We arrived safely home last night after a long two days of traveling. Misha loved meeting Duncan for the first time and had a big smile on his face! We brought Misha a few photos of Duncan to get him used to a big brother and it looks like it worked! Misha continued to smile when we loaded everything into the van and John started to drive home. It was the most I have seen this little boy smile.
Thank you to everyone who came to DIA. It was great coming out to a group of friends and the big WELCOME banner! Thank you to Heidi and Felix Roge for the great welcome home bags for all three kids! How did you know these kids are cucumber monsters?
Misha woke up screaming/crying around 3:00 am. We had put him in with Mari to keep him comfortable and I think he either had a bad dream or woke up in the dark and was disoriented. Poor little guy. We calmed him down and he slept another hour before his jet-lag took over and he came into our room for "Poppi".
We could not have done this without my Mom who stayed at our house and cared for Duncan. She spent the night last night and woke up and made us all Mickey Mouse waffles for breakfast! Misha's first taste of pancake syrup was a success!
Duncan looks as though he has grown an inch or two in the last 5-6 weeks! We need to measure him to find out. He was a good sport while we were gone and was a really good boy for his Grandma.
Mari will return to school tomorrow - so she had an early evening tonight. Misha will be home with me for at least a few weeks to work on his English, manners, and not hitting, kicking, pinching, or biting. We want to wait until he moves out of his confused "Kid Vicious" stage and has some words to express what he is feeling.
We are now a family of five and we parents will have to work on helping each of our children adjust to the situation and learn to love each other.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Flight Information
Many of you have asked about our flight information.
LOT Poland 752 (Departing Saturday, October 18th)
Depart: KIEV BORISPOL 2:30 PM
Arrive: WARSAW POLAND 3:05 PM
5 hour layover at the Warsaw Airport
WARSAW POLAND to LON / HEATHROW
LOT Poland 285
Depart: WARSAW POLAND 8:05 PM
Arrive: LON / HEATHROW 9:45 PM
Overnight at Marriott Heathrow London Airport
UNITED 939 (Sunday)
Depart: LON / HEATHROW 1:05 PM
Arrive: DENVER 4:14 PM
We will have to go through Imigration in Denver and have the meeting in which the Immigrations Officials take us into a room, open the sealed envelope from the US Embassy in Kyiv with all of the documentation. Once we get the official stamp in both of the kids passports, they will offically become US Citizens. This process can take anywhere from 40-90 minutes depending on how many officers are working at DIA at that time of day. Then we pick up our luggage, transition through US Customs, and finally out the famous glass doors at the north end of the DIA Terminal building.
While we know that many of you want to come out to welcome all of us back, please do not feel that you have to! Your thoughts, love, emails and prayers have been felt throughout our journey!
LOT Poland 752 (Departing Saturday, October 18th)
Depart: KIEV BORISPOL 2:30 PM
Arrive: WARSAW POLAND 3:05 PM
5 hour layover at the Warsaw Airport
WARSAW POLAND to LON / HEATHROW
LOT Poland 285
Depart: WARSAW POLAND 8:05 PM
Arrive: LON / HEATHROW 9:45 PM
Overnight at Marriott Heathrow London Airport
UNITED 939 (Sunday)
Depart: LON / HEATHROW 1:05 PM
Arrive: DENVER 4:14 PM
We will have to go through Imigration in Denver and have the meeting in which the Immigrations Officials take us into a room, open the sealed envelope from the US Embassy in Kyiv with all of the documentation. Once we get the official stamp in both of the kids passports, they will offically become US Citizens. This process can take anywhere from 40-90 minutes depending on how many officers are working at DIA at that time of day. Then we pick up our luggage, transition through US Customs, and finally out the famous glass doors at the north end of the DIA Terminal building.
While we know that many of you want to come out to welcome all of us back, please do not feel that you have to! Your thoughts, love, emails and prayers have been felt throughout our journey!
Received the US Visas for Kids Today - Headed Home!
Yesterday we had the Doctor's appointment in the morning. She gave both children a clean bill of health. Due to Mari's age, 11, she had to received a Hep. B shot (which I felt bad about because I had assured her that she would not need any shots). Mari was a trooper! Both of the children's blood work came back fine also - thank Heaven. Mari was tired and kind of out of it the rest of the afternoon. I don't know if it was the shot, nerves at leaving here, or the excitement of returning to Colorado (or some combination). She asked "no returning Gorodnya" and I told her "no, maybe someday". I think it is sinking in. She has been a sweetheart with translating Misha's needs to us, translating to Misha what we need of him, and helping to get him down for naps and for the night. I hate asking her to take on this "mother" role when I need to impress upon her and Misha that I am the Mother now, but I am guilty of taking the path of least resistance and will work on communicating one-on-one with Misha when I get home.
With our medical paperwork in hand, we headed to the US Embassy yesterday afternoon. It felt a little wierd blowing past the people in line outside - but that is what we were instructed to do by the guard outside after he saw our passports. I held our passports out so that the Ukrainian's in line could see that they were dark blue American passports and they didn't try to lynch us for butting in line. Luckily, I had read Stefanie Krebs' blog and knew that we weren't allowed to take anything into the Embassy except paperwork, passports, $400 cash USD per child (bring extra in case you paperwork is not complete and you need to beg for copies at $1 per page), and in our case because it was a cold day, our coats.
Unfortunately, I did not know to print out the paperwork in advance (before leaving Colorado as we did not have a printer here), available on-line at http://kiev.usembassy.gov/amcit_adoptions_eng.html The forms are also available at the Embassy. It took over an hour to complete just the forms. Completed samples are on the wall if you have any questions. A set of forms will need to be completed for each child as the Embassy will generate a file for each child. The forms include an I-864W (rev. 01/15/06), an I-600 (rev. 11/28/01), an Exemption from Immigration Vaccination Requirements, and a DS-230 Part I and Part II. We only had one copy of the Adoption Decree, so we pleaded with Natasha to make a photocopy. She came back and said it would be $1 per page. We were thankful to have this resolved for $8. Time in the Embassy, read as your child(ren) would be happier somewhere else, would be significantly reduced if you complete the paperwork in advance.
As I was ten minutes into happily completing forms, and John was keeping Misha from dismantling the Embassy (hah, they thought bulletproof glass would keep them safe), Natasha behind the window asked if we knew that our 171-H was for 2 children in the 6-10 year old age range. Althought Frontier Horizon had Mari listed as 9, Mari is 11. The Dossier was submitted before we had met Mari on her hosting trip. We had a long conversation/argument about Mari being just 4 months into her 11th year. Natasha did not care about this technicality, just that Mari was 11. Natasha left us to see how to proceed. I was no longer happily filling out forms, but had a pit in my stomach and could barely concentrate. Great, to get through this whole process, to Ukraine the kids are ours, and to have it hinge on a piece of paper generated by our Government!
If you are in process with competing documents for your Dossier, I would recommend
a.) having your Social Worker, and your employer in the employment letter, downplay your salary as it is open to all to see in the various proceedings and thus an assessment point for how much money you will be asked to forfeit for "expediting fees", and b.) have your Social Worker list the age of child(ren) that you would like to adopt at as wide of range as possible (keeping in mind that there can not be more than 45 years difference in age between the child and either parent, and that there must be 15 years difference between the age of the child and either parent).
Natasha reviewed the rest of our completed paperwork and told us that we would have to discuss the issue concerning Mari's age with the Consular Officer in the morning. We were hoping the Officer would be American and would listen to reason and would wave this technicality. John asks if I can cry if I need to. Trust me, if the Officer says "no" to the Visas, I won't be pretend crying. We should have caught this, we didn't, our Facilitator should have caught this, he didn't. A restless night of sleep. We want to go home desperately, we miss Duncan so, so much!
