - but in a much quieter corner of town. We are actually closer to the Shevchenko park and the “Pok n Pop” (Rock N Roll) café that I wrote about in my last post. We feel that this apartment is in a better spot. We like being in a much smaller, quieter area without having to defy death everytime we cross the street. On the other hand we only need to walk a half block in either direction to get to one of two major thoroughfares. A grocery store is right on the corner and there are restaurants all over the place if we opt to go out. Our apartment itself is fairly spacious and has two beds compared to the one bed that we’ve had in all of our previous apartments. Interestingly, the spare bed is in the kitchen. Now when it comes to interior decorating I’ve always thought of myself as the clueless type; the right side of my brain has never been the dominant half. Yet even to a fashion invalid like me, having a bed in the kitchen seems to be a little off. On the other hand there is a practical side to this. Anyone for breakfast in bed??


Today was a cold, drizzly day which I am told is typical of Ukraine in the Spring. We went to the The Russian Art Museum that we wanted to go to on Monday but found that it was closed. Our guide book described this Art Museum as being full of art from both Russia and Ukraine. In fact we found only a small fraction of the works of art to be from either of those countries. The admission price was a little higher than the guide book said, probably because they have a special Asian art exhibit showing from March 26th through April 27th. Cost of admission was 16 hrivnas – about $3.20. Not exactly bank busting and well worth the afternoon out of the apartment. Fortunately the Museum had handouts in English describing most of the art. The Asian art exhibit seemed to be pretty heavily patrolled by both ushers and security. First of all we were not permitted to wear our overcoats; we had to check them in at the front. Then during our walk through the exhibit we were always being watched by at least one person. Sometimes more. Shirley noticed that security seemed to focus on only us. I don’t know if the Museum people were paranoid about theft but it would have been pretty tough sneaking a huge vase or a huge rug out of there even if I had my overcoat. Once we got to the regular Museum displays, the “patrols” seem to lighten up (or maybe the Museum people realized how harmless we were). There was a lot of Indian and European Renaissance stuff. There was also a huge selection of art from the Islamic parts of the world. For my own reasons I tend to avoid Muslim anything but even I will admit that the paintings, the Turkish pottery and especially the handmade Persian prayer rugs were all very ornate and beautiful.



Within half a block of the Museum is that Rock and Roll Café that I wrote about in Monday’s post. Since I already posted a picture before, no need to do it again. Shirley and I couldn’t resist checking it out and walked over there just for the sake of going in. The moment we stepped into the place, we were assaulted by Rolling Stones music. In fact that was all we heard overhead during our entire 45 minute stay. Now to an old Stones fan like myself, I didn't mind a bit - and anyone else in Kiev who likes the Stones would love it here. The music included some live versions of classic stones as well as some Russian/Ukrainian remakes; I didn't realize it at first until I heard a female singer saying how "dzumping dzack flash" is a gas gas gassss. The Cafe itself was very Applebee’s-like, not bad but somewhat trendy and definitely pricier than your typical Ukrainian places to eat. Two coffees and two plates of French fries cost about $13 including tip; kinda comparable to prices at a restaurant in the States but if you compare it to two full dinners at a Ukrainian Cafeteria-like place for about $9 total, then its obvious that being trendy is a costly hobby here in Ukraine.


We cruised by a University which was pretty active with students crisscrossing between the buildings (if you can figure out the name of the University, let me know). We figured that a place like a University would b a perfect place to look for an internet café so we began keeping our eyes peeled for anything with a WIFI sign in the window or the word “INTERNET” in Russian (at least we can read that word). Surprisingly we never did see an internet café anywhere near the University. However we did spot an interesting looking nightclub called “MEMPHIS” right by the campus. It was complete with Egyptian graphics outside of the building. We were surprised at the good deal of traffic going in and out of MEMPHIS and all of the “traffic” looked like college students, or at least people around the age of 20. I know that college kids will always be college kids; back home we also frequented the Philadelphia hot spots during my college years. Thing is, even we usually didn’t start THIS early (or at least those of us who graduated didn’t). We saved all of that fun stuff for the weekends which usually started on a Thursday night. Here – it was 3pm on a Thursday afternoon – and these kids were already getting cranked up. Who knows, maybe they’re the ones who have their priorities right and it was us college kids back in The States that had our heads screwed on backwards!


