Love Heals - A Family's Story

Ukranian Egg Fight?!

2010-04-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

Zenon just found this article...I wish I brought eggs to court that one day! And one big smoke bomb. Next time....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100427/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ukraine_russia_fleet

Volcano

2010-04-17T05:34:00.001-07:00

Seriously, how did we miss this?

The Long Trip Home

2010-04-16T12:43:00.001-07:00

Wednesday morning wasn’t unlike some of the others. He refused basically everything I asked of him. He even tried slamming his bedroom door and locking me out. Unfortunately this didn’t work out for him because the other day when he disassembled and reassembled the door knob he broke it (I had asked him not to but he didn’t listen ;-)). I needed to check email so I decided not to dig in. We were at the internet café by 9.

Vitaly called at around 10 am. The passport was ready. Yay! We were in a cab headed for the train station to buy train tickets for that night by 10:30. I made an error in judgment in hindsight. I agreed with Vitaly that we could take a bus to Zaparozhe to get the passport to save some $$. Unfortunately I was stressing the entire day. We were on the bus by 11 am but needed to get the passport, fax it into Kiev, and be back to Melitopol for our 7 pm train. Not to mention finish packing and pay the apartment owner. Considering the trip to Zaparozhe was 2 hours alone it wasn’t worth the stress (worry about cab to passport agency from bus stop, and finding a bus back to Melitopol in time) to save what amounted to $20 when taking a cab would have been reassuring. …but for once everything went off without a hitch (except the part where Ruslan got mad at me for not buying him a pepsi. You see, I started to explain to him that if he was good all day that he could have a pepsi later. Since I was explaining this to him in the cab he told me to stop talking because he was embarrassed about my Russian. He missed the part about all day and expected the pepsi when we got to Zap).

I decided on taking 2 beds in a 4-bed sleeper room on the train gambling that we would have tolerable roommates. It was not a good sign when drunken sailors poured out of the train and started yelling when we went to board. It turns out that one of our roommates was a passed out sailor and 3 others were using our room as the drinking room. They continued after we arrived, drinking and yelling and offering us homemade wine, even though Ruslan, me and our other roommate (a nice lady who just wanted them to leave) were resting on our beds. They just sat on the edges of our beds and kept on like it was normal. One of the sailors gave Ruslan a bullet from his gun as a souvenir. (Ruslan wasn’t about to let me have it so I had to ask Dima the next day to have Ruslan give it up. Dima just threw it onto the lawn at the medical office!) The sailors left at about midnight and we got some sleep before our 7 am arrival in Kiev.

The apartment owner, Constantine, was waiting outside of the train and drove us to the apartment which was just a stone’s throw from Independence square for $50 per night. It figures that the best apartment with the best price and location was found on the last night and without time to take advantage of it! Dima met us 30 minutes later and we spent the next 8 hours completing the medical exam and acquiring the passport at the US embassy. Ruslan was tired. I am sure the finality of the situation was sinking in. 5 minutes before our interview at the embassy Ruslan says “I’m leaving”. What? He says I don’t want to wait anymore, just take me back to the orphanage and won’t stop walking towards the exit. Wow. What do I do? So I stand in front of him and explain that he is our son now, there is no going back, and if we miss our interview then we may be in Kiev for another few more days waiting instead of a few more hours. He doesn’t care and continues to walk outside. I see Dima out there and quickly explain what is going on. I ask Dima to bribe Ruslan that we will go skating afterwards, we just need to finish. We it seemed to work because Ruslan came back in and we finished our interview. Crisis averted. I felt for him. The past 48 hours were nothing but traveling, waiting, paperwork, and examinations with little sleep. We walked out of the embassy with the last piece of the puzzle at about 4 pm.

Dima sent us to a mall with indoor skating, arcades, trampolines, etc, and Ruslan blew off some steam for a few hours. We made it back to the apartment for a few hours of sleep and headed off to the airport for our 5:30 am flight. It all over and we are going home! Not so fast. The Lufthansa agent told us to step aside as he was printing our tickets. No explanation, he just said that he needed to talk with his supervisor. 20 minutes later we are still standing there watching everyone else walk away with their boarding passes. Finally he explains that we need to leave the secure area and go back outside to talk with the Lufthansa agents. Of course I am waiting for the next letdown. Fortunately the agent over there explained that the system was not processing the ticket properly but she had a fix. We were on our way. This was just Ukraine’s way of saying goodbye to us. It was a fitting end to our long adventure.

I am pretty sure that it was more of a relief to leave Ukraine than it was to arrive in the US. Our entire trip was long, probably 24 hours, but Ruslan was great the entire trip. In fact, on our last 1.5 hr leg from San Fran to San Diego he was practically jumping out of his seat. Every 5 minutes he would ask “Is that San Diego” from the moment we got in the air.

Cindy and Voss met us in San Diego at 7pm. It was great to see them. It’s now Friday and I am back at work. I left this morning and everyone was in good spirits. Baba is here, she just got in on Tuesday, and it’s great to see her as well.

Just for the record Cindy made chicken Osso Buco for dinner last night. We traded in the bread for Tortillas and made burritos. It's good to be back!

GREAT NEWS!!

2010-04-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

Yes! Zenon got the passport and they left immediately on the train to Kiev!!! They are finally on their way home! They are on the 10 hour ride on the train (overnight), will go to get the medical done, get the Visa in the American Embassy and take off on Thursday morning. We can hardly believe that they will be home in just two sleeps (Voss's way of counting the time until he gets to see his dad and new brother.) I almost don't want to relax yet. I mean, the Embassy could always blow up or somethi...OK, I won't even finish that sentence.

I think it is almost over. I think we are picking them up at the airport on Thursday. I forgot to ask the time they come in. Marty came into town today and we have already begun to plan the welcome home dinner and it WILL NOT be ANYTHING Ukranian!!

Anyone have any suggestions?

I wonder if he ever got to return the power cord?(ha)

Good News, Bad News

2010-04-12T01:58:00.000-07:00

The good news is that we searched some more, with the help of Ruslan's friend Artom (whom he met at the internet cafe), and found a power supply for my laptop. This was saturday. I was excited to have the internet back at home and get some work done. The bad news is that it was the wrong model of power supply and I could not use it.

OK, so there is more bad news. The guy at the store promised that I could return it, no questions asked, if it did not work. It was $30. I tried to return yesterday and he asked me for my passport. Um, ok, yes I just walk around with a pasport. He also said that they did not have any money in the register to refund me if I did have a passport. Sounds promising!

Ok, so there is more bad news. We are still in Ukraine. It turns out that the passport authority in Kiev decided not to issue any passports last week. Good thing we paid the expediting fee! Actually, from what I understand the expediting fee is just so that it does not take 1 month.

OK, not finished. The passport authority is not issuing passports again today (Monday). For a week now we have been told tomorrow, tomorrow. Well, we have been told again tomorrow (tuesday). We were hopefull to have been home last Saturday but at this point we are in danger of missing our primary flight date on Thursday.

....oh ya, Ruslan spent 10 minutes swearing at me this morning. He didn't like that I ask him to brush his teeth and make his bed.

Other than that, and the weather being 50 degrees again, we are doing well ;-)

Internet Cafe

2010-04-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

....is our 2nd home. 3 hours on Monday. 3 hours yesterday. Almost at 3 hours today. At least we are getting out of the apartment!

I have to give Ruslan credit, he has been great since he let me have it. Everything I say registers with him. Almost always he immediately refuses to do as I ask but it almost like a routine where he will do it when i turn my back.

Saturday after everything happened and the internet cafe I received a call from Tamara and Nikolai, our friends from the last trip. They came and picked us up and the plan was to go for pizza (or so I thought). They drove us out to "Stone Grave" (http://www.panoramio.com/photo/18496941) and told us all about it. Ruslan had a blast and spent an hour climbing all over the site. Afterwards we went to gorky park to meet their 1 yr old daughter who was there with Tamara's mom. We spent a better part of an hour looking for the 2 squirrels that inhabit gorky park (really? 2 squirrels?). Not surprising that we did not see them since the park is about 2 square miles big! They dropped us off at home soon after at which point we scrambled to find something to eat since we did not go for dinner.

Yesterday Henry picked us up and we went for the sports equipment. The selection wasn't great but we bought some good sports equipment and games. I have a few extra dollars remaining so I bought a bunch or socks for the boys and hair accessories for the girls.

We arrived at the orphanage and it looked like a ghost town. Within minutes the parking lot was buzzing with kids who were excited about their new equipment. After a few group shots with about 50 kids (I was told that the orphanage currently has 110 kids) Valerie ushered me into his office and said sit. Henry came following a few minutes later which was great because the two of them were able to talk for the next 2 hours. Valerie ordered the 3 of us a filling lunch of boiled chicken legs, mashed potatoes, and beet salad. The chaser was homemade wine, lesser of all evils (I adamantlt declined any alcohol, but after refusing cognac, vodka, and beer Valerie finally talked me into his wine). It was a nice lunch, Valerie has been one of most hospitable people I have ever met. I think he really does good by the kids at Nova Nikolaiev.

I spent the last half hour with Ruslan and his friends watching them skateboard andthen the final goodbyes. It was very anticlimactic. Ruslan just gave a few handshakes and a few hugs and we were off.

Henry droppped us off and had plenty to say when I gave him a platform on the video camera. I swear it was a 10 minute monologue! When I called him for a ride I was reading for whatever price he threw at me, it would just be nice to say bye and thank. Henry only charged half his normal rate which was a nice gesture.

Like I was saying we have filled the rest of our time with the internet cafe and television with a few breaks to eat. Ruslan is happy. I am happy, nothing to complain about.

We were hoping to travel to Zaparozhe today but it did not happen. Looks like tomorrow we will travel there which means we will have to travel home next week. What's a few extra days at this point?

Monday Blowup

2010-04-05T04:57:00.000-07:00

Today has been tough. I have been fairly lax on Ruslan and decided I needed to take a stand on at least one issue. I had asked that he use sheets on the bed to sleep last night and he declined. I gave him the option of sheets and tv tomorrow, or no sheets and no tv. He decided no sheets.

Monday morning we wake up and he goes straight for the tv. I ask that he turn it off and he declined. I turn it off myself. Battle lines are drawn. Ruslan digs in. For the next 2 hours he locks himslef in his room. I realize after a while that he has the tv back on. I pursuade him to unlock his door. He does. I take the television out of his room. As he closes the door I say please dont close. He tells me not to worry because he wont lock it. I decide ok. Guess what, he locks it!

The response I wanted to say "fine, no internet for the rest of the day". Instead I take a different road and ask him to talk. After a half hour he comes out and says fine. We act like nothing happenned, but later I tell him that we need to listen to each other, etc,etc.

We needed to go downtown, exchange some money, and pay for the computer and internet for the orphanage (Part of the gift from people who donated!). Ruslan was impatient the entire time, complaining that his knees hurt (but he was jumping all over things) and saying we need to take a taxi. After paying for the computer stuff we hit the sports store for some other things for the orphanage. The situation was getting worse and Ruslan was very impatient. He hit his tipping point when I declined to buy him something. Let's just say that he has a lot on his mind and maybe a little nervous/apprehensive/confused/mad/sad/etc,etc about everything. He is in a very tough spot right now and I need to work hard not to let him get closer to the edge. It's been tough. At this point a better strategy maybe just to get him home to california then put my foot down.

Wish me luck.

Easter Sunday

2010-04-05T04:42:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a fun day for us. Since Vitaly left Ruslan and I in Zaparozhe and went home to Nikolaiev from there, this was our first day on own. We had laid the groundwork earlier and went to the orphanage to pick up Adol, Ruslan's friend. It was a quick trip and Henry droppped us off near the skating rink. I was hoping that Henry wouldn't overcharge like he seems to be doing but he did, asking for 250 grivna. I paid and made a mental note.

We went skating for a few hours then onto City Cafe for pizza. Now Ruslan hates pizza, so he says, so I finally made him eat some for dinner. City cafe pizza isn't half bad. Ruslan ate half the pizza all the while saying it wasn't good. I think we have a new pizza lover ;-). ALong those same lines I have discovered that Ruslan's standard answer to every question and comment is either 1 of 2 things: "I know" or "no". This can be frustrating.

When we were all finished I decided to ask a different cab what he woul charge for the trip back. 100 grivna = 12 bucks. Henry was waiting for my call and was surprised when I called him back from the orphanage saying that we didn't need a ride. He asked why and I quickly said I didn't know how to explain but I would tell him tomorrow. This was especially aukward because the plan was for him to pick us up at 9 am to go to church with his family for easter sunday.

The next Morning Henry arrived to pick us up. He quickly asked Ruslan how we got to the orphanage and Ruslan said by taxi. That was the end of the story. Henry didn't seem to care. I like Henry very much as a friend but think his taxi is far too expensive.

We walked to church from Henry's apartment. People were lined up outside where the priest was blessing the easter baskets. We stepped inside the church for 10 minutes, lit some candles, and were on our way. I like this Ukrainian church, only 10 minutes compared to the 2 hour Ukrainian church I remember!

Back at Henry's apartment his wife made us a nice spread including plenty of different fish (none of which I could stomach) and a bunch of other things like eggs, pork, mashed potatoes, and salads. We polished a bottle of Ukrainian wine (between Henry, Olga, and myself) while Ruslan and Melisa had juice. After a few hours Henry told me he couldn't drive and we had to take the bus home.

The rest of the afternoon Ruslan and I played basketball and watched tv. Unfortunately we cannot use the computer since the power supply broke. This has been heartbreaking for both of us!

Picking Ruslan Up - For the Final Time

2010-04-05T04:29:00.000-07:00

After applying for the tax id in Melitopol, which went super smooth, we had to pick up Svetlana for the final paperwork in Nova Nikoliev. Henry let us out and Valerie ushered Vitaly, Svetlana and me into his office. He quickly assembled an assortment of pickled tomatoes, fish and cream cheese, cookies, mayonaisse pizza, liverworst, coffee, tea, beer, vodka, juice, and of course cognac. I wondered who the heck was going to eat all of this.

Yanna jioned us in the office and everyone made quick work of the food. You'd be surprised how much you can eat after a few vodka shots. I decided to take my poison today so that I would not have to do it on our last visit to the orphanage next week. I had promised Valerie 3 more shots before I leave.

The next morning we arose early to catch a bus to Zaparozhe. I very much appreciate the concious effort Vitaly has made to do everything quickly and cheaply. We had the option to take a cab but Vitaly recommended the bus - really no difference expect at least $100 dollars savings. I enjoy the bus experience. It's like being part of a group where everyone is in it together. I notice people are always helping others with their bags, with their kids, etc. It's great.

We arrived in Zaparozhe and applied for the passport with absolutely no problems. What's going on? It was straight back to Melitopol for 2 hours on the bus. Ruslan did good as well with hardly any complaints. The entire day took 8 hours.

This was great news that we were able to execute the birth certificate, the tax id, and the passport all within 2 days and finish on Friday. If we had to wait for the weekend, with Monday being a holiday, then this could have set us back almost a week!

Sasha

2010-04-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

There wasn’t enough time to finish off the story with Sasha. Ever wonder if things happen for a reason? Do you think there is a chance that Ruslan may have never seen Sasha again?

Ruslan just dropped the news on me. I was dumbfounded. On one hand this was amazing, on the other hand it was disturbing to me. Although we were granted pending legal status by the court nothing was finalized until after the 10 day waiting period and the paperwork was in hand. What that really meant was that there was an opportunity for someone to petition to the court against the finalized adoption.

Ruslan continued to say that he made plans to meet up with Sasha later in the day at Gorky Park where we had just finished skating. I said “Ruslan, are you sure you know what you are doing? I don’t feel comfortable with this.” I never at any point want to burden Ruslan with any of the pressure or understanding of the gravity of every single step but in this case I felt it was important. “Ruslan, you know that there is still the possibility someone could petition the courts. I would rather we wait until after Tuesday to meet up with Sasha.” Ruslan actually had a good answer. He said Sasha already gave his written consent so there was nothing to worry about. I agreed to think about it and let him know my decision.

After a consultation with Vitaly we agreed that it shouldn’t be something I need to worry about. With that we waited until 6 and went back to gorky park to meet up with Sasha. I don’t want to get into the details but I will say that things went great. They skated together and we left our contact info for Sasha so we can hopefully stay in touch (Sasha did not have any contact info to share).

There was a question as to if we already met Sasha. It was actually Andrei, the oldest brother that we met initially in December.

The next day Henry drove us back to the orphanage. Ruslan disappeared into the woodwork with his friends after I told him I would be back after Sumi. I don’t think he even waited for me to finish.

The Amazing Race

2010-04-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

We boarded the train at 5. I was curious about our roommates since we were only able to get the top 2 bunks in the 4 person compartment. Good news was that we only had one roommate. The bad news: He was Bellarussian, 300 lbs, and had the smell of something I never want to encounter again. Seriously, Vitaly scrunched up his face and opened the window without saying hello. We were joined by another passenger a few stops later. Since we had the top 2 bunks we did not have access to the table in between the bottom 2 bunks. No problem, when Vitaly ordered a few coffees he just made the new passenger get up off his bunk while we sat there and had our drinks. Smelly Bellarussian just slept the whole time while his belly hung out from his undershirt and sagged off the bed.

We arrived in Sumi at 2 a.m.. Lucky for us there was a room at the makeshift train hotel where we could rest and wait for morning. Unlucky for Vitaly there was only 1 bed. He is always making sure I am comfortable which is nice. He slept on the chair.

We were up and on the move at 8 a.m., arriving in the Sumi city office soon after because Vitaly was told we required authorization from Sumi offices to visit Lebedyn offices (a town in the Sumi district). All we got at the Sumi office was a blank stare and told that there was nothing they needed to do. OK, so onto Lebedyn and hope for the best?

We caught a taxi and showed him a map. He drove us the hour to Lebedyn. After talking with approx 10 pedestrians, and walking into a few different unmarked buildings, we finally located the office in question. We were actually met with a smile from the lone lady working in the office, a good sign of things to come, right? She gave us a few simple directions, go pay the small fee and go get a paper notarized, and she could update the birth records and issue a new birth certificate. Easy! So far so good. We left her office at 10 a.m.. We were both in good spirits. This was about the time I joked and said to Vitaly that it felt like we were participants in the amazing race. I should know better by now!

The first bank was closed and we could not pay the bill there. The notary was there. He took 1 look at the paper, smiled, and said I cannot notarize this without a tax id#. You need to go back to Sumi and apply for one. This is when Vitaly’s demeanor changed, he said let’s find another notary who will do this. We got back in the cab and found another bank where we could pay the bill. 1 out of 2 down. Now to just find another notary in this town. Easier said than done. Apparently there was another notary. His building was even harder to find then the city office but we finally found it at about 11. He actually spent more than a minute looking at the document. Unfortunately his answer was the same, we need a tax id #.

Vitaly decides that we can track down the local authority and apply for a tax id there. After 15 minutes of searching we arrive at the office. In applications the secretary shows a chart of how it takes 1 week to process a tax id #. At this point I get that sick feeling again. It was at this point that I crossed the line of tolerating Ukraine to understanding why people here are so unhopeful.

We get in the cab and drive the hour back to Sumi. We find another notary. Great news, she signs the documents and we are back on the road to Lebedyn at 1:00. An extra week avoided! I start to get the wind back in my sails and think we may even get the paperwork and make it back to Sumi for the 3:00 pm train back to Melitopol! Unfortunately I shared this with Vitaly and he set me straight – this is Ukraine.

We made it back to the office in plenty of time. The woman sat us down and said Vitaly, Zenon, you are the first to arrive. Just kidding. She actually said her grandparents used to live in Salt Lake City, and that they were famous. Half an hour later after we were finally issues the new birth certificate Vitaly said “ya sure your grandparents were famous. Just give me the paperwork”. It was really funny.

There was a bus station next to the office. Unfortunately no buses went from there to anywhere helpful. The new plan was to make it to Kharkov, a main “regional center” where the train options should be plenty. It was 3 pm so our kamikaze taxi driver floored it south to Akhtyrka. The drive was about an hour. Not joke, we pulled into the bus station just as a bus was leaving. Vitaly made it stop, asked where it was going, andthen grabbed me out of the cab and threw me on the bus.

The going was slow. Our plan the whole time, come hell or high water, was to make it back to Melitopol to apply for Ruslan’s tax id # on Thursday which we need to apply for the passport. There is a 1 day waiting for the tax id, and applying for the passport on Friday could say a lot of time especially since Monday is a holiday. The bus seemed to stop for every pothole and there were plenty of potholes. At this point it was 4:00 and all we had eaten all day was a bun early in the morning. Vitaly was tired and hungry and not in the best of moods. That is why the bus pulled over with an apparently mechanical failure Vitaly started complaining and pacing. Our slow bus had taken 2 hours to get us where we were, but not that close yet. “we need to do something” he said. I said “no problem. Let’s just walk down the road a little and ask a local to call a cab for us”. Again, Vitaly laughed and said “this is Ukraine, people don’t just call cabs for people”. With that he walked outside and flagged down the second car he waved at. I saw him talk with the driver andthen quickly start walking back to the bus. I knew it was on so I grabbed the bags and got ready to jump into my first ever hitchhike.