Allyson offered to pray with us this morning, which we did, and we faced the day ahead covered in God's Armour. We arrived at the Embassy for our 10 am appointment at 9:30. We checked in and went to wait in the Waiting Room, with toys and kid's books and near the Cashier's Window, and were called at 10:05. After 20-25 minutes of being processed we were asked to wait 30 minutes while the Visas would be prepared. No mention of Mari's age at all. We didn't bring it up either.
After receiving our sealed packets of paperwork and the 2 Ukrainian passports with US Visas, we headed to TGI Fridays for a Celebration Lunch with Christina. A cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke - WITH ICE. How much more American can you get?
We are looking forward to being home, but dreading the flight and the 5 hour layover in Warsaw tomorrow. We worry about Misha on the plane and keeping him occupied. He exhibits the typical orphan behavior of no respect for other's property, hitting, kicking, and is a child in need of boundaries and guidance. Hopefully the person sitting in front of him on the flight will be patient and understanding if he kicks the back of the seat. Please pray for us on the flight home, for our safety, for our sanity, and for Misha to relax and sleep.
I will blog when I get home as I have a whirlwind tour of Kyiv to post. Kyiv is 1500+ year old beautiful, bustling, growing city of 5-7M people and a young democracy. It will be interesting to see how the country changes from this visit to our Heritage Trip visit planned several years down the road when Misha is old enough to appreciate seeing his country and learning about his heritage.
Thank you for all of the comments and e-mails. They have kept us going and we looked forward to reading them whenever we could! Hugs to everyone! We will see everyone in Colorado and Dunc buddy, we will give you one BIG KISS (and lots of little kisses)!
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Received the Children's Passports Today!
John drove to Chernihiv today (over 2 hours up and 2 hours back, plus the wait while the passport office staff were at a long lunch) to pick up the children's new passports! They were promised on Friday and didn't materialize. Yesterday they were still in Kyiv, where they are generated (but we are not allowed to pick them up here). They were finally couriered to Chernihiv this morning and received at 11:00. The passports are Ukrainian with their new Barrett names and what we will use to have the US Embassy affix their Visas into. Once we reach the US, we can apply for US passports.
This is a major hurdle and puts us one step closer to being able to leave. Tomorrow is the medical exam for the children, their blood work is already completed, which is required by the US Embassy. We will also go to the US Embassy and apply for the Visas. This gives us a buffer of a day for anything to go wrong. We are saying our prayers that everything runs smoothly.
We miss home so much. The apartment is our oasis of America in this city. Last night we gave into temptation and went to O'Brian's Pub for some comfort food. We both had Chicken Kyiv ... it seemed a shame to miss while in Kyiv! We are so thankful for your comments and e-mails that brighten our day. Yeah! The end is in sight!
This is a major hurdle and puts us one step closer to being able to leave. Tomorrow is the medical exam for the children, their blood work is already completed, which is required by the US Embassy. We will also go to the US Embassy and apply for the Visas. This gives us a buffer of a day for anything to go wrong. We are saying our prayers that everything runs smoothly.
We miss home so much. The apartment is our oasis of America in this city. Last night we gave into temptation and went to O'Brian's Pub for some comfort food. We both had Chicken Kyiv ... it seemed a shame to miss while in Kyiv! We are so thankful for your comments and e-mails that brighten our day. Yeah! The end is in sight!
St. Nicholas Church and CIty Landmarks
We wanted to share a few of the landmarks in Gorodnya. The city was founded in 1550. It was considered a major village during this period. John would say that little has changed other than the addition of electricity, indoor plumbing in some cases, and vehicles. We have included a few old photos that we found on the internet. The poplar trees still line the roads and we are sure that most of the homes in the photos are still standing and in use. We know that the wells are still in use.
We pass St. Nicholas Church every day on our way to the Orphanage. Even if the gates are closed you can reach in and undo the latch and walk around the grounds. We did not try entering as a priest was on the side of the building and he justed looked at us. He looked like he was right out of the 1800’s (including the dark scruffy black beard and long, dark, shoulder-length hair that he was trying to pull a comb through) . He lives on the grounds in a small trailer house. He intently watched us walk around and take pictures. We told him “hello”, “thank you” and “goodbye” in Ukrainian – he just looked at us and never spoke (a vow of silence?). The frescos are of Archangel Michael and Archangel Gabriel.
The Madonna sits in the main town square, right across from the Lenin statue. Lenin stands in front of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (a big white two story building with a amphitheatre inside) which is where we found the computer classroom that has allowed us to have internet access for 5 grivna per hour ($1 USD). The building is also the unofficial community center and we often passed ballet or dance classes later in the afternoon. The name has been pried off the Lenin statue, but everyone knows who he is and it is just easier to leave him standing there rather than go to the trouble to rent a crane or tip him over and possibly dent the concrete below.
We found a beautiful stained glass window of three women, one bearing a loaf of bread, in the building that houses the Market grocery store that we frequent. A restaurant is upstairs. You are unable to see the window from the outside, which is a shame.
We have found several monuments to fallen soldiers from the area – one for WWI and WWII and one for Afghanistan. We also pass a monument honoring the Soviet Military with an old jet mounted in concrete.
Beyond the poplars that line the roads, there is a beautiful park filled with willow trees surrounding a lake. A mural of a Ukrainian Family (Papa, Mama, and son) is at one of the entrances to the park. The mural reminds me why we are here and once we reach it we are almost at the Orphanage!
Now that we are in bustling Kyiv, we miss our little town and look back at it with fond memories (everything except the bed and the mud)!
We pass St. Nicholas Church every day on our way to the Orphanage. Even if the gates are closed you can reach in and undo the latch and walk around the grounds. We did not try entering as a priest was on the side of the building and he justed looked at us. He looked like he was right out of the 1800’s (including the dark scruffy black beard and long, dark, shoulder-length hair that he was trying to pull a comb through) . He lives on the grounds in a small trailer house. He intently watched us walk around and take pictures. We told him “hello”, “thank you” and “goodbye” in Ukrainian – he just looked at us and never spoke (a vow of silence?). The frescos are of Archangel Michael and Archangel Gabriel.
The Madonna sits in the main town square, right across from the Lenin statue. Lenin stands in front of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (a big white two story building with a amphitheatre inside) which is where we found the computer classroom that has allowed us to have internet access for 5 grivna per hour ($1 USD). The building is also the unofficial community center and we often passed ballet or dance classes later in the afternoon. The name has been pried off the Lenin statue, but everyone knows who he is and it is just easier to leave him standing there rather than go to the trouble to rent a crane or tip him over and possibly dent the concrete below.
We found a beautiful stained glass window of three women, one bearing a loaf of bread, in the building that houses the Market grocery store that we frequent. A restaurant is upstairs. You are unable to see the window from the outside, which is a shame.
We have found several monuments to fallen soldiers from the area – one for WWI and WWII and one for Afghanistan. We also pass a monument honoring the Soviet Military with an old jet mounted in concrete.
Beyond the poplars that line the roads, there is a beautiful park filled with willow trees surrounding a lake. A mural of a Ukrainian Family (Papa, Mama, and son) is at one of the entrances to the park. The mural reminds me why we are here and once we reach it we are almost at the Orphanage!
Now that we are in bustling Kyiv, we miss our little town and look back at it with fond memories (everything except the bed and the mud)!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Road Trip to Bahmach and then Chernihiv
I am a full week behind on my blogging! I need to get my you know what in gear and get caught up! If all goes well, we will leave this Saturday for London, overnight at Heathrow, and arrive home at 4:44 pm on Sunday. We miss Duncan so much! He has been such a trooper and such a good boy for Grandma!