We’ll certainly keep everyone posted with our progress with the SDA and referrals. Our last wait for an appointment took a little over two weeks. Looks like that’s about what it will take this time around too.


Thanks again for reading the blog. God bless….



S&S

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

Monday March 31

Greetings from Ukraine,

We didn't hear from our facilitator until late in the afternoon. We had a feeling that since it was so late, that he had nothing new to tell us. When we finally spoke to him, it was apparent that that was the case. As he has been doing for us off and on during this entire month, he was camped outside of the SDA office today hopeful of a development. He is good at being the squeaky wheel. As of yet we still do not have a new appointment date but he is confident that there will be an appointment soon.

I do not know an exact number of families that are waiting for 2nd or 3rd appointments but I did get the impression that the number was a higher than normal. Both our facilitator and our drivers and interpreters have all said that none of them have seen anything like this scenario before in past years. They've never seen so many rejections. Until recently virtually all families selected a referral during their first appointment with only a handful needing a 2nd. Now families like us that are waiting for 2nds and 3rds seem to be the norm. No one seems to know how Ukraine evolved into such a mess.



For an early afternoon activity Shirley and I opted to take a walk to the nearby Russian Art Museum. Our travel guides described the Museum as a combination of beautiful works of art of both Russian and Ukrainian origin (some works are claimed by both Russia and Ukraine). The Museum is fairly close; a little less than an uphill mile. Unfortunately when we got there we found the Museum closed. Then when we looked at the small print of our Ukrainian guide books we saw that the museum was closed on the last Monday of every month. Wow...how's that for taking a hit from Murphy's Law? We're going to try the Museum again tomorrow or some other time during the week. We're still not sure of when we're going to have to leave this apartment.


One thing that strikes me about our neighborhood is the number of casinos that are within walking distance. Although they can't compare to the sprawling Taj Mahal or Tropicana in Atlantic City, this street is nevertheless littered with casinos. We’ve yet to go into one of them although if we keep going through money the way we’ve been, it may be a temptation that I can’t fight anymore. I used to live an hour away from Atlantic City and actually fared fairly well at their Blackjack tables. On the other hand there were days when AC bled me dry in a matter of minutes.





Finally here is a tribute to the dentists in my family, namely my sister in New Jersey and my Aunt in Seattle. How nice it is to be able to find a dentist office without having to be able to read the language, thanks to signs like this. In fact you could probably be a total illiterate and still know where to go to fix a sore tooth!! Here in Ukraine we may be suffering from boredom or otherwise going nuts but at least the family dentists back home can be assured that our teeth will make it even if we don't.






In case you couldn't tell, its been a quiet day with not much going on. But we expect that any day we'll get a phone call that will send us packing and into some kind of action; that seems to be the way things work around here. We're not sure where we'll be sleeping tomorrow night either. We've seen some new names commenting on our posts and some new names sending emails to my inbox. Thanks to everyone for your support and for being in touch.

Sunday March 30th - Spring forward

Happy Daylight Savings Time,


Early on today we received a telephone call from our facilitator saying that he wanted to meet with us for lunch. We were a little hesitant – because of our dwindling resources we had made a pact with ourselves to eat out less and eat in more - but our facilitator sounded psyched so we went for it anyway. The restaurant that we went to was called “Uncle Sam’s” and as if you couldn’t tell by the name, they also served American food. Nice, thick burgers and homemade onion rings emerged from their kitchen although everything was definitely on the pricey side. It's still "therapeutic" for us to eat American; good morale booster and neurosis retardent. We came back to our apartment in better spirits that we've been in a long time.