It was strange. There wasn’t much conversation. Actually it was dead silent and the driver drove like a maniac. Vitaly thought nothing of it. He was actually happy because we made it to the train station in about 30 minutes from there. He tipped the driver 50 grivna. I asked Vitaly if hitch hiking was normal here. He said sure.

So it’s just before 7 and we are at a major train station and everything will be fine, right? Sold out. Both trains leaving that night are sold out. ….but we were able to put our names in on the wait list for 3rd class. Luckily some beds opened up and we made it on the 11 pm train. Phew. With that we had a chance to grab a big Ukrainian dinner and relax for a bit.

3rd class turned out to be better than 2nd class. Although the smell was bad, and you are crammed into a train car sleeping amongst strangers, I was so tired that I fell asleep in no time. We made it back to Melitopol at 5 am. To this point it all proved worthwhile because we received the tax id # today without a hitch. In fact it has been the easiest thing we have done so far, 5 minutes in and out. Did I just let down my guard again? Wish us luck with the passport tomorrow!

Gotcha Day

2010-03-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was officially Ruslan's Gotcha day!!! We are finally his legal parents!!!....now we just to get him out of that country. Another problem. Zenon calls home almost every day to let me know the 411 on all the usual drama in the South of Ukraine. Fortunately, with the time change, I am able to hear what all the problems were for the day and the final resolution within 5 minutes (or sometimes a little more) so that I don't have to ride on that emotional roller coaster.
Here was Zenon's e-mail from Gotcha Day;

Decree came into effect today, Tuesday March 30th.

So, we went to the court at 11 am to pick it up. They promised it would be ready. After an hour of just sitting there waiting, Vitali finally flagged the girl down and she said just wait. A few minutes later she appeared with the decree. Unfortunately it was not signed by the county inspector like they promised it would be. So, we had 2 hours to track down 2 signatures, buy train tickets, and meet the apartment owner to pay her.

Vitali called a cab and he was driving around like he was in the Melitopol 500. Luckily, both signatures, in 2 different places, only took 5 minutes each. That left of plenty of time to rush and get the tickets for the 2:30 departure. Only, it turns out the train didn't leave at 2:30 like they promised. It leaves at 5. No problem, we get in a little later than 4 am now, right, which is good? Nope, we get in at 2 am. great.

Anyway, hope you guys have fun at the zoo.
Love you.
Wish us luck in Sumi!

by the way, Vitali called on Sunday night at 11 pm and said his apartment that he just arrived to was already occupied. I said no problem, come on over here. He did. He slept in Voss's room. The next day i said Vitali, why dont you just stay with me if you need. He said sure and hasn't looked back.

He is always clearing his throat, and stops after climbing a few stairs and just stares into space. His eyes have a yellow tinge. I hope he holds up! ;-)

Humm...life is so much easier when I get to read about the days happenings and don't have to officially be there to live through all the grueling seconds of the adoption process. Zenon called this morning at 5AM to update us. I had a bit of a Zoo hangover, but me and Voss were able to wake up enough to talk. Zenon told us about the trip to Sumi and the story just keeps getting better and better! I don't think we could MAKE this stuff up!

Here is how is went...

(edited by Zenon and added to next post)

Monday Morning

2010-03-29T00:59:00.001-07:00

Vitaly called last night at 11 pm. "Zenon, I have a problem". "I just arrived in Melitopol and cannot find my apartment". Phew. Stop doing that Vitaly, you keep scaring me to death! Vitaly ended up staying the night at my apartment which is not a problem because there is an empty room anyway.

I picked Ruslan up on Friday. Up to that point I had spent the days mostly working on the computer, Learning how to use Dreamweaver to build websites, and spending some time each day to jog and work out at the park across the street. I told Henry to drop us off downtown so we could get some groceries and maybe walk home but Henry translated that Ruslan wanted to go back to the apartment to sleep. It was 1 pm. Of course as soon as we got back to the apartment Ruslan asked if he could use the computer to play games. There must have been a translation error in the car because Ruslan was in no mood to sleep

I talked Ruslan into going to the market to grab a few things for dinner. He obliged but was very impatient the entire time. I try to get him involved and I constantly ask him to either buy things or find things. He always says "ya zniyou" (I know!) as he rushes off to do something. Inevitably I have to step in clarify things more often than not. He was happy to get back and hit the Computer and Television and relax.

The next day we ate a big breakfast and gave it some time to settle before going out to the hockey rink.

We made it to the rink at about 11. Not sure if it was Ruslan's first time but he sure was shaky starting out:

He was having a blast and didn't want to leave. We were there for 2 hours and he sure picked it up pretty quick:

From there the plan was to head over to the outdoor market to get some gifts for Ruslan's friends for when he leaves. So we are walking down a side street on the way. As we pass a bus stop Ruslan walks up to this teenager who standing waiting for the bus and starts shooting the breeze. They talk for a few minutes and I really don't understand a thing but obviously Ruslan knows him. It's strange because this is not a small town, population 160,000 people, so the probability of Ruslan stumbling across someone he knows is not very high. They finish the conversation and we start walking away. I ask who was that. Ruslan responds "that was my brother Sasha".

Thursday March 19th Circus

2010-03-22T22:14:00.002-07:00

Didn't have a chance to share. Last thursday Cindy, Ruslan and I went to the circus. Very interesting.

Getting Settled into a Routine

2010-03-22T22:14:00.001-07:00

Saturday morning was rough. The cognac surely made my head swell because it hurt. It was a lazy morning and we watched about 5 episodes of dexter (chris burned me the first 4 seasons to keep busy). We went out for pizza and groceries. Cindy wanted to make me some food to make sure I would be ok after she left.

Henry came and we saw Cindy to the train Saturday evening. She was in a sleeper car and had a ticket for 1 bed. She was hoping to have the car to herself but apparently no such luck. From what little she has shared I understand her bunk mate was an older Ukrainian gentleman sporting Dill scented cologne. Nice.

Cindy spent the next day in Kiev then caught her flight this morning at 7. She arrives in San Diego at 9 pm.

I started into some semblance of a routine Sunday with a jog around the track (a soccer field across from the apartment complex) then met Vitaly for lunch. Yep, it was pizza. After wards he showed me an outdoor market that we had never come across. It is huge and I am looking forward to spending an afternoon there.

Henry had been talking about meeting up for drinks since out last trip. With Cindy gone he invited me out Sunday afternoon. He parked the car and we walked to the billiard bar. There they had these tables that are bigger than anything else I have ever played on. Apparently it is Russian billiards. The balls are larger than normal and the pockets are just big enough to fit a ball into. The real interesting part is that you can use any ball as the cue ball and sink any ball on the table you’d like. The object of the game is first one to sink 7 balls wins. Sounds easy. It wasn’t. Each game took an hour and I managed to win all 3 games. The best strategy is to hit all the balls as hard as you can and hope one goes in. Sloppy pool counts!

Henry ordered 2 beers (huge beers) and a bottle of vodka. No problem, I will only do a few shots right? Wrong. After we polished the vodka and beers it was off to the grocery store for more beer and more vodka. I was already in trouble at this point. We went to Henry’s apartment and I met his wife, Oyla. She was nice enough to make us a spread of lard slices and boiled shrimp to go with the beer and vodka. The lard looked especially appetizing last night. This morning my memory of last nights celebration has hazy enough that I thankfully couldn’t fully remember how much lard and shrimp I really ate. I made a pact with myself today – no more shots.

I finally made it out at 10 am for some pizza. It helped my condition enough. The plan was for Henry to pick me up at noon so I could visit Ruslan. After calling a few times to postpone he finally picked me up at 5:30. I have learned patience here and just went with the flow.

Ruslan was happy to see me and gave me a big hug. I brought some of the clothes and sporting goods we lugged from san diego to the orphanage and the boys were happy to see some fresh entertainment. We went across the street for some gum with his friends andthen I left. I told Ruslan I would be back in a few days and asked if he wanted to come stay for a night. He said absolutely. The problem is that he was so bored over the Christmas break staying with us in the apartment. I would rather he not get too bored right now since we will have plenty of time for that coming up soon. It’s best for him to spend some of his last days here with his close friends whom he will not see for a long time, if ever again.

Friday Court

2010-03-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

We went in to court hoping to adopt Ruslan. We came out with a girl as well:

Just Kidding, this was Yanna jumping into our first family shot together.
Ruslan was happy with the outcome:

We went out to celebrate afterwards at a fancy Melitopol Restaurant ;-):

Then back at the orphanage Valerie brought us in to celebrate some more:

These started full. The one on the right is the tincture disguised in the cognac bottle:

That's when things started getting blurry. I am a little foggy on what happened after that:

It's now 8:30 sat night, it's quiet and I am turning in. Cindy's train left just over an hour ago.

Ruslan to stay with us for a few days

2010-03-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

The next morning we rose early. Part of the battle these days is balancing the right amount of caffeine to offset the feeling of being tired.

We planned to pick up Ruslan at 2. This gave us a chance to walk around and grab some lunch. They had been building a new restaurant on our last visit and it is complete now, Mama Mia's. You guessed it, another pizza place. The decor is surprisingly Western and very hip. The pizza was dissappointly unremarkable. I had high hopes because it is located within a 10 minute walk and would be a great place to set up the laptop and do some work.

We continued our walk downtown and counted that we stopped 4 times for coffee in 3 hours. Oddly enough we bumped into Vitaly walking downtown. He acted as if it was planned and said "Hi, Henry will be right here". Sure enough Henry drove right up and he went for the 1/2 hr. drive to get Ruslan.

Valrie was excited to see us as usual. Not that I mind but Vitaly intervened and told Valerie that we needed to leave promptly so shots were out of the question. Valerie was dissappointed but upbeat when he learned I would not be travelling home with Cindy and the future held more opportunities ;-)

Ruslan was waiting in the taxi with 3 friends. Apparently he was ready to go! The friends got out and we got in. Henry drove us to the supermarket on the way home and we picked up Ruslan's favorite, a whole chicken. On the way home we passed a circus. It turned out that the ciscus had just come to town so we picked up tickets for the 3 of us for Thursday. Voss would have loved to see the circus!

Ruslan was happy to see I brought the pc instead of the mac this time. We already had a few racing games and movies waiting for him that we purchased earlier in the day. Needless to say he took over the computer for the night. This could be a problem fighting for computer time moving forward! ...but it's good to see him happy with something instead of sitting in front of the tv watching nothing.

Tuesday Court

2010-03-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

The train pulled into melitopol at the scheduled 12:45. As we waited with our luggage for the train to stop the older lady who attended to all the passengers and kept the fir stoked asked us what we were doing in melitopol. We told her what we were doing and how we got to where we are. She soaked it in and her curiosity and preconceived notions got the best of her. She asked " do you beat the kids?". It's the same thing every time you explain what we are doing to those here who aren't involved with the process, they have been told these terrible things about foreigners adopting ukrainian kids and they need to find out for themselves if we are as bad as they have been told.

Henry was there on the platform when the train door opened. It was nice to see a familiar face and I am sure he had other things he could be doing at 1 am. Henry drove us to the apartment where we were met by the apartment owner. It was straight to bed after that.

The next morning we were picked up by henry and vitaly. Vitaly gave me a big hug and shook cindy's hand. Isn't that backwards? We went straight to the orphanage.

They called for ruslan when we arrived. He walked in with kiril and a huge smile. He had no idea we were coming. It was reassuring to see and even more so that he has no problem showing his love for us. We have really come a long way together.

There wasn't much to talk about so we went outside with a soccer ball. Soon all the kids were outside and we were kicking the ball around. I am sure they all were impressed with my kicking, I could tell because they would laugh whenever I kicked the ball. We were dressed for court but you can't pass up moments like these to save your outfit from a few scuffs. Cindy was dressed to impress and the cold was getting to her. She was in a spot blocked by the wind and commanding the attention of a dozen kids using her best russian (by the way she was all proud when she came back from the store earlier in the morning with some groceries. She said I bought some butter, eggs, and yogurt. I remembered to ask for myasoh (it's really supossed to be maslo). Since she really asked for meat I wasn't surprised that the butter was actually cheese blintz filling.)

After an hour of soccer we asked ruslan to take us across the street to the store for a soda. Kiril, vadim and another boy joined us. The store turned out to be a little restaurant with a bar. The boys were excited to order little bottles of pepsi. In fact they asked if they could order chips too. The lady offered that they had little pizzas and porogie looking things and the boys asked if that was ok. Sure. They ordered 6 mini pizzas, a dozen perogies, and 6 mini sweet loafs. That food was gone in no time at all! I was full after just one pizza (crust with ketchup, grated bologna, cheese, and mayonnaise), mmmmmm - not really.

It was noon when we walked back to the orphanage and court was 2 hours away. After I schooled the boys in ping pong we were summoned to the lunch room for a special lunch for cindy and me with valerie, vitaly, and henry. Glad we didn't just eat! A huge bowl of vegetable soup followed by beef and buckwheat. The portions were huge and we left a few pounds heavier than when we arrived. Valerie kept talking about cognac shots but apparently there wasn't enough time to fit them in before we left for court.

6 of us crammed into henry's small machina (yanna joined us for court) and we made it to the court house for 1:30. The wait wasn't long. We were summoned into an empty court room. The mood went from great anticipation to devastation in a heartbeat when vitaly explained that the judge is sick today, court has been rescheduled for march 30th.

Numbness set in.
What?

Let's just talk this through. We have waited months and just traveled 2 days specifically for this 1 appointment and just like that we were rescheduled for a date 2 weeks out? Well don't I feel silly for booking cindy's return trip to begin 6 hrs after the start time for court. What was I thinking? This is ukraine!

Cindy was devastated to say the least. This process has us away from ruslan and now voss! Poor ruslan just sat there emotionless. What now? Well we talked more and vitaly made a few calls. He managed to arrange a new court date for friday. Not the end of the world. Now to just break the news to voss and grandma and reschedule cindy's ticket to leave saturday. Also how to get cindy to the kiev airport for early sat morn when the new court appointment would end approx noon on friday? It'll all work out, right?

On the drive back to the orphanage vitaly shared a few words of wisdom and shed some light on ukraine.
1. Humor is the best way to try and deal with situations like this. Easier said than done.
2. Ukrainian's are used to disappointment. This is why no-one is surprised and why ruslan is not that upset. Disappointment is almost an expectation.

Valerie summoned us into his office upon arrival back at the orphanage. We weren't getting away without a birthday celebration of sorts regardless of what just happened. Needless to say that the tincture (a alcohol cure-all that valerie now stores in an old cognac bottle) went down like poison, but the pickled tomatoes help. It was a special occasion so valerie shared a plate of coleslaw that looked like it had been sitting uncovered in his fridge for the last month. What made the coleslaw even more special was it's contents: red cabbage, creamy wonderful mayonnaise, and herring. Cindy and I did our best to not offend our host. In fact, the coleslaw made me want to take another shot of tincture to drown the flavor! Needless to say this all helped put us in a little better mood. Valerie was excited to show us how the tincture would light on fire because the alcohol content was so high.

We got back home at 4:30 and cindy crashed. I spent the next 4 hours communicating with the travel agent. Deju vu set in when he explained that it is spring break. No tickets available for saturday or sunday. In fact he was skeptical about the next while. He left me to worry about the fallout and how to break the news to cindy. It was a good thing she was sleeping.

The good news arrived in the form of an email explaining that a seat had been found for a monday return. This was a small victory considering the alternatives of waiting another week like I was imagining.

So the adventure continues. We have once again come to terms with the news. Now to occupy our time with other thing like picking ruslan up today (wednesday) and having him with us for the next few days! :-)

I also have to mention that we are blessed with amazing family and friends. I know we can count on more than who are helping right now but it was nice to have jennifer and grandma ardith reassure us that voss was in good hands and everything will be ok (although poor vossy has to wait a few more days for mom to come home). Baba is also ready to fly out and take care of voss at the drop of a hat. Thank you everyone!

Road Back to Melitopol

2010-03-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

2-4-2 was the pattern of seating on the lufthansa flight from LA to Munich. This was far more comfortable than the 2-5-2 we flew last time, especially when I was the one sardined into the 3rd seat in the middle group of 5. The day started with our 6:45 flight from san diego to LA being delayed. No problem because they booked us onto the earlier flight and we made it without any hitches. We actually needed the extra time because we ate up 1.5 hours of our 2 hour layover in LA just waiting to clear what seemed to be the slowest security line ever. It's great when things all seem to work out well and I am sure a sign of a great trip to come. It all started when they waived our extra bag fee of $35 when I mentioned the bag was filled with gifts for orphans. To top it off lufthansa was serving free alcohol on the flight. I ordered a 2nd glass of wine and didn't even want it. It's hard to turn down free.

We made it to Kiev just a little late and our ukrainian cell phone was ringing from the minute it was turned on. It's amazing it still held a charge after over a month considering it seems to only stay charged for a half a day when I actually need it. Dima was calling to explain that the taxi driver's name was Jyroslaw and he was waiting for us.

We made it to the hotel Lybid at just after midnight and decided on a beer at the 70's era lounge before turning in. We realized after a little while that the 6 ladies scattered throughout the almost empty lounge were actually working girls. By the time we left at 2 am it was just them and us. Apparently it was a slow night.

We got to bed at 2 and I for one was exhausted and looking forward to sleep. This plan was derailed when 4 am came knocking and wouldn't let me back to sleep. Cindy was up at 5 and we just read till breakfast opened at 7.

After meeting Dima to notarize some docs we headed for our train departing at 1 pm. It's 3:30 now and cindy has been passed out for over an hour. We get in at 1 am and I will try my best to stay awake and try to get over the jetlag.

Tomorrow we shall visit the orphanage and bring Yanna (the orphanage attorney) and Ruslan with us for the 2 pm court appointment. It will be great to see him.

Not that I am looking for acknowledgment but tomorrow is my birthday. Isn't it interesting that we received our approval to adopt on Cindy's birthday and are having court on my birthday?

***update: I fell asleep probably 2 minutes into my plan to stay awake for the rest of the day. We were awakened at 6:30 by a loud knocking at the cabin door. I thought it would be the train ticketer telling us some news but instead it was a priest all decked out in priest clothes with a long red beard. He was talking in russian and I cut him off saying "I don't understand russian". He was annoyed and responded "orthodox?". How does one respond to that. A little louder he demanded "Orthodox or catholic?". Um, I don't know what the right answer is. I chose one and said "catholic". Wrong answer but apparently not a problem. He said "toh nechoho" as he splashed holy water at both cindy and me, some right in my mouth, and walked away. What he said translates into "that's nothing" as if to say "I'll fix that" as he passive aggressively doused us with a paintbrush full of holy water.

Ukraine's Got Talent

2010-03-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

My neighbor sent this video from the show "Ukraine's Got Talent" and I thought it would be good to post on the blog. The emotion people display in the audience shows how they feel about their country's history. It has been a tumultuous one.

This video shows the winner of "Ukraine's Got Talent." Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.

Her talent, which admittedly is a unique one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears, and
she won the top prize of about £75,000.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear, and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman's face crying, but then a baby arrives, and the woman smiles again. Once again, war returns, and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman's face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled, and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an 'Unknown Soldier.' This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer were looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside, and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

The 'Great Patriotic War,' as it is called in Ukraine , resulted in one in four of the population being killed with 8 to 11 million deaths out of a population of (42) million.

Paste the link below to google to watch the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg#t=00

Plans Are Set

2010-03-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

After a week of making plans we have everything in place. Looking back it would have been crazy trying to plan to leave last week, 5 days after learning the approval was in hand, I feel comfortable that everything is in place now.

We leave Saturday Evening flying into LA then onto Frankfurt finally arriving in Kiev 11pm Sunday evening. A cab takes us to the Lybid hotel just up the street from the train station. Our train leaves Monday at 1 pm and we arrive in Melitopol close to 1 am. Henry will pick us up and drop us off at the apartment where the apartment owner will meet us.

Checking the weather report nothing has really changed. Melitopol is a brisk 32 deg F and is set to fluctuate between that and the mid 20's. Rain and snow in the forcast. I can already picture the warm kitchen oven flame to keep me warm.

Hopefully we have a chance to visit with Ruslan on Tuesday morning before the 2 pm court date. Cindy's train back to Kiev leaves at 7 pm the same day so things are tight!!!! She arrives in Kiev Wednesday morning and will have to stay to cathc her flight at 5:30 am Thursday morning. Crazy travel for Cindy.

So we are all set. We also have $300 and a whole suitcase full of clothes for the orphanage! Thanks for the help!

Wish us luck.

Meditation

2010-03-02T11:53:00.000-08:00

We have been waiting at home now for almost two months and it is really getting on my nerves. My chiropractor told me that I have a lot of tension in my neck and my legs are uneven and my hips are off and my lower back is getting crinked and my cranial sacrial test came back as distressed. Man, stress can do a lot of things to the body!

So, I decided that I should try to take care of myself a little and do some meditation or yoga. I signed up for a vibrational meditation class that I kept getting e-mails about when we were in Ukraine. I thought, ok, maybe if I go, I can start to think positive thoughts and get somethin happenin over here.