Last Tuesday we drove from Gorodnya, where the kids live in the Internot (Boarding School/Orphanage), to the city that they were born in, Bahmach, 3 hours to the southeast to get their new birth certificates processed and picked up. We had to get up at 4:30 am, well one of us did – the one who wears makeup – in order to be ready to be picked up at 5:30 by our Facilitator, Sasha, and our driver, Sergei. For those of you who know me, I am not a morning human. We were up even before the rooster that crows behind the hotel – totally unnatural. We had been at Larissa, Victor, and their daughter Nastiya’s home for dinner the previous night. Victor cooked the mushrooms that we had picked that morning! Dinner was delicious – at least the foods that I knew. I was gracious and took some fish rolled up in aspic … different. I also tried salo (raw bacon fat) to see what the fuss was all about … still no clue and I was sorry I did. When visiting a home for dinner in Ukraine, as most countries for that matter, it is customary to bring a gift. Vodka and chocolates will do. Word to the wise, if you select a nice big bottle of vodka ($12 USD for a large bottle and quality brand) know the Ukrainian custom first that if a bottle is opened it is to be finished. John learned the hard way. Dinner was followed by chai (hot tea) and torta (torte layer cakes) and candy. We had a lovely evening, watching videos of Larissa’s dance recitals and looking through the family photo albums, that ended around midnight. I then spent over an hour on the phone with United trying to get our reservations sorted out to return home.
At 5:30 am, the morning was foggy and drizzly. John put us in the far back of the minivan in the third row – luckily it had seatbelts – in case we hit something in the heavy fog. For the first hour you could barely see 15 ft. in front of the car. Early in the morning is when the Babushkas herd the cows home to be milked or to pasture after being milked, so we had to stop several times for herd crossings. The Babushkas are in no hurry. The cows are in no hurry. We sit. We have moved away from Gorodnya, population around 10K, to tiny villages and miles and miles of farm land. The soil in one area had been plowed, revealing the black soil called Chernozym underneath that Ukraine is so famous for. This is truly the breadbasket of Europe. The joke is that if you leave a shovel out in the field that it will grow branches.
Finally we see Bahmach on one of the mileage markers – we are getting close! We arrive at 9:15 am safely and congratulate Sergei on the drive. John and I have both driven in fog and it is really hard. I had a headache from watching the road so closely so that I could warn Sergei of anything/farm animal that he might not have seen. We find the City Government Offices and Sasha has us wait in the hallway. The wait is not long, less than 1 hour, and we have the new birth certificates in hand! It is official, Mari is Mariya Renee Barrett and Misha is Michael Joseph Barrett – both born to us! Gestation was 18 months and labor will be 5 weeks long – but the good part is that John shared in it! While we were in Bahmach, I wanted to see the home that the children lived in before their mother died. We assume that the residence is being used by the kids’ older siblings, 23 and 24, as the older sister is listed as the contact. We don’t want to knock on the door, we don’t have the children with us for a reunion, we just want a few photos. As we drive to the childhood home, we stop for a train. This is the second time we have stopped for a train. Bahmach is huge rail hub linking Ukraine to Russia. At the crossing, there is no automated arm that comes down. The RR Crossing warning light starts making a weird sound and a person in a booth near the crossing goes out and manually pulls a barricade gate thing in front of the track. After the train has passed, the human moves the gate back. A woman was doing this job the first time, then a man. Crows, birds we have seen a large quantity of the entire time we have been here, drink from a puddle near the track. Crows will always remind me of Ukraine now.
We follow a small car with a warning sticker with a “Y” in the back window. This is a student driver and everyone behind him is forewarned! After finding the home and taking a few pix, we head back to Gorodnya. The fog has lifted and we see the beautiful countryside that we passed, hours earlier, in the fog. We travel through miles and miles of sunflower fields. The flowers are all frozen now and their little heads are bent down, but we can imagine how gorgeous this was in July. Ukrainians, at least in Gorodnya, love sunflower seeds and are constantly spitting the shells out. Plus spitting in general and blowing your nose by holding one nostril and getting the contents to hit the sidewalk – reserved for boys and men!
We return to Gorodnya and Sasha takes the birth certificates to our city office so that tax id numbers (like social security numbers I think) can be issued in a few days (needed for the passports). We grab a picnic lunch (no breakfast and it is now 4) at the grocery store and pick up the children. We now head to Chernihiv, an hour to the south and the capital city of the Chernigov Region, so that the children can be digitally photographed and so that we can apply for Ukrainian passports in the children’s new names. After all of the “business” is taken care of, we return the children, and head back to the motel. I call United again for another 2 hour phone marathon to try to find 4 flights out together and at a fairly reasonable cost. We finally find something that will work, I make the reservations, and I literally fall into bed exhausted. We are happy that we have made this progress and that we have flights out and will see Duncan again!
Last Tuesday we drove from Gorodnya, where the kids live in the Internot (Boarding School/Orphanage), to the city that they were born in, Bahmach, 3 hours to the southeast to get their new birth certificates processed and picked up. We had to get up at 4:30 am, well one of us did – the one who wears makeup – in order to be ready to be picked up at 5:30 by our Facilitator, Sasha, and our driver, Sergei. For those of you who know me, I am not a morning human. We were up even before the rooster that crows behind the hotel – totally unnatural. We had been at Larissa, Victor, and their daughter Nastiya’s home for dinner the previous night. Victor cooked the mushrooms that we had picked that morning! Dinner was delicious – at least the foods that I knew. I was gracious and took some fish rolled up in aspic … different. I also tried salo (raw bacon fat) to see what the fuss was all about … still no clue and I was sorry I did. When visiting a home for dinner in Ukraine, as most countries for that matter, it is customary to bring a gift. Vodka and chocolates will do. Word to the wise, if you select a nice big bottle of vodka ($12 USD for a large bottle and quality brand) know the Ukrainian custom first that if a bottle is opened it is to be finished. John learned the hard way. Dinner was followed by chai (hot tea) and torta (torte layer cakes) and candy. We had a lovely evening, watching videos of Larissa’s dance recitals and looking through the family photo albums, that ended around midnight. I then spent over an hour on the phone with United trying to get our reservations sorted out to return home.
At 5:30 am, the morning was foggy and drizzly. John put us in the far back of the minivan in the third row – luckily it had seatbelts – in case we hit something in the heavy fog. For the first hour you could barely see 15 ft. in front of the car. Early in the morning is when the Babushkas herd the cows home to be milked or to pasture after being milked, so we had to stop several times for herd crossings. The Babushkas are in no hurry. The cows are in no hurry. We sit. We have moved away from Gorodnya, population around 10K, to tiny villages and miles and miles of farm land. The soil in one area had been plowed, revealing the black soil called Chernozym underneath that Ukraine is so famous for. This is truly the breadbasket of Europe. The joke is that if you leave a shovel out in the field that it will grow branches.
Finally we see Bahmach on one of the mileage markers – we are getting close! We arrive at 9:15 am safely and congratulate Sergei on the drive. John and I have both driven in fog and it is really hard. I had a headache from watching the road so closely so that I could warn Sergei of anything/farm animal that he might not have seen. We find the City Government Offices and Sasha has us wait in the hallway. The wait is not long, less than 1 hour, and we have the new birth certificates in hand! It is official, Mari is Mariya Renee Barrett and Misha is Michael Joseph Barrett – both born to us! Gestation was 18 months and labor will be 5 weeks long – but the good part is that John shared in it! While we were in Bahmach, I wanted to see the home that the children lived in before their mother died. We assume that the residence is being used by the kids’ older siblings, 23 and 24, as the older sister is listed as the contact. We don’t want to knock on the door, we don’t have the children with us for a reunion, we just want a few photos. As we drive to the childhood home, we stop for a train. This is the second time we have stopped for a train. Bahmach is huge rail hub linking Ukraine to Russia. At the crossing, there is no automated arm that comes down. The RR Crossing warning light starts making a weird sound and a person in a booth near the crossing goes out and manually pulls a barricade gate thing in front of the track. After the train has passed, the human moves the gate back. A woman was doing this job the first time, then a man. Crows, birds we have seen a large quantity of the entire time we have been here, drink from a puddle near the track. Crows will always remind me of Ukraine now.