You could say that there is quite a bit of action in this part of Kiev; between all of the shops, restaurants, nightclubs, casinos, etc., it is very busy around our apartment. So for the entertainment section of today’s post I thought that I’d upload some pictures of our “neighborhood”. This first pic is of that Italian Restaurant that Shirley and I went to the other day. Their menus were in either Russian or Italian so we chose to give the Italian menus a shot. Because there are so many Italian words that we’ve incorporated into the English language, we were surprised at how easy it was to understand the Italian menu. We did want to order mushroom pizza but weren’t sure how to say “mushrooms” in Italian. There was one menu selection that read something like “pizza con funghi”. That was a little unnerving; did “funghi” mean mushrooms or something scary? We never thought that we'd need an Italian-English dictionary in Ukraine and our waitress could barely speak English so there was no point in even asking her. Rather than take a chance that we'd order pizza cooked with something God-awful, we opted for pepperoni pizza. That brought forward another potential problem; back in Khmelnytsky we learned the hard way that ordering "pepperoni pizza" could get you a pizza topped with something that looked like banana peppers. “Pizza con salami” sounded like a safe bet. So pizza con salami was Thursday night’s dinner. It was pretty tasty too!!



In an earlier post I also told you about the nearby store called “Mega Market”. Its the closest thing that Ukraine has to a Walmart. There is a prepay parking lot that is part of the store property and the store itself takes up most of a city block and has two floors. Floor one is a huge grocery store full of food; the perfect place to go when the cupboard needs to be stocked. Floor two has most everything else that you can find in a Walmart. Shirley and I were in dire need of a few things. Several pairs of our socks had gotten torn apart after all of the walking that we’ve been doing for the past several weeks. We were also tired of drinking coffee and tea in these little tea cups that resembled glorified shot glasses. So HUGE coffee mugs were also on the shopping list. There was also the normal food and water supplies that we’ve been going through a few times a week. It was a nice, fun trip of exploration as well as replenishment. Anyway, here is a pic of the side of the Mega Market at the parking entrance. It was taken right after we raided the place. If you look carefully you can see Shirley hanging out under the rightmost underpass.





There is an opera house less than a 10 minutes by foot from our apartment. Our landlord complained that their ticket prices are outrageous. By “outrageous” he made us think of Opera prices in the States. I believe opera tickets in New York City starts at about $100 (of course it depends on which opera) so we figured that they must be even pricier here. But when Shirley checked out their prices online, she found tickets to be a very doable $5 to $25 each (dependng on the seats). “Outrageous”? Compared to what? A matinee? Anyway, here is a pic of the "Opereta". It is a beautiful building. If possible we would like to see a show although since we may be leaving this apartment around Tuesday or Wednesday, we may not get the chance. And if our next referral is successful, then next month we'll be back to Kiev with a kid(s) in tow. In which case it will be no way Jose to an opera.





Well folks, that's all for today. Thanks again for all of the encouraging comments and emails. I can't say it enough; hearing from people at home means the world to Shirley and I. God bless...

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

2nd Ukrainian adoption referral has also failed

Hi all,





Sorry it took so long for us to post regarding our 2nd referral. There is virtually no high speed internet available anywhere in this city - or at least we haven't found any. We just happened to jury rig a medievel dial up connection from our hotel room. 56kps only gives us limited email access. There is no chance of uploading pictures, video, or doing anything with attachments or links while we're still in this city. But 1990s-internet is better than nothing.




The roads were heavily congested this weekend. On Friday it took us 6 hours to make the normally 4 1/2 hour drive from Kiev to this city of Khmelnytsky. In fact it took one hour just to get out of the city of Kiev. Traffic was THAT bad.





We arrived at Khmelnytsky Friday afternoon and after securing the neccesary government paperwork from the regional inspector, proceeded to the orphanage. Because it was a Friday - a work day that always "unofficially" ends just after lunch - most of the orphanage buildings were virtually deserted by the time we got there. It took some time but we finally snagged a Doctor who could confer with us regarding the two sisters. Right away my heart sank as the Doctor began rattling off a list of medical issues about these two little girls; medical issues that were conveniently missing from their State Department (SDA) file (all I could think of was "...please....not again"). Then we met the little girls themselves. They were both cute but it became immediately obvious that once again, we were given referrals of children that could only be classified as "special needs". We still stayed at the orphanage and played with the girls for over an hour. The oldest sister had such a sweet personality. She was not shy in the least and laughed easily. Within minutes after meeting us she ordered me in Ukrainian to "sit here" and then climbed into my lap and produced a book for me to read. The two girls were fascinated and laughed out loud when we blew bubbles around them. Then we got a good laugh when the older one tried to blow them herself. She was also awed by my digital camera and loved it when I took her picture and then showed it to her. Of course as is the case with any little kid, she was also prone to "brat attacks". She didn't like the fact that she wasn't allowed to play with our pretty, purple notepad. I suppose that regardless of country, kids will be kids...