It was at a yoga studio that I have only been to once. It is nice and quiet. Ahhh, the stress was already starting to dissappate as soon as I walked into the door. They said to bring a blanket to lay on since it is an hour and a half. I was thinking that it was a bit long for meditation and that I may fall asleep since it is Friday night and I usually can't last past 9PM...the party animal that I am. There were about 30 of us smooshed into this room with green starry sparkels floating all over the room projected from a funky lamp. There were lots of bongo drums, gongs, xylephones and larger drums scattered around the room. Ok, this will be interesting. He asks if we have any questions and the guys next to me speaks up, "Um, are we going to work within the OM frequency? (teacher looks at him funny)"Because last time I went to one of these things we worked on the Om frequency and afterwards I couldn't drive for like...three hours I was so blissed out."
(Ok, THAT guy needs more space and I just neeeed to moooove over a tad...)

He let's us know that the sound frequencies that we are going to hear are supposed to unlock different parts of our brain and open up areas of our body that may be blocked (that guy next to me has some work to do). I just want to meditate.

He tells us to lay down and close our eyes and just listen to the music. A really big drum noise starts and it feels cool because I can feel the vibrations on the floor. I try to meditate. It is going OK and I already feel like I am getting somewhere and then I hear, "Beeeerrrrwwwwwwmmmmm. beeeeeerrrrrrwwwwmmmmmmm." What the hell is that noise? What instrument is that? OK, get back to meditating. [picture my family all together smiling and as happ...."beeerrrrwwwmmmmm. beeeerrrwwwwmmm." Ok, what is that noise? Could it be him doing that with his lips? "Mmmmeeeerrrrrruuuummm. Mmmmeeeeerrrrruuuummm." Holy crap! He HAS to be making that noise with his lips! I have to open my eyes to see if it is true! Is this why he makes us close our eyes? So we can't figure out if it is his mouth or not? If I look, he will definately see me and...who knows? maybe he will stop the class or something? I amost start to crack up. I have to focus on my meditation [going to Ukraine and picking up Rusla..."bbbrrrruuuuummmmm. brruuuuuuummmmm." Seriously, if this guy is going to make these noises the whole time, there won't be any meditating going on! I will just lay here and wonder what his face looks like while he is making that noise. It HAS to look funny. I almost start to crack up again.

Mouth instrument is quiet and I think I am starting to picture our family together happy... and then I notice that the drum is right over my head!! All I could think was that he better not drop that thing because it sounded big. The drum stopped and a bunch of gongs and symbols followed. At this point, I am totally done meditating now and just wondering about the instruments he is using...the tunes he is playing. I swear one sounded like the theme song from Charlies' Angels. Funny, that was the same song that was going through my head for a month straight when we were in Ukraine. Woman next to me is snoring. Mr. Blissed-out is snoring.

I know I live in a hippy town ....and I love it. I am kindof a hippy myself, but this experience was not one I will repeat. It is really hard for me to find something that is too "Far out" for me, but that was way too far out for me. I was thinking how funny it would have been to have Marty in there with me!!! She would have gotten up and left to go laugh in the lobby.

Hey, maybe my bit of meditation did something because we are getting ready to leave soon. I am sure it also has a lot to do with prayers and good thoughts from all of our friends and family as well. Thanks everyone!

Canadian Clearance Finally!

2010-03-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

It’s finally here. One of the last pieces to the puzzle. Dima has my Canadian clearance in hand and now I will work with Vitaly to co-ordinate a court date. It’s interesting because I recently got in touch with the Canadian Interpol department. They shared that I should expect to wait 120 days to receive clearance. Sometimes it’s hard to get a straight answer!

I can imagine that we will be leaving in about a week and a half but that is just a guess (UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Vitali and he has asked for a next Tuesday court date – he’s waiting on an answer!). I believe Cindy’s trip will be about 5 days and mine will be about a month. I better make sure I have some things to keep me busy! The plan is for Voss to split time between grandma and with our good friends around the corner, Jennifer, Noah and David (thanks!). Baba might even make the trip out here very soon but right now she is siestaing in Baja with Dido!

All this time back was very much needed to get bills back in order, to prepare for taxes, and get HeatLab back up to top shape. It’s amazing how far a month and a half will put a person behind. It’s good to have things organized again.

I must also say that I have been very fortunate from a work perspective. My immediate Boss has been very supportive and understanding. Up till now I have been living off of Holidays and Vacation. With some supporting paperwork I will be covered for the rest of my time by the FMLA (family medical leave act) which pays a certain percentage of my wages for up to 6 weeks. Normally I wouldn’t be covered until the adoption is finalized but in my case they were able to consider some paperwork from the Orphanage Director which stated that I was spending our time there bonding with Ruslan before the Adoption was finalized.

Waiting

2010-02-23T08:18:00.001-08:00

Tuesday Feb 23rd.

There isn’t much to post at this point. Cindy’s clearance has been at the SDA for quite some time now and mine is???? Apparently the US government is much more efficient than the Canadian government.

I talked with Vitaly yesterday and he is concerned about changing the court date once again. This will be the second time he has had to change the court date (our latest appointment was for Feb 26th which we cannot make now). I asked him not to reschedule an appointment for now. Hopefully it will not be a problem to schedule a new court date once my clearance arrives.

I also voiced my concern about how Ruslan may be dealing with the delays. Vitaly said he had a conversation with Ruslan and he is fine with everything. It’s like our boy is with other people and we have no real way to communicate with him.

All this time back at home has been great to get things back in order. Between taxes and work there has been no time to do much. I for one haven’t had a chance to notice that we no longer have cable at home! Hopefully Ruslan feels the same way ;-). Voss sure has done a great job finding others things to occupy his time. Not that he was a couch potato but now he plays with his toys and acts like Peter Pan far more.

On another note, Voss is back to his self again! Between the uncertainty of our situation, deviation from his regular schedule, and spending all that time non-stop with his parents, he really wasn’t acting like himself. It’s amazing how sweet he is now that we have been back and settled for a month! He’s been an angel lately.

This morning Voss woke up with me before 6. We had breakfast together. He asked me why I was up so early. I told him that I am busy at work. He asked if I was working on the adoption to bring Ruslan home. Cute!

Back for 2 weeks now

2010-02-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

.

It's been 2 weeks that we have been back now. We spent 45 days away from home and none of us were sick once. Since we have been back Voss has a cough for a week and I picked up a stubborn sinus infection. Strange.

We are all caught up now it seems. Well, not way behind anyway. The lights still come on at night and the shower is warm in the morning. Best of all the internet still works. It felt like we were gone forever. Grandma really kept things in shape, especially Bessel who looks like she lost 5 lbs. It's amazing what a few walks will do for a dog ;-)

Some intersting developments as of late. Turns out that Ukraine has not paid it's passport book bill. The passport issueing company has ceased to send the books. All people in Ukraine waiting for passports are stuck. Imagine this, the interpol requirement did not happen and we finish the legal process. We go to get a passport for Ruslan and there are none availible. Ruslan and I are stuck in Ukraine, with nothing to do, for weeks on end. I am not sure that it would have been a good. So you see, everything does happen for a reason ;-)

Some good news I think. Dima emailed today and said that Cindy's clearance came in today. Mne did not. He said that Americans were processed first. Not sure if this means that mine will come in tomorrow or in 2 weeks. It's nice not to have these types of things consuming every waking minute! I am sure it will come soon.

Now we must cover the other bases: make sure that passports are availible, make sure that official paperwork is availible for the birth certificate, and find out if there are any other hurdles anyone sees on the horizon before we plan the trip back.

Lastly, we posted how we were able to buy some great things for the kids before we left. Well I have been given some more clothes, etc to take with us when we return. Additionally we have $200 more in donations to spend on the kids. We would really like to see if we can't keep this effort going and collect more donations. Once we have a good idea of what the total is then we will talk to the director to see what the kids need and go from there. Really, anything helps. The money goes so much further in Ukraine and anything little is much more than the nothing these kids have now.

You can send the money by clicking on the following link (you do not need an account to send $$, only a credit card - just click the link on the bottom left of the paypal page):Thanks for all the prayers and support.

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The Big Fat Ukrainian Wedding

2010-01-31T11:20:00.000-08:00

When we went out with our Ukrainian friends a week ago, they gave us their wedding disc so we could watch it. Since we are leaving tomorrow, we felt obligated to watch it today. I am telling you, it looked like the funnest- and longest- wedding reception ever! They told us it was very traditional so I feel like we got a good glimpse of what the weddings are like here.

This is how it went....
Bride and groom drive up to the front of the resturant. When they get out of the car, everyone throws rose petals and pops balloons.
The parents are waiting near the door with two glasses of wine, fancy bread with salt on top and a long embroidered Ukranian cloth (we had this at our wedding for those of you who went). Some speech in Russian...Bride and Groom take a big piece of bread and dip it in the salt (I tried to eat our bread and Marty told me it was like 20 years old). They feed each other and wash it down with the wine. I think I remember Marty telling me it was a parent blessing and it was to give you health and prosperity?
They go in the resturant and everyone sits on long tables. You go up to the bride and groom and say something to them and put money and a card into the giant jar with the "$" sign on it.

No speeches, you just start to drink. There was a lot of footage of shots being poured, bottles being opened.

Then there is the feast! I have never seen so much food on one table in my life! Pickles, fruit, whole grilled fish, meat, salad, meat and more meat.

The auction starts. There are several bottles of alcohol on the table and people bid on them. The money goes to the bride and groom and the alcohol goes to the highest bidder.

Then the games start. The best man and maid of honor did not get off easy with no speech. They don't have time, they have to start drinking in order to endure what they are forced to do next. They are the ones who have to entertain the guests for the next hour playing the games.

The bride's shoes were taken from her (not sure why) and the games begin.

Game #1- The BM (best man) and the MOH (maid of honor) sit on a bag filled with marbles. They have to move their bums around to try and guess how many are in there. The MOH won this one.

Game #2- the BM got on the dance floor with two other guys. They all had to put on blindfolds and start to dance. They told the two guys to leave the dance floor and the BM is dancing alone the whole song. He lifts his blindfold and sees he is alone and everyone laughs.

Game #3- Three people put as many suckers in their mouth as possible and try to say something.

Game #4- MOH has to wear the blindfold and give the BM a lap dance. She starts to dance and they switch him up with an old guy. Blindfold comes off...everyone laughs.

Game #5- The MOH has to lie down on some chairs and they place chocolates all the way down her body. The BM has to put the blindfold on, find the chocolates and eat them off of her body. They switch the MOH with a guy so the BM is eating chocolates off of his friend. A few times, he almost kisses his friend. Blindfold off...big laughs!

Game #6- BM dresses up like a girl, MOH dresses up like a guy. They have to dance together.

Then the groom and four of his friends come out with no shirt on and tutus and tiaras. They dance to Swan Lake.

Bride gets her shoes back.

Everyone then goes outside for the fireworks show. It is a serious show of fireworks that lasts about 5 minutes on the video.

Game #7- Grandmas have to dress two full grown men in baby clothes. They have to feed them a baby bottle full of alcohol. The first one done wins.

A couple more games were played and then there is the bouquet toss and garter throw.
Then there is a very serious candle dance. Everyone gets in a circle and holds a candle and the bride and groom dance in the middle. It was very serious. Then it is all over.

We are home

2010-01-30T09:01:00.000-08:00

We got home late Thursday night. It was sad to go through customs with just three people. Every hour that passed during our trip home felt like we were getting farther and farther away from our son- emotionally and physically.

We took the night train from Melitopel on Monday night, arrived in Kiev to finish the paper to the SDA and get the American Embassy papers taken care of. Then, we took the 3 hour journey to Voss's orphanage to visit for an hour. He doesn't really remember anything except what he saw in the old videos. When we walked in, we noticed a lot of new construction. The doors throughout the whole place were new and all the hallways were recovered with paneling. When we went up to the director's office, we ran into the nurses. They looked at Voss for a second and had to say his name a few times before they realized it was really him! They kept talking about how his face has nice color (I thought he was pretty pale since we have not seen the son for SEVEN WEEKS!) how healthy he was and the dark circles under his eyes were gone. His dark circles are a side effect of his kidney disease and he needs to drink a lot of water and take his vitamin sprays to get them under control. They were happy to see him and talked about how big his belly used to be and were making jestures like he used to be quite the serious one (no translator so we had a hard time understanding). Ha! Look at him now! At times, we can't get him to stop laughing. Love heals.

We were brought down to his classroom next. I was hoping his favorite teacher was going to be there so I could thank her for taking good care of him and nuturing him all that time. She was there!! She came out and looked at him for a moment with a confused look on her face. Then she recognized him. "Vasyl!" She was smiling and a bit teary eyed. At least, that is what it looked like through my teary eyes. She was amazed at how good he looked and how healthy he was. She kept grabbing for him, but Voss allowed only a short hug.

We went in and all the memories came crashing back to us. It was all pretty much the same layout, but there was all new furniture, paint on the walls, bright yellow wallpaper, a new kitchen with a stove, and TV. Wow, how is there this fancy orphanage here and Ruslan's is such a rundown mess? This must be where all the Ukrainian Nationals are brought to adopt babies. Another one of his old teachers were there and she showed me a photo of Voss that she still had on her cell phone! Over two years and she still had his photo in there! They showed us old photos from a few Christmases ago- right before we adopted Voss. He was not smiling in one of those pictures. He looked so tiny and sad and alone. Voss did not like living in the orphanage and it was detremental to his health. He is more emotional and living there was very stressful for him. The stress caused him to get sick which landed him in the hospital every 4 to 6 weeks. So, when looking at the old photos, I noticed that he was just not there some of the time. I figured he was in the hospital.

Voss sat down and had a snack with the kids. Of course, it was very dairy based, but he had the rice pudding and pushed the milk away. We took lots of pictures and played on the floor a bit. It was a really strange feeling being there again. The good news was that there were only 9 babies there. They all looked really healthy except for one.

With all of the improvements, we hope that Voss remembers the orphange with good feelings in his heart.

Monday Update

2010-01-25T02:51:00.000-08:00

We have come to terms with everything. Better yet, Ruslan was not upset with the news. It was actually excellent timing bringing the gifts (report in a later blog) to the orphanage with us. Ruslan was happy to to have his family bring things to the orphanage. He was telling the kids that we have to finish some paperwork and he will be leaving in about a month.

Here is where we are now. Tonight we ride the overnight from Melitopol to Kiev. This was already booked on friday before we heard the news. Our return ticket was cancelled. We fly out of Kiev Wednesday morning at 7 a.m. on our way back to San Diego. Tomorrow is a packed day. We start with signing the paperwork at the american consulate so that I can complete the adoption process as a Canadian. We also go to our good friends at the SDA and ensure our paperwork for the interpol clearance is signed and submitted. Right after that we take a 3 hr ride to Cherkassy to visit Voss's old orphanage. 3 hours back to Kiev to the apartment and prepare to leave at 4 a.m. the next morning to the airport.

How did this happen? Well we had been receiving emails from the consulate on a new interpol requirement to be implemented for any NEW dossiers submitted after Feb 1st. Somehow the Ukrainian government instituted this requirement early AND included all prior submitted applications. We have since talked to a few people and with DIMA and have attempted to understand if there is a way around this. He has assurred us that there is not. ....until we made him disucss the situation today with the SDA. Apparently they will be discussing how this is affecting current adopting families and will issue an official statement later today. It is possible, although remotely, that current dossiers may be allowed to continue without this requirement. We keep our fingers crossed, and ask for your prayers, in hoping for good news. With that being said we are all packed and ready to leave tonight.

One last note. The previously communicated 40 days may in actuality be only 10 days. All rumors and speculation so we will see how the chips fall.

So please don't worry that we are not ok. We are. ...although I am not sure Voss would like to hear the news if we are going to stay here any longer past Wednesday ;-).

Donations put to good use

2010-01-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

We went to the orphanage yesterday to break the news to Ruslan that we were going to have to go home without him. The smile left his face and he looked a bit sad. His friends started to ask questions and I heard him say something about documents and then it looked like he was telling them that it was going to be OK. He was comforting them! He is probably used to being let down by life all the time, so he bounced back pretty quickly and told us to come with them to play ping-pong ball.

A month ago, we asked the boys what they had to do here besides TV and they said they have a ping-pong table but no raquets or balls. Thanks to an early donator (who gave me $ before we left to go get the kids at the orphanage something) they now have ping-pong balls and raquets. The room was packed with kids watching and playing.

Today, we were really excited to go to the sports store and pick up the basketball net and all the balls. Since we had gotten a lot of donations, we were able to get a whole lot more than we originally planned. Here is what we were able to purchase; the basketball net set-up, 6 basketballs, 4 soccer balls, 2 volley balls, a couple of cat's cradles for the girls, a gymnastics mat, a couple domino games, a chess set, 4 more ping pong paddles with balls, socks (lots of wool socks), tights for the girls (they wear them under their pants for warmth, and a birthday cake for Vadeem, one of Ruslan's best friends. The kids were not just excited they were in SHOCK! They could not believe they had just gotten all of this good stuff! Kids were similing everywhere!

Thank you all very much for helping us do that today! It was a fun day!

Due to the recent developments, we will be leaving for San Diego in the next few days. We will not be able to allocate any more donations between now and then. We just want to say thank-you for all the support and if you would like to donate either clothes or money then we can put them all to good use when we return.

News

2010-01-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

The SDA has issued a new requirement to all adopting families. No exceptions. An Interpol clearance is needed to continue. This clearance is rumored to accompany a 40 day waiting period. We found out a few hours ago.

Bad luck? Maybe.

What this means is that our court date has been cancelled until our paper has cleared. We have made it through the initial shock and are trying to piece together our next steps. Foremost is considering how Ruslan will feel about the delay.

Most likely we will be traveling back to San Diego very soon and regrouping. We feel like our family is being torn apart. We will post more when we know more.

Donate to the Orphans

2010-01-22T00:11:00.000-08:00

**Update**
We quickly reached our goal andthen some. THANK-YOU! Please see the Newer post. Please don't feel obligated to donate, but if you do know that it will be put to good use upon our return.

----------------------------------------------------------

Our initial plan was grand. We thought we could put together a plan to build a full playground. After a little research and some unreturned emails we decided to scale back a little bit. We talked with the director and he was ecstatic at the thought of installing an outdoor basketball net. Furthermore we noticed that a lot of the orphans clothes are old and could use replacing. We deicided a focus on the basics would be the best way to start: socks and underwear.

So in response to everyone's reply to help out we have the following goal(buying the equipment is better than donating $$ because you never really know where it goes):

Basketball net, backboard, balls and pump - including installation (director mentioned he can get it installed) est $200

Socks and Underwear: $100

....and depending on how things go we have seen a few other things that would be great for the kids (they have absolutely nothing to do but watch tv). There is a contraption that would be great for exercise including chinup bar, benchpress, etc, etc. Also mats, heavy bag, boxing gloves would be a possibility (maybe not). We'll see how things go.

So our initial goal is $300. Please donate what you can, even if it is $5. You can send the money by clicking on the following link (you do not need an account to send $$, only a credit card - just click the link on the bottom left of the paypal page):

We will keep a running total in the blog and also take pictures of the equipment once it is purchased.

Thanks!

Friday Jan 22nd Weather Forcast

2010-01-22T00:09:00.000-08:00

Weather Forcast:

	Friday Overcast. High: -6 °C . Wind NE 28 km/h . Windchill: -16 °C .
	Friday Night Overcast. Low: -11 °C . Wind NE 28 km/h . Windchill: -19 °C .
	Saturday Overcast. High: -9 °C . Wind NE 32 km/h . Windchill: -21 °C .
	Saturday Night Overcast. Low: -16 °C . Wind NNE 32 km/h . Windchill: -25 °C .
	Sunday Overcast. High: -14 °C . Wind NNE 28 km/h . Windchill: -27 °C .
	Sunday Night Scattered Clouds. Low: -20 °C . Wind North 25 km/h . Windchill: -29 °C .
	Monday Clear. High: -15 °C . Wind North 21 km/h . Windchill: -30 °C .
	Monday Night Clear. Low: -19 °C . Wind NNW 14 km/h . Windchill: -27 °C .
	Tuesday Clear. High: -14 °C . Wind NW 14 km/h . Windchill: -26 °C .

Going Native

2010-01-21T15:18:00.000-08:00

	1. go native	35 up, 2 down
	Used humorously, to go native means to take on some (or all) of the culture traits of the people around you, often said of people who go to foreign countries or far away cities. These traits may include dress, language, accent, etiquette, religion, etc. Important: The common use of the phrase does not have anything to do Native Americans. 1: When he visited China he loved the culture so much that he disappeared and went native. 2: Better keep her away from the village. She might just go native on you. (Copied from the Urban Dicionary) The other day, I was joking with Zenon that we are going to "go native" soon and, well, it has actually happened. Today, we all resembeled the locals; Voss walked around talking as loudly as possible on the cell phone, Zenon (the jean snob) actually bought a pair of Ukrainian jeans and was sporting them all over town (he was forced to buy a pair since one of his two pairs was completely ripped after the snowball fight at the orphanage), and I bought a pair of fur-lined high boots. I even stopped by the fur supply store to pick up some fur bling for family and friends back home. I considered pimping out Zenon's Northface coat with a fur collar, but they just didn't go together. Zenon thought it would be fun to give Voss the "Ukrainian mullet" haircut, but I will never go THAT native. Let me explain the Ukrainian Mullet....totally shaved with the half inch clippers with the exception of a thin row of long hair at the nape of the neck and thin bangs about to the mid-forehead. It is the same haircut Voss had when we first met him (you can check out our old posts from his adoption to see what I am talking about.) We walk around with serious looks on our faces. And when someone stares at us, we stare right back and don't look away. We even get excited to go out for meat pockets! Ugh! Get us out of here before it is too late!