We follow a small car with a warning sticker with a “Y” in the back window. This is a student driver and everyone behind him is forewarned! After finding the home and taking a few pix, we head back to Gorodnya. The fog has lifted and we see the beautiful countryside that we passed, hours earlier, in the fog. We travel through miles and miles of sunflower fields. The flowers are all frozen now and their little heads are bent down, but we can imagine how gorgeous this was in July. Ukrainians, at least in Gorodnya, love sunflower seeds and are constantly spitting the shells out. Plus spitting in general and blowing your nose by holding one nostril and getting the contents to hit the sidewalk – reserved for boys and men!
We return to Gorodnya and Sasha takes the birth certificates to our city office so that tax id numbers (like social security numbers I think) can be issued in a few days (needed for the passports). We grab a picnic lunch (no breakfast and it is now 4) at the grocery store and pick up the children. We now head to Chernihiv, an hour to the south and the capital city of the Chernigov Region, so that the children can be digitally photographed and so that we can apply for Ukrainian passports in the children’s new names. After all of the “business” is taken care of, we return the children, and head back to the motel. I call United again for another 2 hour phone marathon to try to find 4 flights out together and at a fairly reasonable cost. We finally find something that will work, I make the reservations, and I literally fall into bed exhausted. We are happy that we have made this progress and that we have flights out and will see Duncan again!
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Blessings - Full Circle
Blessings
In the morning, after breakfast, I was busy cleaning the hotel room. The staff NEVER enters your room, so you are in charge of changing towels when you feel like you need new ones, changing the sheets, scrubbing the tub and sink, and refilling toilet paper. John is happy with this arrangement as he feels his laptop is more secure. Trash can be left outside your door in the morning – but we usually run it downstairs on our way to breakfast.
As I poked my head into the café kitchen to exchange towels, I noticed that the cook and the bartender girl and the waitress were busy at a stainless steel table. The cook had rolled out dough and cut circles with a shot glass. A large bowl of uncooked ground pork was nearby with the tiny spoons that we use for tea in it. The ladies were busy, laughing, and making pelmeni. I had never set foot in the kitchen, but after I realized what they were doing, I wanted a closer look! Pelmeni are little pockets of dough filled with ground pork and then boiled. They are traditionally served with butter or in a soup with bits of mushroom here. We have discovered that they taste a lot like ravioli when you leave off the butter and top them with Barilla spaghetti sauce. Only buy Barilla – the other brands taste like cocktail sauce.
Rather than asking if I could help, I washed my hands really well, dried them and came over and grabbed a chuck of dough and a spoon. They showed me how much pork to put on the dough disk, and then you fold in half like a small turnover and seal the edges. You then lightly pull the ends of the flat side of the turnover about an inch on each side, touch them together, squeeze to join them and tuck the joined area under (like arms coming around you in a hug). Then you put them on a floured cookie sheet, making sure they do not touch each other, and pop in the freezer. Once they are frozen solid, you can transfer them to a bag.
I had a great time the short time that I helped. I think I was making them nervous as they probably worried the owner would drop by and I would be found in the kitchen. I can see that this would be a great female bonding time and a lot of fun –especially if you understood what everyone was saying! John came down to see where I was, saw what we were doing, went up for the camera and got a few pictures. Hopefully I will be able to make pelmeni for the kids when we get home!
We were having a rather down day, other than the Pelmeni Lesson, as we read some of our paperwork from the Facilitator’s company. I know that some people come over without a Facilitator to help with adoption. I am not sure how they can handle everything, unless they are fluent in Ukrainian or Russian (depending on the region they are adopting from). The trick is to shop around to find a Facilitator that someone else highly recommends. After paying a rather hefty sum in the US for the adoption (Dossier translation and submission), which increased when we added a second child (why when the child is a sibling and residing in the same orphanage is unknown), we paid another even more hefty sum in the Ukraine when we arrived.
We received a $50 credit for our lodging per night during the period before the court hearing. After the court hearing, we were on our own dime (well actually everything is our dimes – only they hold them) for the 10 day wait. We thought that once the hearing was over, we would be back to using the funds given over to pay for the lodging until we went home. Our hotel, the only one in Gorodnya and an hour radius, was $50 per night (outrageous when the average UA blue collar worker makes a hundred to a few hundred a month in salary). This is when we read the paperwork, that we had read at home but didn’t read-read, that said during the wait after the request for passport (up to 20 days per the woman that runs the passport office in Chernihiv had threatened the previous American couple when the US Embassy says the wait should be less than 10) we would also be on our own dime. So basically we pay for the Facilitator and Driver’s lodging when we are not paying for our own lodging. All food is on us. Although Gorodnya was $50 per night, Kyiv is very expensive and we figured it would be over $100 to rent an apartment with two rooms so that the kids would have their own room. Food in Kyiv is also outrageous – TGI Fridays is more expensive here than at home for example. It was in this depressed and broken spirit that we headed over to the Internot to see the kids.
When we arrived, after stopping at the market for the afternoon snack, we couldn’t find Mari. Her entire building was vacant. Unusual on a Saturday. There were also 4-5 cars parked out front, also unusual. We headed over to Misha’s building and started on our normal routine (help the kids get dressed after nap in their multiple layers, prepare snack, clean up after snack, and play for a while). We never have visitors at the building and the doors are kept locked. We were busy with snack preparation when we heard a knock on the door. A local villager and her children were dropping off some cookies, candy, and large bags of fried pork puffs (kind of like cheetohs, but not orange and made from pig fat). Jonna said the kids loved them! Yum! Jonna said this happened every so often. How sweet of the villagers. Then we heard another knock and outside was a large group of people carrying small boxes for the children. They had just come from a program in the school building, for Teacher’s Day, which was the previous day.
The group entered and started speaking Ukrainian to me, I mentioned that I was not their caregiver, that Jonna was. John welcomed them in also. The kids swarmed on the visitors and the boxes. Someone, I don’t remember who, started speaking English and we discovered that one of the visitors was American! She is a Missionary, from North Carolina, named Allyson who currently lives in Kyiv. We told her why we were there and showed her Misha and mentioned adopting his older sister. John pulled out his cell phone to show her Mari and Duncan’s photo and she said “Masha”? Masha is Mari’s diminutive name. We said yes. Apparently she sat next to Mari during the program and hoped that someone would come to adopt her. Talk about prayers being answered!
We gave her a quick tour of the building as we are now experts and know every room and have free reign. I then confess to her our depression over the huge price tag of adopting these kids and how very little of the money is actually given to the Orphanage – where it could do the most good! Beyond giving the Director the sum that he requested for a “donation” we also bought two large electric radiator heaters and a new LG vacuum cleaner (able to be used bagless to save the Orphanage money in the future). We purchased as many DVDs as we could find for the kids at the Bazaar and left them a bunch from our binder that we brought over (in case of rainy days during bonding time). We would have loved to have spent our donation on a new stove for the Baby House and whatever items Mari’s caregiver needed – like coats, hats, and clothing. Instead it goes into a black hole and we pray that it will be used for the kids. It is so nice to speak English to someone, other than my spouse who I have been cloistered with for over three weeks! We explain that we are running out of the funds that we brought and that the stay in Kyiv is a concern. This is when she says “Why don’t you stay with me”. We are thinking sure; you want 4 strangers – one of which is a 5 year old – to stay with you. She stresses yes that she would really like us to. We almost fall over. She mentions that she has a king-sized bed with a pillow top mattress, three bunk beds, a pull-out couch, and a tub. She will give us the bed, she’ll sleep on the couch, and the kids can have the bunk beds. We are thinking no way, but to be honest, she had me at “pillow-top mattress” after weeks of sleeping on what we have affectionately termed “our piece of the rock”.