But the medical issues were very apparent and it frustrated and even angered us that they were either downplayed at our Thursday SDA appointment or outright missing from the girls" files. During our time with the girls we even thought that we saw a few anomalies that weren't mentioned either in their files or by the local Doctor.





During the course of our visit I took about 20 digital pictures and almost a dozen minutes of digital video that I wanted to upload to our International Adoption Clinic for their evaluations. If these two were special needs kids, Shirley and I knew that we'd be way over our heads. We still wanted the professionals to view what we had before we made a final decision. But despite our crisscrossing this entire section of the city, there was virtually no high speed internet anywhere. Regardless, 24 hours later we just made our own decision without consultation from the Clinic. We still managed a telephone call to the Clinic and gave ample descriptions of both girls. Just from what the Doctor told us, Shirley and I knew that we couldn't care for them both. We are by no means professionals and it is possible that many of our own theories regarding these kids were way off base. The pros could have corrected that had they had the pics and video to observe. But our gut instinct said that we're wasting our time with this sibling group. So our decision was to reject the referral.





It is another tough decision and needless to say we're not taking it too well. Our frustration level with the SDA is astronomical. I was a State Worker in New Jersey for years and am perfectly familiar with sloppy government work but New Jersey is a model of efficiency compared to Ukraine. Shirley is understandably angry that we wasted so much time and money to come out here on another wild goose chase. Had we been able to contact the orphanage directly from the SDA to get the facts, we either would not have made this trip or would have made it with a better picture in our brains as far as what to expect. Either way would have been a better scenario. But that didn't happen. So now here we sit, stranded in another city wasting another weekend while we wait for Monday so that we can do the formal paperwork thing and return to Kiev.




And just today we caught the SDA giving more disinformation. Anyone who reviews referrals for adoption knows that it doesn't look good if a referral has been seen and rejected by a lot of families. On Thursday we were told that no one else has ever seen these sisters; we were the first. Just today we read in another blog that last week another couple did see these two sisters - Bogdana and Ivanka - and rejected them. And they may have been seen and rejected by another family back in November. Chalk it up towards more honesty for the SDA.



Shirley and I are so frustrated - we already said to ourselves several times today that we really just want to tell the driver to pack his car with our stuff - take us directly to the airport in Kiev and get us out of Dodge. We're sick of being bled of our money, time and emotions. But we also know that if we skip out now without at least trying for a 3rd appointment, we will never forgive ourselves in the future. When it comes to 2nd guessing ourselves, Shirley and I are the worst there is! So thats where we stand now. We'll be Kiev-bound on Monday to start from Square One.





I have an old college buddy who lived in Ukraine for years and has been following our blog. He recommended that I go to the American Embassy in Kiev to voice our concerns. The American Councel sets aside a couple hours a day (I believe its 2pm-4pm) to hear from Americans. While I didn't consider this when I first heard it, I am certainly reconsidering it now. I doubt that it will affect our outcome but at least there will be official documentation about this situation somewhere. After reading so many other blogs about adopting from Ukraine, I know that we are not alone. With only a handful of exceptions, every blog I've read tells the same story.



Our facilitator was very uplifting and says that he will push for a faster appointment date than the 2 weeks it took the last time to get us an appointment. I just hope that its not all in vain.





Well thats it for now. Sorry to post on such a depressing note. Thanks again to everyone for their love and support. I also want to thank those of you whom we've never met but who are following our Ukraine adoption blog. If you have a blog and have it set to private, please feel free to "invite" us to your page so that we can view and comment on your blog as well. You can get our email address off of our profile right here.





Thanks again to all and God bless...








Steve