Court Date

2010-01-21T13:48:00.000-08:00

We finally got the approval from Berdansk. It was touch and go for a day, but Vitali worked it out and made it happen. What? Don't we sound excited? We will be excited when we are in the airport in San Diego! As far as our court date...we were told that it is next Friday. Hopefully, that date will stick. There is always that chance that it will change. We are happy to finally get the preliminary date, but frustrated when we worked out how much longer we will have to stay here.

Zenon took one for the team yesterday when he didn't tell me anything about the phone call he had with Vitali on Wednesday night (he is the best husband). I guess Vitali was very worried that we did not get the papers and was thinking that we might not get them ever! Poor Zenon waited until 2: 30 the next day to finally call Vitali to see if he had any news. Vitali was supposed to call in the morning, but I guess he decided that he would make us wait until he was done with all the paperwork for the day. We would have waited until 6PM! When Zenon got him on the phone, he was in a great mood at the orphanage finishing all the paperwork. Nice. Thanks for giving Zenon an ulcer Vitali.

(Note to anyone adopting from here in the future...no one wants to talk about future good possibilities. They really focus on all the bad things that could happen. I mean, why get your hopes up? This is a country filled with people with little hope.)

So, we will see how things go tomorrow. I think me and Voss will leave by the 31st. Zenon will finish up here with Ruslan. He drew the short straw.

Meeting in Berdansk

2010-01-21T02:29:00.000-08:00

I know some of you are waiting to hear the news and we are still waiting as well. The meeting was held yesterday and the approval letter was faxed to Vitali. We are just waiting for the mayor's signature and then it will go off to theSDA in Kiev this evening. We hope to get the court date today. Hopefully, it will be as soon as next week. I am hoping for tomorrow...but there is no chance of that I am sure.

It snowed here so we were actually able to do somthing a little different today...go for a walk with Voss's sled. We made it to the (stinky) internet cafe and then who knows what adventures will come our way today. All three of us are starting to talk like Eyore (sp? from winnie the pooh). Hopefully we can snap out of it.

Thanks for everyone who has called, e-mailed and put comments into our blog. We don't feel so alone over here.

Ruslan

2010-01-19T09:19:00.000-08:00

We went to visit Ruslan today. He looks really happy and even looks like he has some color in his cheeks. He showed us around the sleeping quarters...finally! We got the grand tour... all the highlights... the rug where they wrestle, break dance, karate, and do gymnastics moves, the TV room with hard benches to sit on and watch tv, and the weights that belonged to one of the older boys. There were several posters from McGills skateshop (in Encinitas) so I am sure that Ruslan got a lot of kudos for bringing cool posters to the orphanage. There were not any other posters or pictures up on the walls, so I am glad he brought them. We finally met his best friend. He must have been gone for the holidays because we have never met him until today. His name is Vitali and he looks like the sweetest little guy. All of the boys seem very sweet and thoughtful with each other. Sure they wrestle and kick the crap out of each other, but they always make sure the other guy is Ok afterwards and that the blood isn't getting all over the carpet.

Ruslan seems to be very comfortable with us. He is trying to talk and answer all our questions in English. He is even posing for pictures which is something that we really have not been able to do. It is amazing what happens to a person when they feel loved. It is the greatest gift you can give to someone. It must be such a lonely feeling knowing that someone won't stick their neck out for you. I can almost tell which kids at the orphanage still have family who visit because they are the ones who still have some softness in their eyes. Some color.

The first time I saw Ruslan at the airport in New York, he scared me a little. He had fear in his eyes. It was a look like he was not afraid to punch me if I tried anything tricky. I remember that most the other kids were smiling and hugging their host families (some knew them from past trips or had received a letter or two before the trip). Ruslan did not want to look anyone in the eye or -God forbid- hug anyone! He looked scared. And skinny. We grouped together with some of the other kids and their hosts to find our way to connecting flights. One of the kids, Victor

(who is finally being adopted), had shoes on that were way to small on him and he could barely walk. Our guess was that they were the newest shoes at the orphanage and so they put those on him. Or maybe, he squished his feet into them just so he could wear new shoes. We made him take them off and walk around in his socks. He looked at us really funny because- who in their right mind would walk around without shoes? Ukrainians NEVER go without shoes, even in the house. Once those shoes came off, he let out a sigh of relief and smiled. One of the girls was a fiery redhead and was already telling English jokes and was the skinniest thing I had ever seen! She was just adopted by a family in Italy (Good, get some pasta and gelato into that girl!) And then there was our guy, the quiet apprehensive one that had the saddest eyes.

We all weighted ourselves on the baggage scale and every host parent there was silently calculating how much weight they can try to put on the child before they had to go back to the orphanage. Ruslan gained 5 pound in 3 weeks. Not bad. He didn't eat much at first because he was busy riding the bike for the 100th time around the house or was having a meltdown in his bedroom. After week two, he came out of his protective shell a little and started to eat. A lot. His favorite thing was (and still is) chicken and he also loves french fries and fruit- any kind of fruit. We would go to the grocery store and he would start to grab anything that looked like fruit and put it in the cart. He got a little daring after a few trips and got a pineapple and a mango. He also loved trail mix with m & m's and macadamia nuts. He could go through a pound of macadamias in a day!

Then there was the behavior. OH, the behavior! I can't tell you how many times we tried to go to pizza port to eat pizza and play video games. He did not want to eat pizza, he hates pizza, and did not want to play video games. The fact was, he had no idea what we were talking about, but the 11 year old mind likes to think that they know everything. We finally got him to go on one of his last nights there and I think he was a little peeved that he didn't agree to go sooner.

Much of his stay with us was dealing with melt downs and him retreating into his room under the blankets for an hour or so. We called the translator almost every day to get him to understand what we were saying and that "Let's go to the zoo" did not mean "We are going to take you somewhere really boring and make you eat pizza with mayonnaise and lard." And it never really got better. We all had big bags under our eyes after that three week "vacation." I think we all were going to bed at 8PM every night.

So, his eyes aren't so scared, he trusts us a little now and he knows we stuck it out in this god forsaken #@!#$* country so we could bring him home with us. We are making some progress.

Boeuf Bourguignon

2010-01-18T09:02:00.000-08:00

OK, so things here have really hit a new level on the boring scale. Cindy fired up "Julie and Julia" last night, a movie about Julia Childs (about as exciting as it sounds). Today we scrambled together all the ingredients for Boeuf Bourguignon, with the exception of thyme, and the concoction is sitting in the oven right now. It took a half hour alone to find just the beef stock in the grocery store. I was on my own because the women working there had no idea what I meant when I said "do you have any beef juice". It gave us something to do today.

Henry, our cab driver, has been calling twice per day for the last 3 days. Tomorrow he will be picking us up to take us to a religious ceremony. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the baptism of Christ. He is pretty excited about taking us. When he calls he yells into the phone. I have to yell back in engrussian so he can hear me. Cindy says I talk to loud but I am just trying to fit in.

Voss has become a selective listener. Cindy believes he is done with being here. That left me as the lone holdout who didn't mind our surroundings.......until yesterday. I am finally done too. One of the things that got to me was that I started getting B.O.. It's not right. It must be the food or something. The other thing was finally realizing that we are in a part of Ukraine that has no Ukrainians, only Russians.

We bought Voss a stuffed cow that sings a Russian lullaby, and he named it Marley. He really misses his friends. In the butcher shop, we noticed that he was wiping his eyes a lot and then realized he was crying. He really misses his grandma today. I think he is a little tired of us and would like a change of scenery.

So here is the latest. We went on Friday to pick up Ruslan from the orphanage. Vitalli phoned in ahead and we figured everything was set to go and Ruslan would be with us for the weekend. We got there and indeed everthing was set-upfor Ruslan to come with us. The only thing was that Ruslan didn't want to come. Can you believe that he would rather spend the weekend with his friends instead of locked up in an apartment doing nothing with a bot half his age! ;-) No problem, we didn't mind. We took our customary shots with the director and left feeling good. Voss had mixed feelings. Sad because Ruslan wasn't coming. Happy because the director gives away lots of chocolate (and pickled tomatoes) after a few shots.

Right now it is Monday night. Cindy is listening to a book on tape, Voss is in bed, and I am contemplating going to sleep soon (it is 7:30). Tomorrow Vitali comes back into town. We plan on visiting Ruslan with Vitali around noon, after our time with Henry at the Jesus ceremony. Wednesday is when the rubber meets the road. All our waiting comes down to wednesday. The panel of bureaucrats in Berdansk will meet then and decide the fate of splitting Ruslan from his brothers. We have been told it is just a formality.

Maybe we will take pictures and share how the cooking experiment worked out.

Quiz Results

2010-01-16T03:31:00.000-08:00

Awesome! Quiz is now closed. Here are the answers:

1) 6 eggs

2) pizza, not the mayonnaise kind (cilantanos is the only place that serves something that resembles american food)

3) 3 bowling alleys. It was also confirmed that Melitopol has only 3 bowling alleys so we have seen them all.

4) Speaks Russian

5) Vitali

6) Dima

7) Feta cheese

8) Cartoshka

9) Spiderman

Brianna = 6

Mike = 4

Bree = 5

Jennifer = 5

So to summarize. Brianna wins! ....and Mike comes in last place. The good news is that everyone wins something nice from Ukraine, a bottle of medicinal cognac. ...and Briana wins an additional prize tbd.

By the way, congratulations on the engagement Bree.

What do you do after Ukrainian sushi?

2010-01-16T01:01:00.000-08:00

We went for lunch at the Smile Cafe the other day. We were told it was a sushi place. We got the menu and it had lots of pictures in it (like Denny's) so we thought of ourselves as lucky and ordered some cool things...or so we thought.

Zenon picked the picture of a silver bowl with mushrooms and seafood and cheese. It looked good. Voss picked the chicken soup. Can't go wrong with Chicken soup. I picked a cool looking thing that sort of looked like a dumpling tied at the top with a bow.

So, let me tell you what we really ordered; Zenon- a strange seafood mix with all of the seafood he does not like (a.k.a mussels) topped with some creamy sauce. Yuck. Voss- Chicken soup. Good stuff. He is the only smart one of the group. Me- a crepe filled with kidney and liver stew tied at the top with a green onion. I took one bite. Yuck! How is that sushi?

Afterwards, we finally found the big park. Here we are having fun.

New Year Trick-or-Treaters

2010-01-16T00:33:00.000-08:00

On January 13th, Ukrainians celebrate the ancient New Year. Again, they come out and visit houses to say their poems for treats or money. Let me explain money....they are expecting COINS! Not bills.

On that night, we had three girls come to visit and recite their poem. We had no chocolate or fruit, so Zenon looked for some money. All he had were bills. The smallest denomination was a fiver (62 and a half cents). We gave each a five. One snatched it out of my hand so fast I almost got a paper cut.

Two minutes later, three boys show up at the door. They said something in Russian and I said I didn't understand. "Give me money." In English, just like that.

I said, "I don't have any money," and shut the door.

Humm? Maybe we are giving out too much money. Two seconds later, another ring at our door. Voss was in the bathroom freaking out about something so I decided not to answer. Note to self...Do not give trick-or-treaters any more than one coin.

Russian Poem

5 grevina for the person who can translate.

And it is called a "New Year Tree" not a Christmas tree here.

The orphanage

2010-01-15T23:36:00.000-08:00

I took some video of the orphanage since I figured some of you would be interested to see what it looks like. Notice the lack of outdoor entertainment? We would like to purchase some playground equipment and basketball nets if anyone would like to pitch in. We are looking into the costs now.

The drive to the orphanage

The entrance

The school

Box the orphanage dog

The cafeteria

Cute boys

Living quarters

In the directors office for the usual cognac, pickeled green tomatoes and chocolate breakfast

Orphanage puppies

Our night out on the town

2010-01-15T23:03:00.000-08:00

We have made some Ukrainian friends. When Santa came to visit our house, his angel spoke English and called us a few days after to invite us to visit the water with them. Last Sunday, they took us to the hot springs. It was VERY cold that day! People go to the springs for health and sit in the waters to get rid of all their aches and pains (see videos). The kids had a great time being close to the water again. On the way to the sea, there were several stands set up selling fish. They were all dried and salted and hanging from a string. They bought us a string of fish so we had something to eat with our beer later (I don't know...fish that has been hanging outside for weeks?!).

On the car ride home, the couple (Tamara and Nicoli) continued to ask us several personal questions that we would normally never answer...but had no problem answering in this country. How much does Zenon make, how much do we pay for for our house, electric, gas, cars, taxes, why are we adopting Ruslan, etc.? All the most personal questions. From what we have read, Ukrainians have NO problems asking these questions. We were asked the same questions last time we were here. Of course we down played the responses a bit. I mean, the average salary here is less than a $1000 a month. We had no problem spending half of that outfitting our outer winter clothes for the trip here! We continued to compare costs of things and remembered how expensive life is in North America.

We invited them to dinner and asked them to take us to their favorite restaurant. Last night we went to Russian house. We had a traditional Ukrainian dish of potatoes, boiled steak and cheesy sauce. I don't like potatoes, only like my steak on the barbecue, but I ate it anyway. It wasn't to bad, actually. She ordered wine, something we don't drink here because the wine here is awful. It wasn't bad last night, but this morning I feel terrible. And I only had one glass!

After dinner, the music and dancing started. As it turns out, they brought us to a dance place. I noticed a stage, but didn't think twice about it. It was for the singer! They have live singing every night (where was the band?). I kept looking at him wondering why he was slightly "stiff" while singing and then I noticed the computer screen in front of him....Brianna and Rita are going to like this one....he was reading the lyrics from a screen! It was karaoke! Awesome! No, we didn't sing. It wasn't really like that. He was the star of the show and didn't ask if anyone else wanted to sing. He did have a great voice. Voss was having a great time dancing. He was checking out the girls in the really short skirts who were there for a birthday party. I think him and Kent need to go out on the town one night. Maybe when he is ten.

Thursday Night

2010-01-14T13:29:00.000-08:00

I set the alarm for 5:00 am with a plan to wake up and do some work. After not being able to fall asleep I am aimlessly surfing the net and and losing another online tournament. I will try and update you with the latest trivial happenings.

On Tuesday we went to a new bowling alley to check it out. We heard there was good sushi. I was surprised that it was so good (maybe it's just my lack of variety has lowered my standards?). It was actually a Japanese style restaurant off the side. We went bowling afterwards, just Voss and me. I racked up a 109, and Voss was a little frustrated with his 42. I don't mind taking the win because I really don't think my 109 will hold up much longer.

The girl working at the alley spoke English pretty well. I was surprised of course but she said she lived in Minnesota and Florida for a year studying agriculture. She said she likes the US and doesn't like Ukraine. That was when Cindy perked up and joined the conversation ;-)

Yesterday we met with Vitali. He is frustrated with everything but still trying hard to see what he can do. We told him to use his charm to make things happen (he didn't know we were joking about the charm thing).

The elections are in full swing. There are booths set up on the sidewalks. There was an old lady getting literature from the USSR party tent, red flag and all. Maybe communism is on the ballot?

On the way home I stopped for a $3 haircut again. We then stopped for vegetables and chicken to make some chicken soup at home which turned out pretty good.

Today we rolled out at about 11 and made our way towards the little cafe Cindy found in the mall. We started out at the pharmacy and found the prescription cognac. Not sure yet what to do with it. Voss was excited when we got to the little mall because there was one of those toy machines with the mechanical arm inside. You know, the ones where you spend about $5 to try and pick up a $1 stuffed animal and always leave with nothing. Well his reward for having a good walk yesterday was to hit up the same type of machine at a different mall downtown. The problem is that a few days prior, when I turned my back for a minute, Voss jammed all the coins he had from his pocket into the machine trying to get more turns. Problem was that he was stuffing the equivalent of pennies into a quarter machine and jammed it up. He was upset when we went back there yesterday and the machine was out of order. Now you can understand why he was doubly excited at finding another working machine.

We hung out there for a while andthen over to our favorite restaurant for a bite to eat. On the way home we picked up a bunch of eggs because we are going to pick up Ruslan tomorrow for the weekend. Our last stop was at the convenience store for a few beer. Cindy went in and came back out after a few minutes with a disgusted look on her face. In the store she was grabbing the beer out of the cooler and knocked a can off the shelf and when it hit the floor it popped a leak. It proceeded to spray Cindy and the 4 people around her. It was funny hearing Cindy tell the story because I could see that she didn't get embarrassed. It was even funnier when she realized that she was charged for the can that fell and popped a leak!

I bought a subscription at an online movie site called megavideo. We have access to almost any movie now. Voss just watched HOOK the other night. Just before bed tonight he asked if he could go with Peter Pan to never never land if Peter showed up during the night. He was given the green light as long as he promised to return before morning.

It's now 12:45 and I will go turn off the alarm. Seeing as it is my turn to wake up with Voss I will have a 6:30 wake-up call anyhow.

...by the way keep the comments coming. We look forward to reading them.

Following Mom's Advice

2010-01-13T01:22:00.000-08:00

We are taking our Mother's advice and not saying anything if we have nothing nice to say. If we were to say what is on our minds, it would be a post with a four letter word in between every word along with more swear words. The holidays are over and the reality of our situation here has hit us again like a ton of bricks. It was really hard to be positive yesterday and we are trying to get more information today. I hope to post some good news later. Again, please send positive thoughts.

It's not as bad as it sounds though. We expected to have some paperwork completed on Monday or Tuesday but have been told that it will not be addressed until the 20th. No other steps can be completed before this next step is completed. Therefore we are delayed another 2 weeks. At this point we are trying to understand how to coordinate this with work. I may have to travel back to San Diego to work for a few weeks and come back for the important court dates.

Voss has a book and it has my favorite story in it. It is about an old Chinese farmer. One day the farmer's horse runs away. His neighbors come by and say to the farmer "oh, such bad luck you have" The farmer replies "maybe".

The next day the horse comes back and brings with it a wild stallion. The farmer's neighbors see this and say to the farmer "oh, such good luck you have". The farmer says "maybe".

The next day the farmer's son breaks his leg trying to ride the wild stallion. The neighbors say "oh, what bad luck you have". The farmer says "maybe".

The next day the army travels through conscripting all the able young men from the countryside. The farmer's son is spared since he is not capable to fight with his broken leg.

So it's not always a bad idea to try and look past the bad news and hope the good won't be far behind.

Saturday Bus ride

2010-01-10T00:31:00.000-08:00

After our walk downtown, where we exchanged the rubber basketball that would not stay inflated, the guys rode the bus back to home base. We waited on the #24 and Cindy helped us on with 2 scooters, 2 filled grocery bags, 2 boys, and a stroller. The bus was packed and I stood blocking the door of the Van sized Bus.

Voss has a fairly high decible level and immediately blows our cover in public (as if the yard sale of stuff we were carrying with us didn't already). I always have to remind him to whisper. The bus started moving and Voss tripped a little (all 3 of us were standing). I grabbed his jacket with my one remaining finger. The lady seated behind him cleared her lap and offered Voss a seat on her lap. My immediate reaction was to say no, but then I think, "Why not? This type of thing is normal in Ukraine." I told Voss to sit on her lap and he cautiously obliges. Let me tell you! That was the quietest I have heard him in the last month! He didn't say a peep for the 10 minute ride! Was it strange that I allowed Voss to sit on a complete stranger's lap? Well, in the U.S. I am sure it would be a completely uncomfortable situation if anyone offered such a thing, but it felt OK here.

Ruslan had been super patient all day (and Voss) so I offered the internet cafe around the corner. I left a note for Cindy and we went to the internet cafe. It was small and stinky -like the other one- and there were about 12 boys waiting to use the 4 computers. The attendant said the wait would be well over an hour. I consulted with Ruslan and he had a few thoughts...he wanted to go to the other cafe which was 15 minutes away...or he wanted to wait here for a computer. I told him that both were not options and asked if he wanted to go earlier tomorrow and try. He did not like that response and stopped talking to me. Not good.

So what to do now? He said he was going to stand there and wait and that Voss and I could go home. No can do! It's such a delicate situation that always has the potential to spiral uncontrollably downward when he feels like something has happened that isn't fair. It's so easy to say, "If you are going to act like this then forget the internet cafe tomorrow!" Right? Wrong. He needs space and needs to be given a way to make a different decision. I gave him 10 minutes then explained how Cindy may be waiting for us and get worried since we have the only house key. After a few minutes, he just said "LET'S GO!" and started speed walking back to the apartment. He was out of site in no time while Voss and I were trying to keep up.