She then said she was leaving on vacation over the next weekend, so the place would be ours. Okay, we are not the kind of people who stay with someone we don’t know. I hate imposing on my Jr. High school girlfriends when we visit them. Allyson confessed she is not the type to invite strangers to stay with her. Something about it felt right … did I mention “pillow-top mattress”? Really, her sitting by Mari during the presentation, and her being in our building, during the time we always visit Misha every day. We were probably the only Americans in Gorodnya, possible the only Americans in the Chernihiv Region, that afternoon and we all end up in a tiny building at the back of the Orphanage at the same time.
It was then that I noticed the boxes that the group, a Ukrainian church group from Kyiv, brought to the kids. They were full of toys, crayons, stickers, small trucks, and candy. They were shoeboxes. They were labeled “Operation Christmas Child”. I almost fell over. We have assembled boxes for 8 years for OCC, when I heard of the program the first time at my MOPS group at Church. For several years we have volunteered to transport the many boxes given by our church members to another church, further north, that OCC parks a semi-truck trailer at to collect the boxes. We have then joined the Pastor of that church in praying over the entire truckload of boxes for safe transport and to bless the lives of children around the world and to spread the message that they are loved by a wondrous God. I have volunteered at the Distribution Center in Denver pulling out plastic snakes, chocolate, play weapons, money, porcelain dolls, etc. and re-filling the boxes with McDonald’s toys and donated toothbrushes! This is when I knew everything was meant to be. Blessings - full circle – how fortunate are we?
P.S. Thank you Allyson, the pillow-top mattress is the most comfortable bed I have ever slept on!
In the morning, after breakfast, I was busy cleaning the hotel room. The staff NEVER enters your room, so you are in charge of changing towels when you feel like you need new ones, changing the sheets, scrubbing the tub and sink, and refilling toilet paper. John is happy with this arrangement as he feels his laptop is more secure. Trash can be left outside your door in the morning – but we usually run it downstairs on our way to breakfast.
As I poked my head into the café kitchen to exchange towels, I noticed that the cook and the bartender girl and the waitress were busy at a stainless steel table. The cook had rolled out dough and cut circles with a shot glass. A large bowl of uncooked ground pork was nearby with the tiny spoons that we use for tea in it. The ladies were busy, laughing, and making pelmeni. I had never set foot in the kitchen, but after I realized what they were doing, I wanted a closer look! Pelmeni are little pockets of dough filled with ground pork and then boiled. They are traditionally served with butter or in a soup with bits of mushroom here. We have discovered that they taste a lot like ravioli when you leave off the butter and top them with Barilla spaghetti sauce. Only buy Barilla – the other brands taste like cocktail sauce.
Rather than asking if I could help, I washed my hands really well, dried them and came over and grabbed a chuck of dough and a spoon. They showed me how much pork to put on the dough disk, and then you fold in half like a small turnover and seal the edges. You then lightly pull the ends of the flat side of the turnover about an inch on each side, touch them together, squeeze to join them and tuck the joined area under (like arms coming around you in a hug). Then you put them on a floured cookie sheet, making sure they do not touch each other, and pop in the freezer. Once they are frozen solid, you can transfer them to a bag.
I had a great time the short time that I helped. I think I was making them nervous as they probably worried the owner would drop by and I would be found in the kitchen. I can see that this would be a great female bonding time and a lot of fun –especially if you understood what everyone was saying! John came down to see where I was, saw what we were doing, went up for the camera and got a few pictures. Hopefully I will be able to make pelmeni for the kids when we get home!
We were having a rather down day, other than the Pelmeni Lesson, as we read some of our paperwork from the Facilitator’s company. I know that some people come over without a Facilitator to help with adoption. I am not sure how they can handle everything, unless they are fluent in Ukrainian or Russian (depending on the region they are adopting from). The trick is to shop around to find a Facilitator that someone else highly recommends. After paying a rather hefty sum in the US for the adoption (Dossier translation and submission), which increased when we added a second child (why when the child is a sibling and residing in the same orphanage is unknown), we paid another even more hefty sum in the Ukraine when we arrived.
We received a $50 credit for our lodging per night during the period before the court hearing. After the court hearing, we were on our own dime (well actually everything is our dimes – only they hold them) for the 10 day wait. We thought that once the hearing was over, we would be back to using the funds given over to pay for the lodging until we went home. Our hotel, the only one in Gorodnya and an hour radius, was $50 per night (outrageous when the average UA blue collar worker makes a hundred to a few hundred a month in salary). This is when we read the paperwork, that we had read at home but didn’t read-read, that said during the wait after the request for passport (up to 20 days per the woman that runs the passport office in Chernihiv had threatened the previous American couple when the US Embassy says the wait should be less than 10) we would also be on our own dime. So basically we pay for the Facilitator and Driver’s lodging when we are not paying for our own lodging. All food is on us. Although Gorodnya was $50 per night, Kyiv is very expensive and we figured it would be over $100 to rent an apartment with two rooms so that the kids would have their own room. Food in Kyiv is also outrageous – TGI Fridays is more expensive here than at home for example. It was in this depressed and broken spirit that we headed over to the Internot to see the kids.
When we arrived, after stopping at the market for the afternoon snack, we couldn’t find Mari. Her entire building was vacant. Unusual on a Saturday. There were also 4-5 cars parked out front, also unusual. We headed over to Misha’s building and started on our normal routine (help the kids get dressed after nap in their multiple layers, prepare snack, clean up after snack, and play for a while). We never have visitors at the building and the doors are kept locked. We were busy with snack preparation when we heard a knock on the door. A local villager and her children were dropping off some cookies, candy, and large bags of fried pork puffs (kind of like cheetohs, but not orange and made from pig fat). Jonna said the kids loved them! Yum! Jonna said this happened every so often. How sweet of the villagers. Then we heard another knock and outside was a large group of people carrying small boxes for the children. They had just come from a program in the school building, for Teacher’s Day, which was the previous day.
The group entered and started speaking Ukrainian to me, I mentioned that I was not their caregiver, that Jonna was. John welcomed them in also. The kids swarmed on the visitors and the boxes. Someone, I don’t remember who, started speaking English and we discovered that one of the visitors was American! She is a Missionary, from North Carolina, named Allyson who currently lives in Kyiv. We told her why we were there and showed her Misha and mentioned adopting his older sister. John pulled out his cell phone to show her Mari and Duncan’s photo and she said “Masha”? Masha is Mari’s diminutive name. We said yes. Apparently she sat next to Mari during the program and hoped that someone would come to adopt her. Talk about prayers being answered!
We gave her a quick tour of the building as we are now experts and know every room and have free reign. I then confess to her our depression over the huge price tag of adopting these kids and how very little of the money is actually given to the Orphanage – where it could do the most good! Beyond giving the Director the sum that he requested for a “donation” we also bought two large electric radiator heaters and a new LG vacuum cleaner (able to be used bagless to save the Orphanage money in the future). We purchased as many DVDs as we could find for the kids at the Bazaar and left them a bunch from our binder that we brought over (in case of rainy days during bonding time). We would have loved to have spent our donation on a new stove for the Baby House and whatever items Mari’s caregiver needed – like coats, hats, and clothing. Instead it goes into a black hole and we pray that it will be used for the kids. It is so nice to speak English to someone, other than my spouse who I have been cloistered with for over three weeks! We explain that we are running out of the funds that we brought and that the stay in Kyiv is a concern. This is when she says “Why don’t you stay with me”. We are thinking sure; you want 4 strangers – one of which is a 5 year old – to stay with you. She stresses yes that she would really like us to. We almost fall over. She mentions that she has a king-sized bed with a pillow top mattress, three bunk beds, a pull-out couch, and a tub. She will give us the bed, she’ll sleep on the couch, and the kids can have the bunk beds. We are thinking no way, but to be honest, she had me at “pillow-top mattress” after weeks of sleeping on what we have affectionately termed “our piece of the rock”.
