Sunday, May 27, 2012

So we got our court date! May 29th, Tuesday. Bon and Jonathon will catch the overnight train back to Kyiv Tues night then fly home on the 31st.  I will wait here for the madatory 10 day waiting period after court.  After the wait is over, our facilitator will need to travel to Russia to get Veras birth certificate changed.  Once this is completed, we have a couple days in Kyiv doing US Embassy stuff then I will bring the girls home.

Please keep praying for  us, the Russian birth certificate thing is still uncertain and we absolutely need that before the US blesses the adoption officially.  We have heard nightmare stories of the Russian birth certificates taking 6-9 months.  Not sure what we would do if that were the case, we are totally trusting in our awesome facilitaor team (Nastya, Alexey, Alex and Zhenia).  We know they will come through because they have been rock solid so far!

Ukraine life continues to keep us intrigued.  We had an emergency dentist trip today, it was funny watching the dentists and the dental personnel run outside to smoke after each patient.  Everyone smokes here, its nuts.  The dental trip cost us less than 200 grivna.  Under 25 bucks for an emergency abcess tooth, meds and a follow up filling.  Crazy how cheap a dentist is here.  It was a good dentist also, flat screen TV on the wall in the waiting room, very nice.






The top pic is from the graduation ceremony. The next two are pics from the river beach where we took the girls swimming.  The bottom pic is another from the grad ceremony.  Vera is leaning up against big brother Jonathon.

Everthing else is going good.  I love the Ukrainian people.  They are so genuine and real.  Life is hard here for a lot of folks.  There are no jobs, people carve out their own niche to make a living, selling produce on the streets, etc.  But there is a real sense of community here.  There are no "suburbs" in Ukraine.  Everyone lives in these soviet era  apartment complexes.  The government will not allow people to build single family dwellings so everyone lives in these huge apartment things. The structure makes people live together, kids play together in the common playground areas, and shop together at the local neighborhood stores and street kiosks.  It is so different from everything we are used to in the states.  We take daily walks to the market to buy our bread, eggs and milk.  If we need to go to the mall we jump on the bus (marshutka) to take us wherever we need to go.  If we get lost, we grab a taxi and ask the driver, "skolka dengi McDonalds???"  We are about a ten minute walk from the only McDonalds in Zaporozhye (nearly one million people in Zap btw).  Zap is like a Denver sized Commerce City.  Heavy industry, I have never seen such a variety of the color of smoke blooms spewing into the air as I have here.  I am sure the EPA would have a field day here in Zap.  The evenings are delightful with the scent of burning tires and howling packs of wild dogs.  It is so different here but we really have come to call it our second home.  People just live their lives. 

I will update soon, after the court date!!  We love and miss everyone back home.  I cant wait to get back to the states and enjoy a spicy burrito!!! (The food is so bland here and everything is spiced with dill, we have yet to find any type of Mexican style food =())


1 comment:

  1. Hey, Owen! That is a big place. Didn't realize that. Mariupol, where Anya is from, has a massive(& I mean, MASSIVE)steel factory that sits on the edge of the city on the Sea Of Azov. It looks like something out of an epic movie. The pollution and chemicals were unreal! That's going to be a long time alone there for you. What do you think, about three weeks total after court date? We'll pray for the birth certificate issue. That could turn real ugly real fast, so hoping for the best.

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