We have been reading this excellent book: Beyond Logic, Consequences, and Control. The book is excellent and really helps us consider a different perspective. In a nutshell, children who have come from tramatic backgrounds have defaulted to a different way of handling stressful and confusing situations. Their wiring doesn't allow them to objectively process things when in a stressful state. Therefore, the traditional parenting method of logic, consequences, and control just add fuel to the fire. For example, in a stressful situation he tells us to go fly a kite and we respond saying you lose XYZ privilege. He becomes more out of control, doesn't learn anything, and no one is better off. It is a long term goal (not a problem because we have time ;-)). In the heat of the moment, we need to reaffirm our support and love and allow the child a way to feel comfortable about calming down. Once the situation is back to normal, maybe an hour or so, take the child aside and explain how lying, stealing(etc.) hurts other people and it is not the best way to handle things. Reaffirm love, support, and that we are always here to listen. I hope we aren't speaking too soon, but we have really seen some great results so far. We both wish we had know these things earlier.

After a half hour, Ruslan acted as if nothing happened. We talked about what could be done differently next time and all was back to normal. We have already done this strategy numerous times and he has already changed a few bad habits! Pleeeeaase let this be the answer to our prayers!

Quiz

2010-01-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

Whoever posts all the correct results first, OR whoever posts the most correct results will win a special prize from Melitopol (delivery TBD): post in comments section:

(rules: limit 1 entry per person. Some of these answers may be in previous posts, some not. Some answers will be complete guesses. Promised prize to be well worth the effort!)

1) How many eggs does Ruslan eat on average each morning? (answer is not 1 dozen)

2) Our favorite restaurant serves a specialty, what is it?

3) How many bowling alleys have we found in Melitopol?

4) What is Voss's new favorite thing to do?

5) What is the name of our Melitopol Facilitator?

6) What is the name of our Kiev Facilitator?

7) What kind of cheese has Cindy found that she tries to eat in a salad every night?

8) Which of the following is the Russian word for Potatoe?

a) Potatoeshka

b) Hryvna

c) Cartoshka

9) What superhero movie did we buy yesterday (in Russian) for Ruslan to watch in San Diego?

Quiz closes Friday at 10 pm.

Fur

2010-01-09T09:52:00.000-08:00

We continue our social observations here in Ukraine. Due to some recent observational activity of Melitopel culture, a couple of our questions have been answered today.

Question #1. What type of business is the one around the corner where there is always a frenzied type of line inside the store and -one day- a large frenzied crowd waiting outside as well?

It was the butcher shop. People have been going there to get their Christmas Turkey. They must run out of turkeys at some point in the day and people try to get there early on the days of the delivery to secure their Holiday Turkey.

Question #2. How does every woman afford a fur coat? Every woman has some fur on them somewhere; coats, hats, boots, collars, around the hood. Most are wearing a year's salary of fur on their person. How is this possible? Are they just really good savers? And how is it that I have never seen the same coat twice? They are all different.

I found a fur supply store today at the mall. On one of the larger racks is a row of all types of animal pelts for sale. For a small amount, you can buy our animal pelt and have a coat made for you. You get to pick the fur, the hood, the collar, and the style. Or, go get a coat at the market for cheap and add the fur collar. Several pre-made collars were available for sale and you just sew it on to whatever coat you have. Or, you can buy fur by the yard (about two to three inches thick) and you sew it on to the arm cuffs and around the hood of your $30 coat (a very popular style). Don't forget your hat! You can buy a fur pom pom for the top of your knit ski hat. If you are on the less creative side, you can buy a fur coat all made and designed for you. A cute waist length full fur, with big fur hood, is around $125.00. For a leopard print one with a little more style, $225.00! I personally liked the full mink trench coat. I think it was the most expensive in the store and I didn't want to touch it to look at the price or I would have had five Russian speaking sales people on me trying to get me to buy it. Ukrainians are very good sales people. I bought a necklace and tablecloth today that I didn't really want, but I was not leaving their stores empty handed! I did not want to get talked into a full mink coat too.

Chocolate

2010-01-09T01:10:00.000-08:00

Every time I turn around, someone is giving Voss some chocolate. One of the women at the orphanage gave him a few chocolates (without asking me....they don't bother asking the parents here) and I found him facing a corner, chowing down on chocolate! He had chocolate all over his face, as grandma will attest to the fact that Voss always has food on his face. At the time, I thought it was only one chocolate, but later I found AT LEAST 5 chocolate wrappers in his pocket.

Voss is allergic to milk. He gets a very "strong" reaction when he drinks it. Has anyone ever seen Gremlins? Yeah, this is similar to what happens to Voss when he drinks milk. Eating chocolate is close to drinking milk for him. He gets wild and starts biting (I am not kidding). If I would have thought of it, I would have had our translator write a big sign to tie around Voss's neck that says, "Do not feed me chocolate or I will bite you."

One day, me and Voss decided to make an art project with all the wrappers and papers from boxes of chocolate. Here is Voss's mask. He wore it around all day outside. That was all we needed...people having another reason to stare at us. But at least they were not staring at me so much.

The Boys

2010-01-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Our boys are doing great.

Ruslan is getting to know us and - I think- starting to trust us. He is really funny and does silly things and just waits for us to look at him and laugh. He eats about a dozen eggs a day (is that ok Marla?) and can down about 25 meat dumplings in a sitting. A bag full of tangerines lasts about a day and a half and roasted chicken?....well, don't get too close after you put him in front of one! We went to a cafe yesterday and he even came inside with us to sit for a second! Then, he went back outside to stand guard again. One of these days he will come in and sit with us and drink or even eat something. Considering where he has been for the last 6 years, he is doing better than expected. We have to take him back to the orphanage on Monday to start all the paperwork and court proceedings. It is going to be really strange here without him. He is totally cute. He let us know that he wants to get a hamster when we get home.

Voss misses his friends. The other day, he told me he wants to "go to Aunt Janet's house to have some vitamin water, because I haven't visited in a while and she always has good drinks at her house." He also drew a picture for his friend Dirk and has planned a playdate (in his head) with our neighbor, Noah. When we were out for a walk the other day, he noticed that a lot of kids were walking with their grandparents. He would make comments like, "Oh, is that his grandma? He looks happy," and, "Look at him. He get's to walk with his grandpa. I want to walk with my grandpa...my Dido." I asked him if he missed his grandmas and Dido and he got kind of quiet. He was either really sad or pretending that he can't understand English anymore since he speaks Russian now. That is his new favorite thing to do. He will put all of his Russian words together in one sentence and tell me I have to respond in Russian. He will say, "yes no good no thank you no your welcome," and wait for me to respond to it. He was talking in his sleep the other day and started to say "yes" and "no" in Russian. Maybe it is starting to stick?He really misses Bessell too.

Together, they are starting to bond. They share everything pretty well. They try to talk to each other and there are a lot of misunderstandings. Of course, Voss wants to do everything that Ruslan does and follows him around everywhere. Ruslan gets a bit annoyed sometimes. I walked into the living room the other day when they were watching TV and they were sitting on the couch with their arms around each other. It was really cute.

Now, let's get this process moving and get the hell out of here!

Merry Ukrainian Christmas Eve

2010-01-06T00:47:00.000-08:00

Waiting. It seems like that's all we do.

Ruslan has been a bit depressed/scared and has refused to leave the house now for two days. We talked to him last night at dinner and after 20 minutes of trying to figure out what he was complaining about, it turns out that he really misses his friends. I immediately started to cry for him because I tried to think about how hard it would be to leave friends (who are more like family) at the age of twelve. Two seconds later, Voss started to cry too.

So, Zenon and Ruslan went to the orphanage today to see if we could take a few kids bowling. The director said no, made Zenon do a couple shots of cognac and sent them on their way. We still went bowling. I took Marty's advice and started my career as a bowling instructor. Zenon was my first student. I was knocking them down every time so I decided to let Zen in on my secret moves. I think he ended up winning the second round of bowling. Two Americans walked in during our game. What are they doing here!? I did like the rest of the Ukrainians and just stared at them.

When you are really bored and can't understand what anyone is saying, you tend to be more aware of what is going on around you. Lately, I have been noticing lines forming outside and inside places and have no idea what types of businesses they are. You know, with the different alphabet here and the fact that the Pimsler's "Learn Russin in 12 Easy Lessons" doesn't cover the alphabet - we can't even try to figure it out. So, I started to just line up with people or follow the crowd to see what kind of trouble I could get us into. Why not? We have NOTHING else to do.

A few days ago, we were walking around town and we noticed a few herds of families rushing into a building (everyone's always in a rush). I decided that I would follow. It turns out it was a theatre and there was some kind of Christmas show for little kids starting at some point. So me and Voss decided to go in and check it out. Most of the kids were dressed up in costumes. It was mostly girls, so there were MANY princesses. I figured it was the Nutcracker or something and they all like dress up like princesses. I did notice a stray bumble bee and Darth Vader. I didn't pay much attention. We went in and sat down wondering what we were in for and when it was going to start. Voss was scared that something was going jump out at him and was sitting veerrrrry close to me. I couldn't even comfort him since I had no idea what was going to happen.

As soon as the curtain opened, I immediately noticed that there was something off. It started with a witch and a bunch of animals talking and singing. After a few songs, I realized that the whole thing was lip synced...even the regular talking (that was the part that was making it "off"). The costumes and dancing were the worst things I had ever seen. The story appeared to be about some animals who were looking for their winter coats. I think the witch took them and the snow fairy helped them get their coats back. We kept waiting for Santa to show up since the billboard had a picture of Santa on it. No Santa. All of a sudden, the snow fairy and the animals were all waving good bye. Everyone got up within a split second and started rushing for the door (again rushing).

Voss and I managed to squeeze ourselves into the Christmas mosh pit to get out of the main theatre to let the crowd lead us outside. The crowd took a sharp right...away from the stairs that lead to the exit. We followed -without much of a choice- and both wondered aloud what was happening. We ended up at another smaller theatre and all the kids were in a giant circle holding hands and a giant Christmas tree was off to the side. Voss did not want any part of the hand-holding and had a death grip on my leg. One old woman tried to get him out there, "Go on little girl. Get up there." (I have to admit, his hair is quite long all of a sudden). Thankfully, Voss can not understand. Both of us wondered if THIS was when Santa would appear. Nope. Neptune, king of the ocean came out to talk to everyone. He pulled a wrench out of his pocket and everyone yelled "Nyet"...Russian "no." Then he pulls out a giant key and everyone yelled "Da (yes)." The witch came out again and gave up her key as well. Where is this going? An 8 (ish) year old girl came out and did a dance number in the middle of the circle with moves Beyonce could use in her newest music video...backless dress, short skirt, lots of make-up. Everyone broke up into smaller circles, started singing, and that was when they lost me and Voss. We left (Me and Voss have almost the same 2 minute attention span). I guess we will never know what happens next.

Later, I thought about the kids'costumes and remembered that I did see a few stores with costumes in the window and wondered if kids dressed up for Christmas like Americans do for Halloween.

Well, it gets better....This evening, we were sitting down for our second(or third?) Christmas Eve dinner of the season and the door bell rings. Who is that? We have no friends here? When I opened the door, there was a mother and her little girl standing there smiling and holding two bags half filled with food. The girl began reciting something in Russian...sounded like a poem or something. All I could think was, "Shoot, do I give her food? Should I wrap up the chicken to go? Are they hungry? They don't look poor. Are they gypsies? What is going on? I see chocolates and tangerines in her bag...I have a few in my purse, should I pass them on?" Not knowing what to do, I dumped about 10 chocolates into her bag, smiled and said, "Merry Christmas."

Zenon said, "Um, you may want to go easy on the chocolates, we may have more visitors. Let me call Dima and find out what this is all about."

Sure enough, the kids go trick or treating on Christmas Eve! Ha! That is the greatest!! And they have to memorize, like, a one minute religious poem and recite it before getting their treats! I swear! American kids are lucky with the "Trick or Treat." I want to take a video of the next person who rings our door and put it on the blog. These kids are so darn cute!

Unfortunately, Darth Vader has not been here yet.

Shopping in Ukraine

2010-01-03T23:04:00.001-08:00

Grocery shopping is our big event for the day. It is one of the few things to do in this town. Zenon does not have a problem eating meat while we are here, but I- on the other hand- have gone vegetarian for the time being. After several attempts at buying what I thought was cream for my coffee, Zenon finally brought home the real thing. First time was sour cream, then buttermilk, then buttermilk again, then goat something, and finally cream. I hope we can find it again. At least we have figured out the difference between ketchup and tomato paste.

As Zenon mentioned earlier, the ladies down at the corner store have been all up in our business (head bob, snap to the left, snap to the right). I like my privacy so I am forced to walk a Ukrainian block to one of two stores (1 Ukrainian block = 2.5 Leucadia blocks or 5 to 6 city blocks). The lack of red meat or any meat has caused me to get a little dizzy (just kidding mom) during these walks, but I would rather not have ten women giving me the laser stare and attempt to talk to me when all I want is a dozen eggs and go home.

A few notables;

- The pharmacy here sells brandy. It's prescription strength so, it's good for you.

- the price of candles quadruple when there is a power outage (which we had the other day)

- frozen chickens are three times more expensive than fresh chickens

- a huge bag of organic tomatoes cost 80 cents

- anyone can sell anything on the sidewalks near the market. So, if you happen to have a cow you just slaughtered and can't eat the whole thing, bring your axe, your big cutting log, and the leftover cow and cut it right in front of your customers. Now that is fresh meat!

This is what it looks like when we go shopping everyday. There are a few photos that are a bit blurry because I try to take them quickly without anyone seeing me. The video I was able to take on the sly with the Ipod.

The market

AWWWW, come on! Who can eat a burger after seeing this!? Blood, hooves, fur, bloody axe!

The butcher

The fish stand

Who can guess this type of fish? Looks like something I saw in Nemo... with the light that hung in front of his face to attract Nemo and Dora.

The food here is quite ..... beige... with some splashes of red here and there.

Shopping trip at the market and then the big supermarket

Cravings

2010-01-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

Craving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Always happens.

Waiting, waiting, waiting

2010-01-03T04:42:00.000-08:00

Nothing to do.

Voss's Post

2010-01-03T04:35:00.000-08:00

I love Marley because she sent an e-mail to me. When I go back to California, I will have a play date with her. I visit my brother at the orphanage every time. He's at our apartment right now. We buy food with him, we go to the cool park, and sometimes we take cool busses. We went to a show. It was a bit silly with all the girls. It was OK. It was an ocean king. I have never seen him. Santa wasn't there. He was busy. He got stuck in the business and couldn't come. That is why the ocean king (aka Neptune) came. He had a key and the witch had a key. I am going to stop for now.

Good morning

2010-01-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

Voss is the only early riser out of everyone. First light does not start until just after 7. This morning I made him go back to bed (sit in his room with games) at 5:30 and wait for the sun. He wasn't happy about it.

It's just him and me at the kitchen table and it's alomst 8. There is a fresh dusting of snow outside, but it seems to be evaporating by the minute.

Yesterday, we made the hour walk downtown where Cindy and Voss found a play at the local theatre. Ruslan and I waited outside until the rain started then we went into the bowling alley and waited some more for the only pool table. Ruslan really likes his scooter and could probably ride it all day long if he had too. The only problem is that after 2 days the rear wheel is already bent at an angle and 1 more solid jump from becoming inoperable. Let's hope it holds out.

Before making it to the theatre, we stopped for lunch at Auto Pizza. It almost had the feel of burger joint so I thought, "What the heck, let's try a burger." Voss and Cindy opted for a pizza while Ruslan rode his scooter outside (He wasn't hungry after his 6 egg and anything else he could get his hands on breakfast). I was excited about the burger. The waitress brought our tray. The pizza was already cut into slices and put on 2 plates. I had to unwrap my microwaved burger from the saran wrap. I am not sure what classified this thing as a burger!? If I was to put a heading on the menu it would have read "paper thin chicken fried steak on a mushy bun with mayonnaise oozing from the sides." The pizza was better because the mayonnaise didn't drip of all over your hands when you took a bite ;-)

Cindy and Voss found us in the bowling alley, still waiting. Ruslan was tired of waiting so we decided to make the walk back home since the rain was holding up. I have to give Ruslan alot of credit. When he came to visit in San Diego, he became easily frustrated and impatient. I am sure it helps that I know some Russian now (so he knows what we are doing and when we are doing it) but he also seems to have a different temperament.

Voss is doing well with everything. It is a stressful time for him. Structure and whatever semblence of a routine we can adhere to is the key to everything. For instance, his regular routine is dinner, straight to the shower where I help him get ready for bed, read a book, stay with him for a few minutes before leaving him to sleep. 2 nights ago he wanted to let Ruslan have a shower first, then wanted to shower by himself like Ruslan. After that it was 5 minutes of tv with Ruslan. After that it was complete chaos for 2 hours. Where he normally is fine in his room at 7, he was out of control in and out of his room till 9. We got back to the routine last night and all was well. He is just like his dad because he likes his routine! Other than that the boys are really playing together often and playing together well.

So where from here? More waiting. Cindy admitted yesterday that her tolerance for our surroundings has deteriorated. Not a good thing. We are trying to see when the first opportunity to have Cindy and Voss return home would be and I will remain to complete the remainder of the adoption. This may be possible after the first court date, but may also have to be after the second court date. We did confirm that I can complete the paperwork at the american embassy (the last step) as a Canadian citizen which is a step in the right direction. ....but the other pacing item is my "back to work date" which is currently scheduled for February 1st. I believe it would be possible to extend this date and I may have to start looking into that. Depending on that it may be the other way around where Cindy stays and I return ;-)

New Year's Eve

2010-01-01T00:19:00.000-08:00

We went for pizza in the afternoon yesterday. It started to rain. A little at first andthen a full downpour. It's nice to walk in the rain.

The pizza place was closing early at around 1. When we arrived they recognized us as English speakers and did their best to tell us that the pizza station was closed. I feel very comfortable with my Russian now. I have been practicing. I ordered 2 beers, 3 salads, a desert and some juice. They brought us 2 borchts, 4 rolls of bread, juice and a desert. Back to the drawing board.

Cindy and I have been nominated for worst parents of the year. When at the local store on New Year's Eve, where the bread lady always corners me and asks questions in Russian for half an hour, I was told that the gift giving portion of Chrsitmas is actually celebrated on New Year's Morning. The kid's wake up with presents under their pillow or under the tree (Yolka). She was very disappointed when I said we had not put up a christmas tree. How come no one told us that this was the case here? I thought we'd get a tree in a few days for Ukrainian Christmas on the 7th.

We woke last night at midnight with fireworks exploding everywhere. We are living in the middle apartment building in a cluster of 6 story buildings. I felt like we were about to witness something from a "When things go wrong" video. People were launching fullblown Roman Candles from their balconies and in the courtyards everywhere. I was ready to have everyone run out of the apartment in the event something went wrong.

This morning we heard Santa and a helper walking the courtyard and yelling to the kids. In fact, we all heard a knock at the door ;-) and Santa left 2 scooters for the boys! Voss is outside with Cindy riding his and Ruslan is here with me right now.

2009-12-30T11:18:00.000-08:00

Things are starting to look up around here. The ringer on the phone was initially chosen because it souned like a melodramatic, kinda funny, Ukranian Polka. With all the bad news we have gotten lately, it was starting to sound like the Ukranian version theme song to The Godfather.

Right now, Ruslan is staying with us again. He has no school and everything is closed for the holiday. We are not sure what we will do for the next 10 days with him. There is nothing to do here. We have asked a lot of people and everyone says there is nothing for kids to do. Ruslan doesn't care, he really likes to stay at home and watch tv and play with the Ipod. I think he is just a little scared of the outside world. We need to be patient.

We went bowling today. We got a few strikes. Ruslan refused to play. I won, Voss came in second and Zenon lost. They give you socks here to wear with your bowling shoes. Voss kept his. They have everyone throw them out when they are done. I don't know why I think that is strange. I felt like taking the whole garbage can filled with socks to the orphanage. You can also have a full meal in the bowling alley complete with a white tablecloth. Humm? It's like a dinner club.

Tomorrow, who knows what we will do. Who knows what Ruslan is thinking. In typical guy fashion, he does not talk about his feelings. He seems to be happy at our Ukranian house. He has eaten about 30 tangerines today. Good thing I misunderstood what the woman at the market asked me yesterday and said "yes" to 2 kilos of tangerines. Zenon was wondering what we were going to do with them.

I have some great video of us doing the shot of cognac with the director.

Bowling:

Zenon

Voss

Cindy

Ruslan

Happy New Year!

Tuesday

2009-12-29T06:52:00.000-08:00

I for one woke with that knot in my stomach again. I managed to get internet poker to work so I have at least some entertainment. I don't feel as bad wasting my time here doing nothing.

Cindy and Voss did some school work.

It was 10 am and no word from Vitali. We actually heard yesterday that an option was for Andrei to write the consent and fax it here. The local authorities are feeling for us and laxing the requirements to see if it wont help. ...but of course we need to find what motivates Andrei. Vitali said he would call with any news. No news to this point was bad news.

We decided to go for a walk and left by 11. We walked a few miles to a greek cafe called Foros for a cappucino and something to do. Great cappucinos. Cindy has been super positive about everything and she has helped to keep my spirits up. It helped because I got my mind off of things.