She then said she was leaving on vacation over the next weekend, so the place would be ours. Okay, we are not the kind of people who stay with someone we don’t know. I hate imposing on my Jr. High school girlfriends when we visit them. Allyson confessed she is not the type to invite strangers to stay with her. Something about it felt right … did I mention “pillow-top mattress”? Really, her sitting by Mari during the presentation, and her being in our building, during the time we always visit Misha every day. We were probably the only Americans in Gorodnya, possible the only Americans in the Chernihiv Region, that afternoon and we all end up in a tiny building at the back of the Orphanage at the same time.
It was then that I noticed the boxes that the group, a Ukrainian church group from Kyiv, brought to the kids. They were full of toys, crayons, stickers, small trucks, and candy. They were shoeboxes. They were labeled “Operation Christmas Child”. I almost fell over. We have assembled boxes for 8 years for OCC, when I heard of the program the first time at my MOPS group at Church. For several years we have volunteered to transport the many boxes given by our church members to another church, further north, that OCC parks a semi-truck trailer at to collect the boxes. We have then joined the Pastor of that church in praying over the entire truckload of boxes for safe transport and to bless the lives of children around the world and to spread the message that they are loved by a wondrous God. I have volunteered at the Distribution Center in Denver pulling out plastic snakes, chocolate, play weapons, money, porcelain dolls, etc. and re-filling the boxes with McDonald’s toys and donated toothbrushes! This is when I knew everything was meant to be. Blessings - full circle – how fortunate are we?
P.S. Thank you Allyson, the pillow-top mattress is the most comfortable bed I have ever slept on!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Transportation, Turkeys, and "Moo" Says the Cow
We have enjoyed all the various forms of transportation in Gorondya from horse drawn wagons (wagons made out of metal beds with car axles – sometimes of various sized tires from the front of the wagon to the back) to Mercedes Benz SUVs. Most of the population either rides a bike or walks. The people who ride bikes often times pull a little handmade trailer, an old wagon or wheel barrow, or they stack 50 lbs. of potatos or onions (or both) across the bike frame where the peddles are and use the bike to transport the vegetables home (often times the handle bars are used to hold bags of other groceries). There are a few motorcyles, some with side-cars, and scooters. We even saw a scooter with two back wheels spaced a few inches apart.
The ambulance in town is a large dark green VW van looking thing from the 1950s? with a red stripe painted down the side. If this is the ambulance, I would prefer not visiting the hospital at any point during the trip! Tractors are also common and huge trucks rumbling through town laden with large logs. I would pray that the two-by-fours being used as vertical supports would not break and the logs scatter (possibly killing a pedestrian, cyclist, or one of my goats tied roadside for grazing)! A large number of semi-trucks are coming from Russia (27 km to the north) with goods destined for Ukraine. Our motel has rates from 3 hours for a room, to 12 hours, to 24 hours. We had to raise our eyebrows at the 3 hour rate until we realized, after seeing the a large truck parked across the road, with no extended cab for sleeping, that the driver may have pulled over for a 3 hour rest before proceeding south. There are no speed limit signs and the vehicles move too quickly, past pedestrians, bicyclists, stray dogs, and chickens around town.
After we moved to the one room at our motel with the double bed that overlooked the new construction behind the motel, I really missed getting up in the morning and checking the activity at the gas station to see the conglomeration of vehicles that were filling up. It was always interesting! John on the other hand loved the “Rotortiller Car”. A man had built a car, open to the elements and with a small bed in the back for hauling, out of an old garden rotor-tiller. It was slow moving, 5-10 mph, but he putted-putted through town holding his handle bars and making a racket. We were only able to get a few pictures, distant or blurry, of him out of the taxi window. John thinks he is ingeneous as it gets the job done and transports what he needs to transport!
This is a hard life for most of the people. Men have an average lifespan of 63 and we see few older men. We do see older women, babuskas, often sitting by the road near a few pails of apples sitting on a wooden chair, or other vegetables that they have produced in their garden. They sit behind their fence and watch the traffic go by, one had a cat on her lap that she quietly petted every so often. One had brought her goat herd to the town park to mow the grass! The babuskas look at us curiously and sometimes smile. I think they may not have the best eyesite and may not realize we are “Americans”. Possibly they smile because I great each and every one that we pass and don’t ignore them like the other pedestrians passing by. The changes that these women have seen over their lifespans must have been tremendous – far beyond machines and cars and wars and famine. With Ukraine moving from Capitalism to Communism to Capitalism and from being part of the Soviet Union to being a free, independent country!
Every single family home has at least one fruit tree, a small vegetable garden, and often times a grape arbor with the small purple grapes. Turkeys congregate on the fenceline outside of the Baby House. The males stay on the ground – possibly they are too heavy to fly up and roost on the metal fence railing – and spread their beautiful tails and strut their stuff for each other and for any female who happens to be watching. The girls watch me instead as I like to throw the food scraps from snacktime out into the grass for the turkeys and chickens to clean up. I would save the food, but the children have all fingered and nibbled what was on their plates and they are all little germ factories with their runny noses. Better to be safe and give the turkeys the leftovers!
Two babuskas wearing black rubber galoshes, herd the milk cows from pasture (where they were tied – I have yet to see a fenced pasture) past the Orphanage, home to be milked every night at 6 pm. You could set your watch by them. The cows are Holstein and Holstein crosses. The taxi driver whisks us past them at a speed that John and I just flinch at as we are afraid the cows will move from the middle of the road to a little closer to our side. Many are just walking on their own and not being led by a rope on their horn – only the cow knows which way the cow will go – and we worry about hitting one with the car. The driver is unfazed as he treats chickens as traffic cones, and stray dogs and cows as minor obstacles to zig and zag around. The taxi has no seatbelts and the back seat is as soft as a marshmallow – you sink into it. The taxi drivers, 3 men who share one cab and alternate days, are always punctual and friendly. We appreciate their professionalism and the service that they offer!
The ambulance in town is a large dark green VW van looking thing from the 1950s? with a red stripe painted down the side. If this is the ambulance, I would prefer not visiting the hospital at any point during the trip! Tractors are also common and huge trucks rumbling through town laden with large logs. I would pray that the two-by-fours being used as vertical supports would not break and the logs scatter (possibly killing a pedestrian, cyclist, or one of my goats tied roadside for grazing)! A large number of semi-trucks are coming from Russia (27 km to the north) with goods destined for Ukraine. Our motel has rates from 3 hours for a room, to 12 hours, to 24 hours. We had to raise our eyebrows at the 3 hour rate until we realized, after seeing the a large truck parked across the road, with no extended cab for sleeping, that the driver may have pulled over for a 3 hour rest before proceeding south. There are no speed limit signs and the vehicles move too quickly, past pedestrians, bicyclists, stray dogs, and chickens around town.
After we moved to the one room at our motel with the double bed that overlooked the new construction behind the motel, I really missed getting up in the morning and checking the activity at the gas station to see the conglomeration of vehicles that were filling up. It was always interesting! John on the other hand loved the “Rotortiller Car”. A man had built a car, open to the elements and with a small bed in the back for hauling, out of an old garden rotor-tiller. It was slow moving, 5-10 mph, but he putted-putted through town holding his handle bars and making a racket. We were only able to get a few pictures, distant or blurry, of him out of the taxi window. John thinks he is ingeneous as it gets the job done and transports what he needs to transport!
This is a hard life for most of the people. Men have an average lifespan of 63 and we see few older men. We do see older women, babuskas, often sitting by the road near a few pails of apples sitting on a wooden chair, or other vegetables that they have produced in their garden. They sit behind their fence and watch the traffic go by, one had a cat on her lap that she quietly petted every so often. One had brought her goat herd to the town park to mow the grass! The babuskas look at us curiously and sometimes smile. I think they may not have the best eyesite and may not realize we are “Americans”. Possibly they smile because I great each and every one that we pass and don’t ignore them like the other pedestrians passing by. The changes that these women have seen over their lifespans must have been tremendous – far beyond machines and cars and wars and famine. With Ukraine moving from Capitalism to Communism to Capitalism and from being part of the Soviet Union to being a free, independent country!
