Appointment Time

19Oct2008

12 Hours and Counting

Just under 12 hours till our appointment at the SDA. Only those that have been here know how this feels. The realization keeps peeking in its head every now and then. For Virginia, think the big moment will come during the appointment when we actually will meet our children on paper (today at the SDA). For me, it’s been sneaking in at various times, ie just as we were taxing down the runway, I became overpowered by good emotions. Though I’ve known all along that this was going to happen, it’s taken a long time and sometime despair rears hi ugly head. Now, there is no despair, no question as to if our kids are here. FYI, it’s now only 2 hours and counting; I fell asleep at the keyboard last night when I started this update.

We spent the day wandering old Kiev. This is a beautiful town with lots of old, ornate buildings. We finally walked through the underground mall so I could look for an adapter for our computer. It’s just another mall, just very high priced by Ukraine standards. I’m sure that will be our last mall visit till we have our children, then very limited with them if we do go. We walked past the presidents residence, Chimera house (see pictures when I can post them) and then down to the Dnipro river. It was a leisurely day.

They close the street down in front of Independence Square on the weekends for various events. We were walking along and Irina pointed out a large bronze horse and asked if I was going to get a picture while on it. I asked her twice if I would get arrested and she said no, so up I climbed onto the statue for a picture. She didn’t think that I was serious and that I would actually climb up there. It did draw a number of chuckles from the crowd. I wasn’t too worried because you could see where quite a few people had actually been up there before.

As I mentioned before, we mostly eat at these Ukrainian cafeteria style places and we’ve been trying nearly everything. We’ve enjoyed most of what we’ve tried with few exceptions. The price is always right as well. We’ve been eating out 2 meals a day and it’s costing us about $12US per meal. And, of course, my eyes are always larger than my stomach and I’ve been eating way too much but enjoying all the new flavors. For those liking American fare, there are lots of McDonalds around. TGIF’s is right in Independence Square and they have a Papa John’s pizza in the food court of the mall.

We met the other couple that is trying to get out of here. We hope their passport comes today so they can finish the process. We had a wonderful time with them. We took their adorable little boy down to a park by the river and let him play while we talked up a storm. It’s always a pleasure to finally meet the people that you’ve been in communication with. We hope they have a quick and safe return to home.

20Oct2008

I gotta stop this now so I can get ready for our appointment.

Were back from our appointment and we made a selection of siblings from the Crimea region that we are going to visit. I won’t say much so we don’t jinx the process, but we feel good. We were shown several sets of siblings, most were healthy and older. The gal helping us in the SDA was very nice and helpful. Though I’ve read lots of blogs on the process, I was surprised by the process. I expected that they would have pulled several files of children and we would have selected from those. Instead, we got there and explained what we were looking for and she went through the books pulling files as we talked. We liked the first set she showed us but wanted to look at more. It seemed that she continued to show us files until our hour was running out and then we had to pick from those that were pulled. We selected the first set of siblings we were shown. This is just an observation on our process and it may be different for many families.

We may be leaving either tomorrow (Tuesday) evening or Wednesday morning for region. We’ll then spend some time with the children before the final decision is made. We’ll give more information once we know that the process is going to go through.

We found out that the orphanage is in a village. We don’t know yet whether we’ll be staying there or in a nearby city and drive back and forth each day. What this means is that we may not have internet access for periods of time. As it is, we probably won’t have access after today for a couple of days so don’t think we fallen off the face of Ukraine. We’ll update as soon as we can. We’ll be writing each day to track the events and then post all we have when we can.

My apologies for the possible lack of updating. I know when I was following other families during their travels, I was always waiting for their updates. I won’t post pictures of the kids until after the court date; at least that’s my intention.

Virginia wants to add that if you have problems sleeping on pillows other than your own, bring your own. She sleeps with a tempurpedic pillow at home and is having problems with the apartment pillows. Be prepared to do lots of walking. High heels are definitely the norm, but can be quite treacherous on the old cobblestone streets.

We spent the day today seeing some sites of sites of the city again. We visited one of the large churches here. Quite magnificent!! We took the underground and metro trains around town. The underground is quite deep and quite crowded. We also took some busses topside which weren’t nearly as crowded as the trains. The underground (subway) is quite clean as is Kiev at large. Overall, I’m quite impressed with Kiev and would like to spend more time here as a tourist. The driving is pretty fast for a city, but not as bad as I thought it would be. They don’t like to stop for pedestrians, but will when push comes to shove and you walk in front of them.

I now need some time to format the pictures for posting so I’m signing off for now. We’ll catch as catch can.

Some of our pictures can be viewed here:
http://www.pbase.com/higgmeister/adoption

We were hoping to check email from here but can't. We'll keep trying from another location. They won't let Vista systems connect in this cafe.