We were just leaving the cafe and alas, a phone call from Vitali.

"Where are you?"

"at Foros Cafe"

"don't move and I will be there in 5 minutes"

click

What? He didn't have the end of the world sound in his voice.

5 minutes later he rounded the corner and had a smile on his face. I have never seen him smile.

The brother was in town, not 3 hours away like he said, and he came in and signed the consent.

We are back in business!

After the Weekend

2009-12-29T04:21:00.000-08:00

The weekend was great. Voss had been complaining for a playmate for quite some time and having it be his future brother was almost too good to be true. All the boys wanted to do all weekend was watch tv, play with the remote control car, play video games, andthen back again. It was more like Ruslan would do something, Voss would se him doing it, Voss would want to do it, then Ruslan would give it up and move onto the next thing.

Ruslan was impatient at first. Voss was constantly in his face. ....but towards the end of day 2 they were playing hide and seek together. Comical to watch because they traded btween 2 hiding spots for 2 hours yet still had trouble finding each other. Must get that from Cindy ;-)

On Monday morning it was time to take Ruslan back and meet the brothers to sign the consent letters. We arrived at the orphanage and guess what. No brothers. Not good.

No one was doing or saying anything about it. We called Vitali. He said lets meet. We met for a coffee and hashed out the options and discussed where everything stood.

The problem is that the clock is ticking. Obviously we cannot stay here indefinitely. Monday is 3 days before offices start closing and each step cannot be done in tandem but in series wating for the previous step to finish. Apparently Andrei, the brother, left for Mariupol which is a 3 hour drive to get back to school. We said that he would not be back in town until January 5th to sign the consent. End of story. We offerred to pay his transportation and pay for his troubles but he wanted no part of that. Dead end.

We went home after this set back and started to discuss our options which include coming back home and waiting for progress over here. We still are optimistic that this will all get done.

Christmas Day - Friday

2009-12-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

It felt like waking up with a hangover. Maybe it was a hangover.

Normal morning routine. Coffee.

As depressing at it was we really kept a positive outlook. Our support network, Vitali (the pessimist who I could tell was worried), and Henry (the Russian/Ukrainian sunflower farmer by summer and cab driver by winter is the optimist) had some upbeat advice on the ride home yesterday. Today I held off on talking to Vitali as long as possible. He has a habit of making the best news in the world sound like a death sentence so I didn't want to hear bad news. I finally caved at 11 (he said he'd call by 10) and he said nothing yet. He concluded that he expected the worst. I didn't share this with Cindy. She said she felt good about our prospects. Vitali expected to call us back around 2 when the brothers would call.

We walked all afternoon and needed to be back at the apartment at 1 p.m. for a visit by Svateh Nikoli (Ukrainian Santa). We made it back by 12:55. There was a 60 year old lady shovelling our walkway. She looked tired. I told her to sit while I finished. She was surprised but very thankful. Santa arrived at 1:00.

Voss knew who it was. He came with a snow angel and a photographer. They gave Voss a gift and tried to join hands with him and dance in circles singing christmas carrolls. I thought it was strange. Voss wanted no part of it and hid behind his hands the whole time. The more he hid the more they sang christmas carols and danced in circles!

They were getting ready to leave. The phone rang. It was Vitali. He said "Zenon"

I said "yes"

He said is his most depressed voice "I have news"

I said "ok"

"Are you ready to go to the orphanage" it sounded like he had given up all hope.

"um, ok Vitali. Is this bad news?"

"Are you ready to pick Ruslan up and take him home for the weekend?"

"Vitali, this sounds like good news. Is it?"

"Yes, the brothers called and will come in on Monday to sign their consent"

WHAT? seriously. The guy could make a miracle sound like a tragedy. ....he actually just did.

That was the best christmas present ever.

Layers

2009-12-26T07:07:00.001-08:00

Every day, we wake up to put on our layers: First the baby oil, then the lotion, our underwear, long underwear, our thin layers and then the wool layers, our socks, boots, coats, scarves, hats, Vaseline (on the face for wind protection), chapstick, gloves and finally we are ready to face the outside world. Some days, these layers are not enough protection. Some days, parts of us needed protection and we forgot to put on that layer. Today is Christmas. We are worn out in every way. We are trying celebrate the holiday and make it fun for Voss, but it is difficult. Celebrating is something we don't feel like doing right now. Please pray, meditate, visualize good things for us. We really need it.

Meeting on Thursday December 24th

2009-12-26T06:01:00.000-08:00

Have you ever watched someone's heart get ripped out of their body and then be the one left holding it? Let me tell you what it feels like... Your own feelings completely evaporate and you can only feel that person's pain. It shoots straight into your own heart and you are completely connected to their sadness and fear at that moment. It is the most intense feeling of empathy that you will ever experience.

This is what happened to us two days ago. We had to meet with Ruslan's brother and ask for permission to adopt Ruslan. He would not give his consent nor would he give us a reason for not giving it.

Our hearts were broken.

The meeting with Ruslan's brother was scheduled for 10 a.m.. We did the typical routine and all made it to the orphanage for 10. Brother was late.

We sat in the library with Ruslan and his best friends Sasha, Kiril, and Vadim for what seemed like a very long time. They did well with just an ipod and nothing else for over an hour.

Finally the people started filing into the library. Vitali the translator, Elana the Orphanage Attorney, Svetlana the children's services rep, and finally Ruslan's brother. Immediately He said that he wanted to talk with Ruslan alone. So they left and we waited. The mood was good.

They returned and- for some reason -it just didn't feel right. We made sure that everyone was on the same page and put things in writing before we planned the trip out...but imagine you are a 17 year old who has lived in an orphanage who just recently had been released to live on your own. When I was 17, the only decisions I ever made were relatively meaningless. I was never asked if I would agree to have my brother move away and live with other people whom I had never met and maybe never see him again (of course we expect Ruslan to stay in touch with his brothers). How would I know what to think?

I could see things slipping away. We were trying to make small talk and explain a plan to keep in contact. We wanted his information. He said he had none. There was something not right. All the officials started talking more seriously with the brother. I could make out a few words here and there. No one was talking to me and Cindy. Ruslan and his brother were not making eye contact.

I interrupted. "What's the problem?"

Vitali "His brother says he will not give his consent. He won't say why. He says his decision is final"

It's hard to explain how we felt in that moment.

Disbelief? Cheated? Mad? Sad?

It was one of the biggest moments I have ever been apart of.

What could we say? How could we turn things around? This was not what everyone was expecting.

We composed ourselves and pleaded to Andrei. He would not be losing a brother, but gaining a family. Andrei made eye contact and listened, but he was not changing his decision.

So what did this mean? The courts take all things into consideration. They would like everyone to be happy with any arrangement. Ultimately, it is Ruslan's decision to make. Ruslan's loyalties were with his brother and not with the new family he had known for a short time. Ruslan said he would not give his consent to be adopted. His decision, like his brother's, was final.

Andrei was going to their other brother's house to discuss the situation. He said that he would call Friday morning and give his final answer. It didn't sound promising.

End of meeting. Andrei left. Ruslan left. We went straight to the cab. The situation seemed hopeless and although we didn't talk about it I am sure Cindy was thinking about the same contingency plans that I was thinking about.

We went back to the apartment. We bought some Ukranian food and beer. There wasn't much that was said on Christmas Eve.

Voss's Birthday!

2009-12-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

Voss's 6th birthday

Top Ten List

2009-12-26T00:18:00.000-08:00

of things brought from home that we never could have lived without in Ukraine

10. moisturizing things: body lotion, baby oil, hair conditioner, chapstick

9. Spices (Italian seasoning, green Zatar mix, basil)

8. English magazines brought from home

7. An IPOD with music and downloaded movies

6. Warm flannel pajamas for hanging out at the apartment (no one expects a woman giving birth to look sexy)

5. Ziplock bags

4. Boogey Wipes (moist towels you can get in the baby section of Walgreens)

3. LIQUID HAND SANITIZER!!!!! We brought the mini ones you can get at Bath and Body Works. You CAN NOT buy these here. Not even on the black market.

2. Love and support from our friends and family near and far.

1. Patience (or sanity)

Here are some honorable mentions. These are pretty much for someone who is high maintainence in these areas (which we can be).

-Starbuck's Via instant coffee packets

- deck of cards (Someone with a full deck is hard to find here. No pun intended)

- Thank you cards

- A Blackberry...this would have been near the top of our list, but we HAD to live without ours since it froze on us. Don't get the Blackberry Tour. There is no hard re-set!! Try to find a cell store anywhere in Ukraine who can fix that problem!

-peanut butter

Wednesday December 23rd

2009-12-25T23:47:00.000-08:00

We had plans for the driver to pick us up at 10. We made it to the orphanage at 11. Ruslan and his friends were outside waiting for us. All the boys immediately ran off with the sled. His close friends are Kirin 14, Sasha 13, and Vadine 13. They would not let Voss fall behind for the 4 hours we were with them. In fact all of the kids treated Voss really well the entire time and included him in everything. He loved every second.

The kids from the windows yesterday all came out for lunch at noon today. The sled was the hit of the party and all 20 of them were standing around watching, some taking turns. We were celebrities as well and all were trying their few words of english on us.

Ruslan was told a few times that he needed to go inside for some chores or something. He kept saying neh hachu (I don't want to). Well, he sure changed his mind when an orphanage lady came outside screaming for him to get in there. He dissappeared for 15 minutes.

Closer to us leaving, I made the mistake of throwing a snowball at one of the boys. Before I knew it there were 10 boys throwing snowballs at me. I was holding my own but one flanked my position- unbeknownced to me. I turned around and got hit square in the face. I had to call mercy and they all laughed.

Just before leaving, Ruslan came back out and joined the group of boys surrounding us. Up to this point, he seemed a little intimidated by the older boys- or maybe any attention -but he made an effort to be by us in front of everyone. Every boy had to shake mine and Cindy's hands as we left and help Voss into the car. They we all proudly saying good-bye in English. Ruslan hugged Cindy in front of everyone and we left.

Tomorrow was supposed to be a drive to Berdansk to talk with one of Ruslan's brothers, but instead it is back to the orphanage to talk with Ruslan's other brother and obtain his signed permission. We also have a plan to have internet installed tomorrow. If we do then you will know because you will finally be reading this.

Sledding at Orphanage

Ruslan!

Ruslan Figuring out Video

Ruslan's Best Friends

Tuesday December 22nd

2009-12-25T23:45:00.000-08:00

Internet is up and working so the next few posts are getting things back up to date!

Cindy and Voss woke at their usual time, 6:15. The cab driver was coming at the previously scheduled 8 a.m. so their was not enough time for Voss to do schoolwork this morning. After I showered with lukewarm water (not comfortable when the apartment only heats up to about 60) we received a call stating that the cab would arrive at 8:30. Voss helped me with the daily exercise program I have imposed on myself, 100 pushups, 50 situps, and 20 Voss curls. If I miss any then I make them up the next day. I am only behind 250 pushups right now ;-).

After the cab picked us up we went on to get Vitali. There was more paperwork to get at the orphanage and take to the local inspector. Vitali shared that the region were are in just happens to be the strictest region in Ukraine now, and toughest to adopt from. This is a recent development. A couple from Italy was adopting a child and after the courts waived the mandatory 10 day waiting period the child's bio grandmother protested after she was told the child's body parts would be sold. The Italian couple ran into snags as a result and wrote letters to anyone and everyone in Ukraine. Of course the result of letters isn't positive change in a country like this! So the point of this is that we cannot submit our paperwork to the court now until January 11th. From there we get an initial court date, wait the 10 working day wait period, andthen have the last court date. This all pushes our trip out a few weeks. This trip is different, we take it all in stride. Shoh toh boodeh, boodeh.

We arrived at the orphanage with a bottle of brandy and some cookies to give to the orphanage director. This was partly for entertainment and partly to grease the skids. We are asking to have Ruslan stay with us for the weekend. The director laughed and promised we would drink more but he was in a rush to leave. He also said there was another bottle to finish. He looked appreciative. The question was never asked about Ruslan so hopefully it is asked soon.

Word spread around the orphanage fast that we were there. Within about 5 minutes Ruslan popped his head around the corner. He was in school and I am sure didn't need much of an excuse to leave. We brought the sled, the one we got for Voss the previous day, so that Ruslan and Voss could play. One of Ruslan's friends joined them and they had a good time. There was a layer of ice on the snow so it made for good conditions. It was cute to see in the building across the field kid's faces pressed against the windows watching what was going on outside.

It's a mix of emotions visiting all these kids at the orphanage and you can't help them all. Most of them are beautiful kids and they seem to be so well behaved. I don't understand how these kids stay in the system for many years when they would be great candidates to get adopted. Something doesn't add up. ...but it seems like through experiences like the hosting program we were involved with (frontier horizons) these kids do get exposure and We heard the follow up adoption rate on these kids is something like 30-40 percent which is good to hear.

We couldn't stay long because the paperwork had to be back at the inspectors so we left after 15 minutes with Ruslan. Hurry up and wait is the name of the game. Ruslan gave us all a hug, he just loves hugging Cindy and saying bye to Voss. He does so well with Voss. We were talking afterwards about how he really helped Voss to "keep him in line" when Ruslan came to visit.

After we dropped off Vitali we took advantage of the taxi and went to the supermarket to stock up again. After shopping we asked the driver to take us to a place with something that resembled American food. We ended up at the same pizza chain that we frequented last trip. How can you beat a full pizza, a small coleslaw, 2 beers and a juice all for 50 grivna (6 bucks). Our experiences here in Melitopil are far different then what we saw on the last trip to Cherkassy. The people are friendly and helpful and they actually smile. For instance when I went to order the pizza I had no idea what to ask for since there were no pictures and I cannot read cyrillic. 3 girls behind the counter came to help and started laughing and poking fun at my mixture of English and Ruskrainian. The girl actually started talking to me in Ukrainian which seemed to be something out of the ordinary for her.

After lunch we walked through the outdoor market back towards where we are staying (about a 3 mile walk). We came across an old woman who commented that our girl's hair was nice. She was confused when we said his(her) name was Vosya. She said Vasylli? Who names a girl Vasylli? So she spoke to us in Russian for 15 minutes..... I returned in Ukrainian. It's amazing how you can have a conversation by just picking out every third word. She gave Voss Walnuts which he ate. So we bought a bag. Nearing the end there was a point where she started crossing herself like in church when she realized Voss was adopted from Ukrain but did not understand anything. We promised that Ruslan would reteach Voss to speak Ruslan and she seemed satisfied.

I was in bad need of a haircut so we stopped at a salon looking place. After waiting 10 minutes I received one of the best haircuts ever for $2.50. When I tipped her $1 she looked confused and probably though I was crazy.

After doubling back a mile to reach an internet cafe with dial up speed we made it home after dark.

Back to living in 2002

2009-12-23T06:03:00.000-08:00

We have lost use of our Blackberry. It froze up yesterday and we are now out of touch with our life! We are forced to go to a very smelly internet cafe (lots of teenage boys) and write our blogs. Our landlord says that we will have internet hooked up at our house in 2 to 3 days. Let's see....translate that to Ukraaaniannn....aaand thaaat meeeans....a week to two weeks. We are done crying about it, so let's not talk about it anymore. Just don't text us. We will not get it. And our posts are going to be a bit out of order and a little sparse until we are connected to the world again.

We just wanted to write a quick blog to let you guys know that it will be a couple days before we can write something good. We are in the middle of some travel, some paperwork, and some technical challenges so we can't write our normal blogs.

A quick update...today was our third visit with Ruslan. We were able to visit for a long time since Vitale was traveling to meet with one of Ruslan's brothers. We are going to meet another brother tomorrow at the orphanage. It is a bit scary. We will just hope for the best.

Tomorrow is Voss's birthday. We will celebrate with all of our new friends at the orphanage.

our first visit to the orphanage

2009-12-21T23:02:00.000-08:00

Voss looks kinda happy.

Family photo at the Christmas tree lot with Voss's new sled.

I mean....really! Why do they have feet, pieces of fur, blood and an axe at the open market!? Seriously!

There is a cow tail in the photo. For real.

So, we have been here a few nights already (right? I have lost track of time) and have gone for long walks in the neighborhood. We found the local gym (see pictures later), an outdoor farmer's market, a really big supermarket, and a christmas tree lot. There really isn't much here and we have been getting stared at a lot. It may be because I stop to take photos of strange things like cow's tails and pig's feet, but I just can't believe what I see sometimes! I mean, what do they do with the cow tail (in meat photo on metal part next to meat)? Marty?

We were able to visit Ruslan at the orphanage today. He looks really cute and was all smiles when he saw us. We were a little nervous about our first meeting. Maybe he changed his mind? He signed the official paper that says he will change his name to Ruslan Moon Issel. What's up with the hippie middle name you say? Well my grandmother had a saying, if you can't beat em then join 'em. I have never been one to pass on sage advice, so Ruslan will now have an opportunity to fit in more in some California circles. Actually, that was his nickname when he came to visit. We used it as our "code word" when we didn't want him to know we were talking about him (his head looked like a giant moon). People seem to ask a couple of times to see if they heard the name right, "Moon?"
"Yes, Moon."
Even Ruslan asked twice. It is the same reaction we get when people look at Voss's long hair... A.k.a. The creepy Ukranian Santa said he was going to bring Voss a doll which led us to believe that he thought Voss was a girl.

The orphanage was out in the middle of farmland. The grounds were pretty barren- not a lot of trees or bushes, just a bunch of plain buildings. Several boys were just sort of standing around.

We entered one of the buildings to talk to the director. A rumor was going around that he always serves coffee and cognac to all the parents. We were hoping he was out of the cognac. He was very nice and everyone seemed to respond to him with laughter so I guess he is pretty funny. Two kids walked through the door. One was our Ruslan. He looked bigger already. His hair was the same strange mauve color that Voss's was when we got him. All the blonde was gone. Several comments were made about the length of Voss's hair (again) and Voss threw his arms around his head to protect his blonde locks. He knew well what was being said. I think they were discussing the buzz cut with long bangs style. Oy!

Both children began to write the paper to change their names. Our family was then sent out to wait in the other room. We tried out our new Russian words with Ruslan and he didn't laugh. I guess it was understandable then. Voss began to climb all over Ruslan and kiss him. Ruslan just smiled.

Some coffee and shotglasses showed up with some cookies. The director came in with the bottle of cognac and we all had to drink. Blah!

We are on our way back today for a longer visit. We need to find the internet to download some pictures.

Our Ukrainian Entourage

2009-12-20T04:17:00.000-08:00

I woke this morning at 3 am with one question on my mind...which thought is scarier...the thought of staying in Melitopol, Ukraine for a month, or adopting a boy just before the onset of adolescence?

We have made it to what will be our residence for the next month in Melitopol. It is Russian speaking here, so Zenon needs to learn Russian quickly. He still tries to speak Ukranian, but only gets blank stares in response. We had an entourage meet us at 5:20 am at the train station and bring us to the apartment. It is a 4 room apartment with a long hallway. Basically, two bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom and a livingroom. Not bad for $13.25 a night!! We signed a month's lease and finally got to unpack our things. When we enterd the kitchen, a full breakfast was waiting for us with sandwiches, chocolate cookies, coffee, cognac, meats and cheeses, and a basket of special chocolates for Voss. He was a bit freaked out by all the people so early in the morning, so he hid in the hallway. It was kind of crazy. Extreemly nice, but not how we are used to being treated at 6am. We asked if they did this with everyone and they said no, we are just the most exciting guests they have ever had. So, on that note, we all drank a shot of the cognac.

The owner of the apartment came by later to drive us around the neighborhood. It is really nice and there seems to be a lot of shops around and we are close to the bus stop. It will be bearable enough. The people are really nice, so it will be fine.

Yesterday was Saint Nicholas day. It's for the kids where they get lots of chocolate. Ukrainian Christmas is January 7th which means we will have to celebrate two christmases for the rest of our lives. After the 7th, all government offices close for two weeks so we get to just hang out. I guess we will have time to go to a few shows and see the local sights- riiight.

Tomorrow we see Ruslan at the orphange. I guess he has the flu right now so hopefully we will get to visit him. Then we get our permission from the city to adopt and try to get our court date. Court won't happen until after the holiday which is around the 10th.

Happy birthday Dido and Special Ed! Voss misses both of you. And his grandmas too.

train to Melitopil

2009-12-18T15:13:00.000-08:00

We woke this morning at 9 or so. Last night was another sleepless night. Voss slept fairly well and only woke for an hour between 8 and 9. Cindy fell asleep soon after our movie at midnight and I was up till 2:30 at which time a beer was my only entertainment.

Today Voss dragged me outside for an hour to build an "igloo" in the 6 inches of fresh snow. I couldn't last any longer. Cindy welcomed the break after an hour of homework with him.

Our check-out from the apt was at 1 so we went to the corner pizza bar and ate 3 little pizzas. The best was the last one with bacon and eggs on it. (Not really). Our appointment to collect the paperwork referral was at 3 so I scheduled a cab to pick us up from the pizza bar at 2:30. In classic Ukie fashion the cab driver went to the wrong end of the block. After 15 minutes of searching I found the cab and we made it right on time!