Every single family home has at least one fruit tree, a small vegetable garden, and often times a grape arbor with the small purple grapes. Turkeys congregate on the fenceline outside of the Baby House. The males stay on the ground – possibly they are too heavy to fly up and roost on the metal fence railing – and spread their beautiful tails and strut their stuff for each other and for any female who happens to be watching. The girls watch me instead as I like to throw the food scraps from snacktime out into the grass for the turkeys and chickens to clean up. I would save the food, but the children have all fingered and nibbled what was on their plates and they are all little germ factories with their runny noses. Better to be safe and give the turkeys the leftovers!
Two babuskas wearing black rubber galoshes, herd the milk cows from pasture (where they were tied – I have yet to see a fenced pasture) past the Orphanage, home to be milked every night at 6 pm. You could set your watch by them. The cows are Holstein and Holstein crosses. The taxi driver whisks us past them at a speed that John and I just flinch at as we are afraid the cows will move from the middle of the road to a little closer to our side. Many are just walking on their own and not being led by a rope on their horn – only the cow knows which way the cow will go – and we worry about hitting one with the car. The driver is unfazed as he treats chickens as traffic cones, and stray dogs and cows as minor obstacles to zig and zag around. The taxi has no seatbelts and the back seat is as soft as a marshmallow – you sink into it. The taxi drivers, 3 men who share one cab and alternate days, are always punctual and friendly. We appreciate their professionalism and the service that they offer!
In Kyiv, Catching Up!
We’re back with and I have so much to catch up on! To start, we are safely in Kyiv, with the children, waiting for their new Ukrainian passports (in their new names) to be issued. We are staying in a lovely apartment and spending the days bonding as a family, with the kids also bonding as siblings (they haven’t slept together under one roof for 3 years), and visiting all of the sights of Kyiv (that we did not get to see at the front end of the trip).
I have several blogs to catch up on and I don’t know where to start. John just got his computer working on-line on the internet connection at the apartment last night. After he finished working, it was too late to blog. Everyone is asleep right now, so “Mama” gets a chance to catch up on things other than laundry!
I had several topics I wanted to cover and just didn’t have the chance, but I have great pictures, so bear with me and I will get everything covered.
I had mentioned the open air market, often called a Reenok, or Bazaar in an earlier blog. In Gorodnya this is the only place to buy many goods. There is a fixed, fenced in area that is open most mornings until 2:00 that sells a variety of items and fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat. On Thursdays, vendors from Belorus (less than 45 km to the north) come in and crowd the streets on both sides of the local Reenok and the bazaar more than quadruples in size. We had planned on returning home for the 10 day after-court-hearing-wait, but our plans changed when we understood that things would move quickly and that we would have our court decree the same day that we were due to fly out the first time. In opting to stay and not change our reservations, we had nothing for the kids to wear – that suitcase is at home as we brought donations over for the “first” trip.
When you adopt from Ukraine, you are handed your child in pretty much the same state that God gives you one … only in this case you may get a free pair of underwear if you are lucky! Armed with a list of what we thought we would need to exist with the kids for 2 weeks, we hit the bazaar! Finding clothes for Misha was far more easy than clothes for Mari. Winter coats and shoes were also easy. Sox and undies were a snap. Pants for Mari was difficult and at this point she still only has two pair. We forgot a hat for Misha and mittens, even though his coat has a hood that we use we were given the evil eye by babuskas and mothers alike (who did not think he was dressed warmly enough for the cold 50’-60’ weather) until I bought him a hat, a scarf, and mittens. I am amazed that he does not fall over from heat exhaustion with how bundled he is at times! The first morning in Kyiv, he dressed himself in the requisite 3 layers of shirts at the Baby House. He doesn’t understand that one shirt will do and was wearing his entire wardrobe! He will learn that he is in a heated environment and moves to a heated car and that he doesn’t need all of his layers! He dresses himself morning and night and would wear his new Spiderman shirt everyday if allowed!
The one photo of the man with the small bathtub is a fishmonger. The bathtub was full of water and large live catfish (about 18-20” long). Once a housewife has selected a fish, the man removes it from the tub, sets it wriggling on a tray of fishheads, bonks it in the head with the side of his wooden cutting board and cuts its head off. I was sorry that I peaked over the shoulders of the crowd to see what was going on. We eat fish, even trout when camping, but I was not totally sure the fish was dead from the bonk – it definitely was with no head. There was a man in a small wheelchair that looked modified and low to the ground who was selling coffee from a box mounted on the front of his wheelchair. He had no legs. He was doing a brisk business. I could not bring myself to take a picture – he is making his way through life with grace.
We pretty much found everything we needed. We looked and looked for DVDs for the kids at the Baby House, but only found a few expensive (45 grivna each) DVDs for children in Russian that we picked up for them. Aimee was gracious enough to pick up 3 (15 grivna each, with 12 movies in Russian on each one) for our kids for home at her Bazaar in Mariupol, but we did not find anything like that at ours unfortunately. Thirty six movies would have kept the kids busy during the long winter. I will keep looking here in Kyiv and possibly mail them some videos from here. The fruits and the vegetables at the market are the least expensive and freshest in town. We loved the watermelon as it tasted better than ours. Something about the way we genetically engineer fruits and veggies so that they ripen quickly, are disease resistant, and produce a larger harvest has lost the concept that fruit and veggies should actually taste good. John loved the tomatos. I loved the peaches and watermelon.
It was a great opportunity to see how people live in another part of the world and they have to plan ahead for market day, rather than just running to the store to get something the way we do.
Thank you for hanging in there with us!
I have several blogs to catch up on and I don’t know where to start. John just got his computer working on-line on the internet connection at the apartment last night. After he finished working, it was too late to blog. Everyone is asleep right now, so “Mama” gets a chance to catch up on things other than laundry!
I had several topics I wanted to cover and just didn’t have the chance, but I have great pictures, so bear with me and I will get everything covered.
I had mentioned the open air market, often called a Reenok, or Bazaar in an earlier blog. In Gorodnya this is the only place to buy many goods. There is a fixed, fenced in area that is open most mornings until 2:00 that sells a variety of items and fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat. On Thursdays, vendors from Belorus (less than 45 km to the north) come in and crowd the streets on both sides of the local Reenok and the bazaar more than quadruples in size. We had planned on returning home for the 10 day after-court-hearing-wait, but our plans changed when we understood that things would move quickly and that we would have our court decree the same day that we were due to fly out the first time. In opting to stay and not change our reservations, we had nothing for the kids to wear – that suitcase is at home as we brought donations over for the “first” trip.
When you adopt from Ukraine, you are handed your child in pretty much the same state that God gives you one … only in this case you may get a free pair of underwear if you are lucky! Armed with a list of what we thought we would need to exist with the kids for 2 weeks, we hit the bazaar! Finding clothes for Misha was far more easy than clothes for Mari. Winter coats and shoes were also easy. Sox and undies were a snap. Pants for Mari was difficult and at this point she still only has two pair. We forgot a hat for Misha and mittens, even though his coat has a hood that we use we were given the evil eye by babuskas and mothers alike (who did not think he was dressed warmly enough for the cold 50’-60’ weather) until I bought him a hat, a scarf, and mittens. I am amazed that he does not fall over from heat exhaustion with how bundled he is at times! The first morning in Kyiv, he dressed himself in the requisite 3 layers of shirts at the Baby House. He doesn’t understand that one shirt will do and was wearing his entire wardrobe! He will learn that he is in a heated environment and moves to a heated car and that he doesn’t need all of his layers! He dresses himself morning and night and would wear his new Spiderman shirt everyday if allowed!