No hick-ups at the sda. Dima came with us in the cab to the train station to make sure we got off ok. Trains from western ukraine were 12 hours delayed because of the big snow storm but we departed on time.

We had another dinner with bread, cheese, and sausage. As much as I like it I am looking forward to some healthy food.

It is 1:30 am right now and cindy and voss are sleeping. The compartment is really comfortable but really warm and dry. Voss went to sleep at 7:30 but woke at 10. He was incoragably restless until he finally bored himself back to sleep at 12:30. Cindy seems to sleep well but I am starting to wonder if this jetlag is a permanent thing. Maybe I should start reading a book instead of wandering aimlessly on this blackberry. I'd probably fall asleep in 5 minutes.

We arrive in 4 hours at the train station. The plan is for someone to meet us, a translator named Vitali.

SDA Appointment

2009-12-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

As tough as our first encounter with the Ukrainian Adoption Authority was, this time it was the complete opposite. We met our facilitator just before the appointment. He was smiling. Soon after, we were greeted with friendly faces by 3 girls working in the office. They asked us to tell them a little about ourselves but soon moved attention to Voss (who was flirting with all three women). They helped us get in touch with Voss's old orphanage so that we could plan a visit. Towards the end of the informal meeting, they instructed us to return tomorrow at 3 to pick up the referral. So far so good... it seems.

Dima explained that international adoptions are on the decline and national adoptions are on the rise. Maybe good for the kids, but bad for the business of adoptions?

After the appointment, Dima offerred to drive us home. The walk to the SDA was 15 freezing minutes, but the drive back was a warm slow hour. At one point, we were 1 block from home and Dima made a turn into traffic which was the longest drive around a block I have ever been a part of!

It is snowing and even colder than yesterday. You can't do anything but close your eyes walking into the wind. We went for a Ukrainian buffet and had perogies, chicken kiev, and borsch. I had to go back for seconds on the perogies when the first order turned out to be stuffed with sweet cheese and plums. The second plate was back to the basics potatoes and cheese. I wasn't complaining about the extra food ;-).

It was getting dark on the way home and we decided to hit the park up. This is the same park where Voss rode his first motorized Jeep. In the middle of the park there was a wooden house Svietah Nikolai set-up. We cautiously approached the spectacle of 2 christmas trees dancing with a snowman outside as not to get pulled into some forced picture production or having to dance. Sure enough the lead christmas tree approached and started yelling something in Russian to which I replied "Ne Panymayeh PaRuski". "Not a problem," she answered, "Come to house of Nikolai, same like your english claus."

Um, ok.

So we drag Voss into this wooden house where Nikolai is flanked by 2 angels all dressed in white and blue. Nikolai warmed Voss up with a box filled with a giant gingerbread cookie (ugh, more gingerbread!) and proceeded to talk to him non-stop in russian for 5 minutes. They snapped a picture, printed it out and gave it to Voss. I offered some $$ on the way out but they declined. What?? Weird. A house set-up in the park giving away free cookies and pictures? ...and we were almost the only people in the park!

The walk back home in the dark was rough. It was COLD. Voss started complaining so we ducked into the subway station for warmth. He was fine after that because he started throwing snowballs at Cindy again. For some reason he won't throw them at me. Maybe I got him a little too good the other day?

Thursday Morning

2009-12-16T22:32:00.000-08:00

It's 8:30 and I forced myself out of bed. It's for the better, I am thinking, because we have been sleeping in late. Last night we all went to bed at 8:00, but couldn't fall asleep until 2:00.

We got moving at about 11am yesterday morning and wanted to hit up the little cafe we found towards the end of our last trip. We bundled up to the point where it was unbearably hot underneath the layers before leaving. After 2 minutes outside in the Kiev cold (it says the low was -20 C), we were glad to have on all the layers. Voss handles it well, but Cindy said she doesn't want to get used to the cold. Most of the women in Kiev wear some type of fur coat. Most people wear fur hats. The younger women all seem to forgo ultimate warmth to show off their legs and wear high boots.

We made the 15 minute walk to the mall at the corner of Tarasa Shevchenka blvd and Khreschatyk st. From the outside looking in it is another facade of European 4 story architecture, but inside it opens up to a small stadium-looking area with an outdoor skating rink. Surrounding the outdoor area are the shops (Porsche, DG, etc - anywhere you can think to drop the extra 1,000's burning a hole in your pocket). Below is where we go to find the grocery store and cafe.

After sitting down for a few cappuccinos and buying $40 worth of groceries (definately high compared to what we ever paid before- but it was american type groceries) Voss and I went out for a skate (I lost the coin flip with Cindy) for about an hour. Voss went from not being able to stand on his own to making it across the rink without falling within the hour! I hope his skates weren't as bad as mine because it seemed like they hadn't been sharpened in about 5 years. We were the only ones on the rink and were entertainment for everyone walking by.

The mall was really amazing, all these high end stores in meticulous condition, yet there were barely any people in them shopping. I still don't understand where all the money comes from to support stores like these that seem to only belong in the wealthiest of places.

From there, we wanted to give Voss some more opportunity to get some energy out since the last few days he has been holed up. We walked down past the square to a toy store that used to have an indoor playground. They must have had too many visitors with the same idea because this playground was taken out in favor of more toy shelves. So, we sat down for a beer and warmed-up for the walk back to the apartment. By the time we left it was 4:30 and pitch dark outside.

Voss is doing well, but I can tell he is bored. He wanted to throw snowballs the other night so we went at it. He got upset and told Cindy that he wouldn't play with me anymore after I gave him a snow facial.

Our appointment with the SDA is at 12:30 this afternoon. We should know just a little more information after this appointment. We also meet Dima, our facilitator, for the first time. We should get our paperwork tomorrow afternoon and the plan from there is to catch our train at 8pm (I think).

Right now Cindy and Voss are in the kitchen doing homework. I just heard Voss saying his arm hurts from writing after 5 minutes. He has to work on the excuses! I am going to take a shower now, yesterday I spent 5 minutes rearranging the hanging clothes all over the bathroom before I could get in the tub. On the bright side, at least we have a washing machine!

Having had been in Kiev before, we knew our way around for the most part. It was nice to find an apartment right by the opera house which is almost central to everything. From here, we can walk to almost anywhere within 15 minute. I found this apartment on bestkievapartments.com and booked through a contact named Sergey. Very good experience. The apartment is very clean and comfortable. The $70 per night is on par with what we paid the first trip, but much nicer. The first apartment we ever stayed at was a 1/2 bus ride just to get to where we are now!

yeez va nee chay

2009-12-15T10:06:00.000-08:00

We have finally made it to our apartment in Kiev. It is in the center of town near independence square. Very NICE and in the middle of everything. We found it on www.bestkievapartments.com. It really is the best apartment we have had so far. It is one of the fancier neighborhoods, so we feel safe walking around after dark...since it gets dark around 4:00!!

The 3 day immersion into the German language has effected Voss immensely. He has lost all his understanding of the English language. At least, that is what we would like to think. We have been calling him "Wild Monkey" between the two of us, but keep telling him he is doing well and there are lots of changes coming. Oyvay!

While we were on the plane over here, I just kept thinking to myself, "Why am I going there again? Why. Why!?!" Then, once again, we get to the city center with all the Christmas decorations and it begins to snow! "OK, this will be nice. We can do this!
Focus on Ruslan."

We already had guests to our new place by a couple locals who were picking up the ginormous goody bag from one of Zenon's Ukranian friend's back home. We are ready to go back to some of our favorite places in Kiev. We ODed on Glue Wine and gingerbread and already had pierogies for dinner. Thank God we brought our own spices from home! Ukranian food gets old super quick.

In Germany

2009-12-14T05:17:00.000-08:00

We made it safely to Germany. The plane ride was ok. Voss slept about 6 hours, Zenon a couple hours, Cindy zero. We arrived in Munich around 11AM. After spending a couple hours underground in the subway like a family of moles trying to figure out the symbols on the signs, we finally made it outside to the freezing cold (note to self...the symbol with the box and two people in it is the "elevator" and the WC stands for "water closet" -bathroom). Just as we got outside, it started to snow.
We were looking forward to some good beer and some bratwurst.

We made it over to the center of town where the Christmas village is located. Christmas decorations are everywhere. Every store has an elaborate christmas display in the window. Hundreds of little booths are set up with giant cookies, chocolates, Christmas ornaments, sausages and Gluhwein (hot spiced wine we were calling glue wine) were for sale.

Stores seemed to only sell one type of item- i.e.wooden toys, fancy beer steins, knives, scarves, etc..

It just doesn't seem like Germany is feeling much of the recession because every adult was drinking the $10 glue wine and every child had a giant cookie tied around their neck. We made it over to the Haufbrau house for a giant pretzel and an even more giant beer and a plate of sausages. It is surprising to see how many Germans still wear Leiderhosen (sp?).

Back at the Hotel, we were all passed out at 5:30 PM only to wake-up at 11:30 PM. For some reason, Zenon thought it was 5AM and started to get ready. So, we put on some meditation music and tried to go back to sleep. By the way Voss was jumping on the bed, you would have thought I just put in a workout video. After a couple hours, we were all asleep again.

We finally woke up at 10AM and we are now on the "Polar Express" going to the North Pole(a.k.a. Nuremburg). It is supposed to be a very Christmasy town with a bif wall allthe way around it and decorations
everywhere.
Voss is hoping to see Santa and a few reindeer. He knows he won't see any elves since they are very busy this time of year.

2009-12-11T11:41:00.000-08:00

Open your heart! We want to come in!!!

2009-12-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

Today is the Friday and we leave tomorrow morning. Either it is the 3 cups of coffee I have drunk to stave off sleep this morning, or I am starting to feel nervous. There have been so many things to get done this week, but I think we have done a good job to cover all the bases. Regardless, I always have that feeling like I will forget my toothbrush or something like that.

My friend Dima at work has been a great help to put us in touch with some contacts in Kiev for help as well as find a place to stay in Melitopil. I am excited because the cost of the apartment is $400 for a month which will be the best price we have ever come across. That has helped to ease some of the "unknowns." A big thanks to Grandma who will take care of Bessel and our place while we are gone!

Voss is doing really well and he is looking forward to the trip. He keeps saying "My brother" this and "my Brother" that. He is also talking about a sister now....maybe he knows something we don't? His count down to take off is done by counting how many sleeps. Today he will say, " 1 more sleep 'till we leave." Having met Ruslan I am sure Voss understands a little better what is actually happening and what to expect. The only concern he has voiced so far is that he hopes Ruslan will share toys. I am sure there are plenty of other underlying emotions for Voss. I can imagine he is wondering what to expect from our family dynamic once this is all complete, what to expect in Ukraine, and also what to expect if we have a chance to visit his orphanage. He is resilient for sure and handles everything really well.

Grandma is scheduled to pick us up tomorrow morning at 5:00 for our 8:20 flight. Ever since we missed our flight back from Florida because I forgot to account the time change in my phone’s calendar, I am a little extra sensitive to being early for flights (not to mention the magnitude of this flight).

Get in touch with us in Ukraine

2009-12-02T16:02:00.000-08:00

We have set-up some cheap international calling. Don't call without using these instructions or you will pay alot.

INSTRUCTIONS REMOVED BECAUSE THEY WERE STOLEN AND USED TO CALL NIGERIA, SLOVAKIA, PHILIPPINES, ETC.
ACCOUNT HAD TO BE SHUT DOWN!

Map Of Europe - Do You Know Where Ukraine Is?

2009-11-25T20:09:00.000-08:00

Appointment date!

2009-11-23T15:18:00.000-08:00

So we received our appointment last week. We are set to meet at the SDA (Ukrainian Adopting Authority in Kiev) on December 17th. After we have the appointment we will have the legal paperwork to travel to Ruslan's Orpahage in Melitopil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melitopol) and start the process there.

From what we can gether we will be travelling there (Arrive dec 21st) to get the authority of the city to adopt Ruslan. Take this paperwork back to Kiev(arrive dec 23rd) and obtain more official paperwork. Take this more official paperwork back to Melitopil area(arrive dec 25th) to initiate court. Court may be slowed by the national holidays from Jan 1st to Jan 11th. In which case we can finish court Jan 12th. Travel to Sumy (arrive Jan 14th) right after this to get Ruslan' birth certificate (where he was born). Take this back to Melitopil area(arrive Jan 15th) to apply for passports. Once we have the passport then we can travel back to Kiev (arrive Jan 17th) and have the medical review which we take to the embassy and apply for the Visa (apply for on Jan 18th). Once we have the visa then we can either wait for our flight which is scheduled to depart back to San Diego on Jan 21st OR reschedule for an earlier date if availible!

Sound like a plan?!

Adding to the Story

2009-11-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

It has been over 2 years since our life changing trip to Ukraine. It's amazing if you think about it. I don't know which part is more amazing, being a parent or how much we love him, or how much we learn from a kid!

Voss really puts substance into everything we do. Before kids there was a lot of stuff to do. With a kid in the picture, everything you do with them actually has more meaning. I don't mean to belittle what life was like before child, but it's just different in a good way....like building a steering wheel for the pirate ship in the backyard treehouse. Such a simple thing, but so rewarding.

In the last 2 years, we have done so much. I hate to try and wrap it up in 1 posting so I won't. More to come later on what has happened over the last 2 years. This update is just to start the ball rolling for our next chapter as a family.... the addition of Ruslan!

Ruslan (pronounced ruse LAN) joined us from Ukraine for 3 weeks this past August. He was visiting from an orphanage in Ukraine and came as part of a summer hosting program. It was really amazing how it happened and really amazing how we have made this decision to move forward and adopt Ruslan. We are now in the thick of the bureaucracy of Ukrainian adoptions and waiting to hear word on our appointment to travel to Ukraine. Of course the latest outbreak of H1N1 has the country closed for adoption, but considering what we went through the 1st time, (and how things just have a habit of working out) we are optimistic that there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

So now that the stage is set , we can share the story of what has happened over the last 2 years and how we came to meet Ruslan in our next updates! Above are some recent pictures of Voss.

Amazing

2007-09-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

Vos is adjusting amazingly. He feels comfortable that we are here for him. He is starting to feel comfortable with meeting new people. It is truely a leap forward that I wasn't giving him credit for. I think he would do fine with visitors here (hint hint Mom and Chris!)

Here are some pictures from the zoo on Friday:

Home Sweet Home

2007-09-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

It is 7:15 and Vos is reluctantly watching baby Einstein beside me on the couch. We started with sports center at 5:45 this morning and that grew old fast as well. He keeps saying Elmo, Elmo. I can only handle so much Elmo but am about to give in.

Vos is adjusting perfectly. He seems to be smiling all the time and really likes his new room, bathroom, and all of his toys here. Still with all his stuffed animals, noisy gadgets, and action games he’d still prefer to be in the cupboard rattling the pots and pans. The only tough adjustment for Vos has been overcoming his mortal fear of Sabacas (dogs). For those of you who haven’t met our dog Bessel, she is the most loving and kind dog. Vos started off thinking she was a fire breathing, child eating werewolf. Over the course of the last 3 days and an entire bag of dog cookies Vos has come close to overcoming his fear. Yesterday in the park he was even hugging Bessel and pulling her tail. The only problem now is to get Bessel adjusted to Vos!

Our trip home was exhausting to say the least. When all was said and done the trip was 24 hrs. Added to that we still had to make it home and get settled there. Vos was absolutely great during the entire trip. We got him to bed at 7 the night before and all got up at 3. From there we made it to the airport at 5. Ever since Cindy and I missed our flights back home from Florida last summer I become very nervous that we’ll miss our plane. This time was definitely no exception. We made it to the ticket counter just before the big influx of passengers and received our boarding passes without any problems. From there we went through Ukrainian customs. The officer did not speak English and was very confrontational. We figured out what he wanted after a few minutes, which was the adoption paperwork. After storming off and returning he waived us through. After 2 months of dealing with unhelpful people this was actually an amusing situation as opposed to being stressful. On our way into Ukraine we paid for a VIP service, which was comforting since we had no idea what to expect. This service fast tracked us through customs without any questions. After advice from previous travelers the $130 for VIP was money well saved on the way out?

After sitting for 1.5 hours waiting for our departure we boarded our plane. Vos was excited and enjoyed his window seat. He wasn’t frightened by takeoff or anything else for that matter. We were worried that he would have trouble with his ears and gave him a sippy cup for takeoff and landing but that too was not an issue. We also debated whether or not to give him something to help sleep but decided against it, which turned out to be an excellent decision. After landing in Amsterdam we noticed a big problem. Vos didn’t want to leave the plane. This was the first time he made any noise.

The Amsterdam airport is one of the best we have been in. They have dedicated playrooms for kids, which we sat in for a while. They also have nap room for babies with private couches and cribs. All this for free. Vos was having trouble being in the airport for 4 hours and needed a timeout. Understandable. Part of our waiting included lunch – McDonalds fries for him and a brie sandwich for us. As soon as we boarded the 8 hour flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis and Vos sat in the middle seat he got an idea of the boredom he was in for and started his protest. It was a row of 4 seats and the guy on the end wasn’t happy. He must’ve done someone wrong because right behind us was a mother with 4 KIDS under 5 years of age by herself! It is funny because a year ago I would’ve given the mother a piece of my mind when her 4 yr old daughter kicked my seat for 8 hours straight. Instead I gave the girl some play dough. We did our best to keep Vos entertained. He needed a timeout or 2 but managed his best by requesting bathroom trips every half hour for the 8 hours. We all managed some sleep on this flight although not too much. The meal was good, baked chicken with salad for me and cannelloni for Cindy and Vos. Cindy was much more patient when we needed to be with Vos. She is doing great and Vos really responds to her well.

We headed to customs when landing in Minneapolis. Vos was in the stroller here so this was helpful. There was a dedicated line for new “immigrants” and it also happened to be the same line as the flight personnel. The customs officer was not concerned about our short window to catch our next flight and made sure to handle all 20 or so attendants and pilots before he called us up. We were visibly agitated, tired and concerned. It was nice to see he empathized with us when he asked “is there a problem here?”. As Cindy was half way into saying “YES, we are about to miss a flight and you ………” I interrupted and said “No problem sir”. I am certain we were one step towards secondary but he decided to wave us on. Unfortunately one of our bags didn’t make it to the carousel(it was delivered home yesterday) and we had to rush onto catch our 4 hour flight to San Diego.

Vos and Cindy slept most of the flight. He was fidgety again but nothing unmanageable. Again he had the window seat and enjoyed watching the other planes and the views from the air when awake. Elmo also kept him entertained for 20 minutes. We arrived in San Diego on time and were greeted by Andy, Raegan, and little chuck who brought our car to the airport furnished with a car seat (Vos loves it). We were also surprise greeted by Melodie and Allen who brought balloons for Vos. In the parking lot Andy locked his keys in the car. Lucky Raegan knew to call onstar to unlock the car. Cindy’s mom Ardith was at our house to welcome us home with an ice cold beverage. Vos liked the welcome home posters, the toys, especially the tickle me Elmo from Cliff and Alissa that is now a fixture with him when he sleeps.

It is now 9:00 and I am trying to finish this up. Cindy just woke up and Vos is no longer requiring all my every minute of attention. He made it half way through Elmo. He is back to pretending he is terrified of Bessel although he keeps walking right up to her when she isn’t looking. Vos has really been amazing through this whole thing and is now really turned a corner. He didn’t need one timeout yesterday, which is one of the first days this has happened.

We now have to get all the logistics worked out to try and adopt Vos’s brother from the same orphanage. We have been told that everything should workout just fine and there shouldn’t be any hiccups. I will be sending an email out to ensure we have all our bases covered.

Now football is about to start. I have been looking forward to watching football for month now so it’s pretty exciting.

Lastly, I know how many questions and misconceptions we had before our trip to Ukraine. If you are considering adopting from Ukraine or will be traveling soon please send us an email and we’d like to share with you everything we feel would be helpful. I really wish there was someone share with us all the nuances.
zenissel@yahoo.com

Zenon, Cindy, and Vos

Time

2007-09-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

To quote a good friend of mine: in life there are only 2 things that matter, people and time. This has great meaning for me. I will spare you the gory details. Let's just say we consider ourselves blessed.

It's our last day. The past few have been ones where I think we have grown considerably as a family. We are learning what is important. Keeping an open mind is key.

Vos seems to feel very comfortable around us. He doesn't listen to a thing and only does the opposite of what one says. The challenge for us is not only to understand the workings of a 3.5 year old but also the workings of a 1, 2, and 3 year old in some areas. Couple that with the challenges of the past he has faced till now and you can imagine he feels lost, confused, angry, misunderstood, and on and on at times. The next little while (maybe a few months) will be important ones. They say that having a consistant schedule without many distractions to start will be important to help Vos feel comfortable, secure, and behave properly. This may mean little, if any, visits to and from friends. Because of the obvious, this will be hard. The other important thing I've read is not to spoil Vos with gifts. We may need to hide any from him ;-).

We are on our way to meet Lena for our last ukrainian meal. A ukrainian buffet. From there, we are meeting at the adoption center to inquire about Vos's brother.

The apt owner was very understanding and hospitable when we discussed rent last night. She gave us a nice discount. She has been living in the apt turned museum next to her apt. It was donated by the wife of a famous ukrainian piano composer who died when he was 42 after being imprisoned by the kgb during wwI. It isn't as much a museum as it is an unkempt dusty shell with photos and a piano.

Wish us luck travelling tommorow. We have decided to press our luck and not give vos anything for the plane ride as far as a relaxer. To get him partially adjusted, there will not be a nap today and he is going down at 6.

Bye bye sweet mother ukraine. We will miss you in ways you won't understand. (I won't - cindy)

Thanks to everyone for following along and making this an entertaining outlet.

Zenon, Cindy, and Vosya

can't sleep

2007-09-14T16:24:00.000-07:00

I rarely have this problem. It's 2:30 a.m. and I have been up for a few hours.

The final step was completed at the consulate today and we have Vos's visa. There was nothing to it really since we had done all the hard work months before. Nothing left to do but wait for the flight on wednesday morning at 6:30. We will have to get up at about 3 am. Not looking forward to that.

We ate perogies for dinner. Potatoes and mushroom filling. Vos was more interested in eating the sour cream by the spoonfull. He is doing great, always looking for trouble.

I'll give sleep another chance.

-Z

When I was in Poland I had Pony

2007-09-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

Ever consider what your last meal might be. I do. I like food. I am not considering my last meal these days but my first meal. The first meal when I get back that is. I am somewhere between a greasy french fry filled california burritto with chips and salsa OR a steak with some pat and oscar's salad and breadsticks. A solid Bully's style burger would be third. Whatever it is will be accompanies by a beverage with ice. I havn't seen ice since we got here. They havn't figured that one out yet. I know this isn't anywhere near as glamorous as it should be but I'm easy.

Now for the title. If you don't remember that Seinfeld episode then you are missing out. There are pony's in the park that are there for the kids to ride. They also have little jeeps and motorcycles (the battery operated ones) and Vos actually almost had his first insurance claim (we have that one on video). In fact they have almost anything a kid would want in the park and that is a direct result of the new free economy coupled with lack of rules (it's neat but too much).

Vos has a love/hate relationship with both dogs and ponies. Either animal he would give up a bath for but once within 15 ft of one he freezes up in terror. It's amazing. All he wants to do sometimes is just look for dogs and ponies. Wait till he sees dog beach!

We submitted our docs to the consulate today. All went smooth and we have our official appt tommorow where we will receive our visa for vos. And this is it for the ukrainian paperwork. The rest is done in the u.s.. Well almost done here in ukraine. We will be submitting a letter to the adoption authorities to adopt vos's younger brother. Cindy and I will be drawing straws and the loser will have to come back to Ukraine next summer! ;-)

I want to also add that Cathy is my favorite sister of Cindy's (kim doesn't read this right?)

-Z

post #50

2007-09-12T04:11:00.000-07:00

We must celebrate the occassion, maybe some ukrainian food tonight? Cindy actually said she wouldn't mind perogies. Maybe ukraine is growing on her.

More on Vos. He has gained 3 pounds I was told today at the doctors. We went for a mandatory medical exam where the paperwork generated is sealed and accompanies us to the u.s.. For the results today we had to pay extra as usual. I will cab it the 45 minute round trip to pick them up shortly.

Vos was excellent during the entire visit. He remains close to us now at all times and listens (this is new). It was tough when they pricked his finger for blood work and spent 5 minutes squeezing and dripping blood into a vial. He handled it like a champ. I wouldn't have.

Tommorow we walk to the american consulate to drop off all his paperwork. A mountain high of paperwork. We navigated the walk yesterday and good thing because we thought this would be handled at the embassy, but in fact it was the consulate which is in a different location. What is the difference between the embassy and the consulate anyway?

The feeling of having a child want you near them is what makes everything worth it. He has fallen asleep on me a few times now. He wakes us up early in the morning. Vos loves horsing around. I would do this a 100 more times for a child like him.

Thanks for the responses. We may have trouble finding chocolates with alcohol in them here so hopefully the wooden sticks I found at the playground will keep him busy. Just kidding(I'll bet my sister doesn't think so). Cindy mentioned possibly a video game or something for him but I don't want him to turn out like me and waste his youth on them. ...or worse yet: buy a nintendo in his late 20's ;-).

He is picking up a little english here and there. My mom thinks he talks like a little old ukrainian man. I agree with her but think his inflections and mannerisms are great.

Thanks to Andy and Raegan who will be picking us up at the airport with our car and have a car seat ready (although I am questioning the need for 1 after a month and a half without one here).

Lastly, I have my name up for the 1-2 nl omaha and am waiting for a call on my cellphone. Sounds like it happens once a week. If you understand that then good. If not then it's probably better that you don't.

-Z

Zenon won't let us buy more than three toys for him right now so he doesn't get spoiled. He doesn't seem to notice b/c he is now playing with all the pots and pans in the kitchen. He thinks they are HIS toys.
He really looks forward to his evening bath. He loves bathtime and he has found several other things to put in the tub with him besides store bought toys. Here is an inventory of his tub toys;

Plastic box
Plastic shapes that fit into box
Toy truck
Toy Airplane
A piece of his toy traintracks
Toy train that is now broken from being in several puddles and the tub. Batteries removed
A plastic spoon
A funky metal Ukranian cup
A milk jug
Two yogurt containers
Three small actimel containers
A tomato carton
A plant stem
Two sticks from the front yard
One large rubber snake

He was close to putting the watering can in the tub with him one night, but I drew the line there.
-C

Question

2007-09-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

If you know of an answer please post. Marty asked if we had considered how to deal with jetlag and Vosya on the way home. We are not sure. We are boarding a 6:30 a.m. Flight and will be up at 3 on the day we leave (8 more days).

My parent's annisversary was yesterday. Their 40th to be exact. Amazing! My sister's family and my brother's all got together to take them away for the weekend to a cottage. It sounds like it was a fun. Especially at times like these we wish we lived closer to Toronto.

Today was a walk around town and back followed by naptime andthen another walk in the park. Cindy made a great dinner and just went to put vos to bed.

Last night I sat solo at the corner cafe refreshing the football scores on my laptop untill it closed at 11. Not entirely exciting but better than nothing to get my football fix.

No plans for tommorow. It's nice not to have to think sometimes.

Vos is doing great and so are we. Bonding.

-Z

sunday football

2007-09-09T05:43:00.000-07:00

We found the bakery with the muffins this morning. Not a big deal you say? Bah. It is very big. I followed the cinamon roll with a raisin butter thingy and helped digestion with a creamy capuccino. Breakfast of champions. Tommorow will be more of the same.

We also found lettuce at the grocery. To top it off the weather is perfect. 5 degrees and windy I'd guess. But the sun is out. It makes a person feel alive.

I met the irish couples translator who delivered our passport from cherkassy. We were scheduled to go there for it on tuesday but lena called and said that this translator could deliver it for us. The catch was that it would cost $120 for the passport lady to release it. I said forget it, I will go myself and travel the 6 hours and pay the 30 bus fare. Miraculously the passport arrived anyway. Hmmmmmmmm.

Football start in 4 hours. I can't find a place to watch it anywhere. I may try and get an internet radio feed somewhere but have never done this.

All are doing well. It is 4 and cindy and vos are napping. He did go for a nap today, one just has to be more stern with him.

-Z

balmy

2007-09-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

As unbearably hot it was a few weeks ago it is as cold and rainy now, especially with my shorts on. We outfitted the stroller with the raincover and managed to get lost this morning. The goal was to find the puppet theater. I finally admitted that my shortcut was faulty and Cindy took over. She sniffed out a few families who looked like they were going somewhere. We followed them into a russian religious congregation where there was plenty of entertainment includong songs and a puppet show of their own(the puppets didn't move with the voices). It didn't seem like anyonw realized we were out of place. ...and it helped that the 3 of us had no idea what was being said.

We backtracked and came across the hyatt,the place where we were ealrier on the trip with Kent. We made good use of the concierge and got a map with directions to the zoo, the puppet theatre (by the way, I wasn't even close), and the arizona restaurant so hopefully I can catch some football tommorow.

From there we found our way back but not before we stopped for some delicious uno's deepdish chicago style pizza. It was actually ukrainian style pizza at a place that advertised unos but it was decent none the less.

Vos refused his nap today. I have been forcing it upon him to the point where he refuses to enter the bedroom when it's time. Instead we had "quiet time" and played in the bedroom. I have no idea if this was a good thing to do or not. We hope he will still take naps!

He was a saint yesterday with me. He acted up last night when we sat down to dinner so cindy immediately took him home. She is great parenting him.

We have not had hot water since arriving this time in kiev. It wears on a person living like charles ingles. The ukrainian landlord, altbough very very nice, is constantly here in the apt and reiterating rules that we have been breaking. Funny thing is that he havn't broke any rules but this is what old ukrainian ladies do. The location is great but changes of scenery are helpfull too. Although it may not be the most desireable thing to move vos to another location we are actually considering it. We still have 11 more days and really need to consider our sanity as well. The irish couple we have been in touch with is in an apt near the city center on kreschatic and we may consider that.

Good news, the passport has been completed and is on the way here. We will have everything wrapped up next week and will wind down for our flight home.

-Z

cindy is shopping

2007-09-07T04:45:00.000-07:00

Not a surprise there.

I am home with Vos and Cindy is off for some pt. He handles it very well! We were straight forward with him and said mommy would be back soon. I leveraged my position with promises of elmo whom we introduced to him last night. Thanks to my sister for that one! He now loves mommy, elmo, baths, and milk (in that order). He made me lay down for nap time after I made him hot dogs. I gave up after 20 minutes of elmo and threatened no bath tonight. He didn't bite. I eventually turned it off and he was actually o.k. w ith it after the sense of independence he got when making me sleep on my bed while he on his. He is now asleep which is the first naptime without a cry. Progress!

Our translator has gone back home while we wait for vos's passport to be completed (something about a paper shortage?). She had promised to keep in constant contact andthen decided to turn off her phone. I had tickets booked for next monday in hopes all would fall into place. Thursday was the important date that we had hoped to get his passport, so we held out on changing the plane tickets since there was no word from lena. Well that certainly backfired. No passport and now our tickets are booked for the 19th as there was nothing earlier availible. If our translator had of keep us abreast we could have chosen an earlier date. I don't remember ever being as mad as I was yesterday. A little communication goes a long way! I have to admit that I may have let myself become a little negative which surely has had an affect on things.

We both got over it fairly quickly. This will be more bonding time for us all in his native land. And I am sure once it is all done we will appreciate everything all that much more.

So I now have to go to pay for the new tickets in person. Klm is the airline and the office is right beside polish airways where all the polish people hangout. It is also just past the polish embassy and that too has many pols. I feel like I am in barczewskiville everytime i go there!

After this we are meeting in university park (me and vos with cindy and the other couples). We also plan on going out for georgian food tonight.

Tommorow we have been invited to tetianna's (the apt owner) dotchuck (cottage) for the day. She promises that there will be a good time had by all near the river and the apple trees. I'll bet vos will love it.

-Z

Vosya from a few weeks ago

2007-09-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Writing from a cafe today. Things are slow but FAR more entertaining then Cherkassy. Our daily routine has grown to involve 4 p.m. meeting in independance square which we will do again today with the other couples. Vos had McDonalds last night. It was his initiation to become american. The transformation is almost complete!

Going home right now to change plane tickets from next Monday to next Friday (didn't get passport today). Will will be home on the following saturday. Final answer.

-Z

Brian Maul in Ukraine

2007-09-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

I couldn't believe it! Brian has a twin.

nap time

2007-09-05T05:21:00.000-07:00

I like nap time. I get so tired during the day. I am not sure how I am going to handle a full day of work. Yesterday and today Vos fell asleep beside me. It's great! Cindy and him are doing great together too.

He just got up from a nap. They said he needed time to wake up at the orphanage but with us he is all happy right from the getgo.

We are leaving to meet 2 other couples at independance square to hang out. They adopted from the same orphanage as well. Yesterday we met up and toured, ending for dinner at tgi fridays for a burger. Everything is new to vos and it is great to watch him. He like the bathrooms.

I booked our tickets for monday - positive thinking, right? Hopefully the passport will be ready tommorow.

Vos liked the park this morning. There was a miniature pony which he was scared of. He is scared of dogs too. I am sure that won't last for long.

Thanks for all the comments, keep em coming.

-Z

heart of kiev

2007-09-02T21:36:00.000-07:00

After all this time, we were finally able to arrange our last days in kiev at an apt downtown. This was the place we had originally planned for when we travelled here, but signals were crossed and it hasn't been availible since. The apt is owned by an older Ukrainian lady who rents to visitors here. She is very hospitable and made us vegetable soup and apple crepes for our arrival. She even offered to take us to her country home and relax by the river.

The apt is older victorian style with vaulted ceilings and classic Ukrainian decor. It looks like a Ukranian art museum. We had to move all the breakables away from Vos to the top shelves. There is a balcony to the north where Vos has been feeding the pigeons and also a balcony to the south that takes advantage of the afternoon sun. This place is in an amazing location.

We are able to walk anywhere in the core of Kiev. Yesterday, we went to a few parks, talked to an old lady who's dream is to become a u.s. Citizen one day, and went to the mall for more pants for Vos ( they are all being cleaned since he has been so excited from all the new things!). Vos's favorite was the playground in the children's store.

Everything is so new to him andit is fun to watch his reaction. We are here for another week and a half, at least. Now the countdown can begin.

Zenon is teaching Vos to form playdough into a bunch of strings, put them in his hand, and pretend he is sneezing out the strings of playdough. Should be a cool trick to show buddies at preschool.

3's company

2007-09-01T00:37:00.000-07:00

The day was full of running around and we didn't have a chance to see Vosya yesterday. When we finally arrived at 5 I am sure he was questioning us coming at all. He was waiting by the door when we arrived and apparently had been asking about us all day. I wondered if he would.

From the orphanage we went back to the apt. I was expecting child rearing to be a difficult thing but this is easy!

Just kidding chris. This has been the first minute I have had since last night to do anything. We gave him a bath last night, showed him our room. We played andthen got ready for dinner at 7:30. This is when he decided to deviate from the plan so we headed for bed (we ate at 10). From then it took him 2.5 hours to fall asleep. I hope this was a result of his new surroundings and not a habit!

He slept on our bed all night. I couldn't sleep, constantly waking to make sure he was still breathing. I'll bet this is normal for new parents. Cindy slept perfect. Vos slept perfect. As for me I am still looking forward to mine.

He was up at 6 and that was it. He has been nonstop action since then. The lone saving grace is that he does now understand what a time out is and respects it's wrath. ;-). So when he does get out of control he has the option to stop or have a time out.

We finalized all legal paperwork yesterday. We went for passport photos today and went straight to the front of the line if you know what I mean. There really is no other option. The locals were not happy to see this, they have probably been in line since last month. We were told to expect the passport on tuesday which is fast. This means that we may be able to schedule the last steps later in the week and be home by next weekend. This would be a great thing.

We are loving every minute of parenting. He is an amazing child. He is learning english and manners all at once. Cindy is great with him and they are back to their mother son relationship (where he goes to Cindy for safety). We have been discussing targeting next summer to come back and try to adopt vos' younger brother for now. Maybe this will be a possibility.

In a few hours we are off to kiev for a change of scenery. We will be staying near the center of the city for a change, close to everything. We will have to come back on tuesday to get his passport so it will be a 6 hour round trip just for that. (But we need to leave cherkassy!)

The end is in sight.

-Zenon

Ukranian photo studio

2007-08-31T02:46:00.000-07:00

The sidetrip that Zenon referred to yesterday was to the photographer to get passport photos. I wish I had my video camera to show everyone what the studio sample pictures looked like! They were the funniest things ever!

There were bad hair family shots, lingere shots (several were wearing the same lingere..ewww!) A mom and daughter lingere shot...another ewww! One of a really frightened cat on front of cheezy scenery, and bride a groom shots...these were the best! One picture had a shrunken shot of the bride and she was all glowy white and sitting in the palm of the groom's hand smiling and looking up at him. Another one was with the groom shrunken in the bride's hand and she was acting like she was going to smoosh him with her 3 inch heels...my personal favorite.
Then the one of the groom holding the bride's leg up really high so you could see her garter belt...

We just left the office to get Vos's social security number. It was a former Communist headquarters so it was well equipped with a helicopter port on the roof and several underground escape routes in case of bombing attacks.

Soon, we will pick up Vos and say goodbye to all of his buddies and teachers. They are all so cute I may try to just shove an extra kid in my bag- I am in love with at least two other boys in his group now. Zenon even says he wouldn't mind having 5 or 6 kids.

This will probably be my last post since I will be chasing after a three year old for the rest of the trip.

Thanks everyone for your support and kind words. You all really helped us get through the tougher times!
C

birth certificate

2007-08-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

Not since our first week in this country have I been this tired. We were up at 4:30 preparing to travel to update Vos' birth certificate in a town 3 hrs away. We are in the cab and cindy is sleeping while Lena and the cab driver are engaged in non-stop communicato. I am sure they will be for the whole ride.

Lena arrived yesterday and soon after began the arrangement of all the details. We should have the b.c. Updated in a few minutes after which we submit for both a ukr soc sec # and ukr passport back in cherkassy. We also pick up vos from the orphanage today. He is excited to leave and we are excited that the day is finally here when we officially become parents. We have been planning on today being the day for a while. Yesterday Lena said we'd have to wait till monday. Cindy flat out said no way. Lena knew she meant business and negotiated him leaving with us today.

We had a side trip for Vos' photos yesterday. He was well behaved. when we returned to the orphanage he became upset and confused as to why he had to go back. 1 more day we told him (the reason for cindy's stance)

The weather has cooled considerably and has been raining. It is a welcome change. The contrast has been from about 110 degrees to about 60 yesterday. Amazing. It is like fall here all of the sudden. I like fall.

We went for azerbijan food yesterday, a recommendation from Daria. Finally some non ukrainian food in cherkassy. I think we may go back every day untill we leave. We also found a coffe stand in a local supermarket that sells espresso drinks to go. This too will be a daily stop.

Football starts in a week. I am very excited about this. I am hopefull that Vos' disinterest in sports right now is only a phase he's going through. I could use a partner to help pursuade Cindy that football is important on sundays.

We hope to post more photos soon, especially brian maul's twin brother.

Lastly, it was Anna-Lisa's birthday on tuesday. We called but the number has changed because you moved. So, a belated happy birthday to A.L..

-Z

monday

2007-08-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

The weather has cooled quite a bit and we are enjoying our time much more.

Same routine. Up at 7. Orphanage at 10. Leave at noon. Downtown to pass the time. Back to orphanage at 4. Leave at 6. Back home.

Vosman is doing well. He is most definately treated like a prince around there. This makes parenting hard. The real deal starts on friday and we are preparing for it. Straight from the orphanage to the bathtub when we receive word from court that everything has been finalized.

From friday we anticipate 1 more week or so. Wish us luck.

I am running on fumes so the posts may be few from here on in.

-z

5 and 1/2 to go

2007-08-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

Days that is.
We can wisk Vosya away and he won't ever have to see the orphanage again. He is not back with his normal group yet. This will happen tommorow. Our guess is that he is very much oppossed to that idea. He will not stray too far from his current location which is the medical wing. I think he likes all the attention there.

He likes being spun around like superman and placed on the ground dizzy. The jungle gym is also a place where he gets his kicks. Today we smuggled in a frozen juice for him. He loved the contrban as it was melting. I believe he had his first brain freeze. If the caretakers had have found that we may have been in big trouble. Today was a good day to build on.

We went the direction of the river at lunch today. We saw the beach at the river and had a nap there. Today is the day after independance day and there was many people at the beach. It kindof reminded me of a scene from my childhood. Many older ukrainian types. Plenty of open fields near the water and no formal parking. Just a few cars scattered around with dirt tire tracks amongst the grass. I had a nap while cindy people watched.

It was hot.

On our way back we stopped at a hotel in search of air conditioning. We found a restaurant in the hotel dnipro(may not correct name). Excellent borsch. $6 with tip for cold beers, fries, and the soup. We'll be back there. English menu too which is worth it alone.

Now we are back at the apt and have cooled off. More of the same at night: reading, dinner, and terrible internet access from the mobile phone.

By the way Allisa, no to all your questions.

-Z

HOT

2007-08-24T05:32:00.000-07:00

It's hot.
Real hot.

We're on the bus right now. Cindy looks like she just ran througha sprinkler and is fanning herself. We just bought a fan because we couldn't sleep.

Vosya is doing great. He loves to bury apendages in the sandbox. He cried when we left at lunch today. All parents leave at lunch. We met a couple from ireland and a couple from isreal. We all discussed the lack of variety in cuisine. They confirmed that a frying pan is the only way to cook something and beef is never an option. I'd pay good money for a crummy hamburger right now.

They also shared that they have both been to ukraine twice without luck on their first attempts to adopt. We have been lucky.

Back to see vos. We'll tell him you said hi.

Andy, he hasn't caught on yet but I think I'll have him saying it by the time u pick us up.

-Z