The one photo of the man with the small bathtub is a fishmonger. The bathtub was full of water and large live catfish (about 18-20” long). Once a housewife has selected a fish, the man removes it from the tub, sets it wriggling on a tray of fishheads, bonks it in the head with the side of his wooden cutting board and cuts its head off. I was sorry that I peaked over the shoulders of the crowd to see what was going on. We eat fish, even trout when camping, but I was not totally sure the fish was dead from the bonk – it definitely was with no head. There was a man in a small wheelchair that looked modified and low to the ground who was selling coffee from a box mounted on the front of his wheelchair. He had no legs. He was doing a brisk business. I could not bring myself to take a picture – he is making his way through life with grace.
We pretty much found everything we needed. We looked and looked for DVDs for the kids at the Baby House, but only found a few expensive (45 grivna each) DVDs for children in Russian that we picked up for them. Aimee was gracious enough to pick up 3 (15 grivna each, with 12 movies in Russian on each one) for our kids for home at her Bazaar in Mariupol, but we did not find anything like that at ours unfortunately. Thirty six movies would have kept the kids busy during the long winter. I will keep looking here in Kyiv and possibly mail them some videos from here. The fruits and the vegetables at the market are the least expensive and freshest in town. We loved the watermelon as it tasted better than ours. Something about the way we genetically engineer fruits and veggies so that they ripen quickly, are disease resistant, and produce a larger harvest has lost the concept that fruit and veggies should actually taste good. John loved the tomatos. I loved the peaches and watermelon.
It was a great opportunity to see how people live in another part of the world and they have to plan ahead for market day, rather than just running to the store to get something the way we do.
Thank you for hanging in there with us!
Monday, October 6, 2008
We're Alive, Wild Party, Mushroom Hunting
After several days without the internet, we are back! We received our court documents today - hurray! Tomorrow morning we are leaving for Bachmach - several hours in the car (adults only, we are not allowed to take the kids yet) - to pick up the two birth certificates. We are going to ask if we can bring the kids back to the hotel tomorrow evening, after the adults return from Bachmach, to have them spend the night with us and then possibly leave Wednesday morning. The main purpose is to throw them in the shower and scrub them really clean! The bottom part of the shower can hold water (I have used this for laundry) and would make an ideal small bathtub (6-8" of water) for Misha to just soak in! This would be ideal - but nothing ever goes as planned here, so we may not be able to leave until Thursday.
We have the option of waiting here in Gorodnya for the Ukrainian passports (in the children's new names) to be issued down in Chernihiv (may take up to 20 days) or heading for Kyiv for the wait. Although we love our little town, we are more than stir-crazy and tired of the same food morning, noon, and night! Kyiv will be much more expensive but there is so much to do and so much Ukrainian history there to show the kids! Misha may be too young, but Mari is not.
Yesterday we spent several hours with Mari's group and played cards in her room. "Go Fish" is a new game to many and I lost as what I had in my hand was verbalized in Ukrainian to other children who would ask for something, even without one of that kind in their own hand! Mari's roommates Alina and Marina played as did Alina's brother Sasha and another boy named Sasha. The other roommates Christina and Ina (home from the hospital) played with Barbies.
Last night when we came down for dinner, a huge party was going on in the dining room to celebrate Teacher's Day. We realized, after 20 some days here, that we recognized several of the participants and when they saw us, they added two chairs and sat us down for a feast! We tried to beg off, but they would not hear of it! The tables were groaning under all the weight of the food! You eat some, dance some, eat some, toast, eat more, toast, dance, go outside and talk, eat more, toast, dance, and toast! My neighbor gentleman made sure my plate was always full, often times with stuff I would have never selected or knew what it was, and that my glass stayed full. I tried everything and pushed the things I didn't like around on my plate alot to be polite! The evening finished with fresh fruit added to the table (huge green grapes from Turkey, small purple grapes from the Crimea in Ukraine, and watermelon - where is Duncan?) and several cakes (tortas).
What a night and what a headache this morning! Vodka is drunk by the shot and sipping is considered rude - finish it in one gulp and then chase it with juice or water. After several obligatory toasts, I had John hide my little shot glass and then told our host that I don't drink. They tried to switch me to wine or beer ... no luck. They then poured what I thought was grape juice from a soft-sided box ... I took one gulp and yup ... wine! John was fine and held his own. Dancing is one-on-one or in a group circle. There was no folk dancing, which I hoped would occur, but you just sway and move your feet in place while facing forward into the circle and talk to your neighbors. Very convivial!
We finished up the evening showing pictures, to our end of the table, of life at home on John's computer and they asked questions such as how much money John makes, how much gas costs, how much our house is worth, how much our mortgage is. All fairly private questions in the US - but par for the course here. We had read that these questions are normal and just a way to level set their understanding. They often ask each other these same questions. We answered as honestly as possible and I think they understood the salaries are comensurate with the cost of living after hearing how much our mortgage is a month.
Before the evening ended, our host, Victor, invited us to come mushroom picking (more like cutting) in the morning. After breakfast, they arrived to pick us up and drive us to the forest several miles outside of town. The woods are very thick with pine, oak, birch, and other trees. The leaves are turning in earnest now and the oranges, golds, greens, and browns were beautiful! Victor brought his daughter Nastiya (11) along. She is learning English and we were very touched that she missed school to come with us on this outing! She did a very good job with her mushroom picking English lesson - she taught me all about the mushrooms and we spoke entirely in English! Victor is a champion mushroom spotter and Nastiya came in second. There were around 20 varieties of mushrooms in the forest around us. We were shown which one single variety was edible and how to cut it away from the ground. There are several "imposters" that look very much like the edible one and Victor was very careful at the end to inspect our bags to be sure we had only safe mushrooms.
Nastiya spotted a little grey-green snake with orange cheeks and called me over. I saw a woolly-caterpillar and some black beetles. There are no bears left here, very few deer, a few foxes, some wild boar, and some beavers. Heavy hunting over several hundred years or more has pretty much decimated the edible wildlife. Except for the chirp of a few birds the forest was quiet and beautiful. The moss is so thick and cushiony under your feet it was like walking on pillows most of the time. The mushrooms peek their heads just up through the top of the moss and look like little brown nuts poking out! It was an experience we will never forget and a very special memory of the motherland of two of our children!
Tonight we are invited over to Victor, Larusa, and Nastiya's home for you guessed it, mushrooms! We will have to find out what is appropriate to bring to such an occasion and pick something up!
We will blog again as soon as we can. We hope everyone at home is healthy and safe. We miss you all and look forward to coming home! I get to call Aimee once a day on our Ukraine phone and hear what is up in Mariupol and that helps keep me sane!
PS Misha is being treated daily for lice and he still has his hair!
We have the option of waiting here in Gorodnya for the Ukrainian passports (in the children's new names) to be issued down in Chernihiv (may take up to 20 days) or heading for Kyiv for the wait. Although we love our little town, we are more than stir-crazy and tired of the same food morning, noon, and night! Kyiv will be much more expensive but there is so much to do and so much Ukrainian history there to show the kids! Misha may be too young, but Mari is not.
Yesterday we spent several hours with Mari's group and played cards in her room. "Go Fish" is a new game to many and I lost as what I had in my hand was verbalized in Ukrainian to other children who would ask for something, even without one of that kind in their own hand! Mari's roommates Alina and Marina played as did Alina's brother Sasha and another boy named Sasha. The other roommates Christina and Ina (home from the hospital) played with Barbies.
Last night when we came down for dinner, a huge party was going on in the dining room to celebrate Teacher's Day. We realized, after 20 some days here, that we recognized several of the participants and when they saw us, they added two chairs and sat us down for a feast! We tried to beg off, but they would not hear of it! The tables were groaning under all the weight of the food! You eat some, dance some, eat some, toast, eat more, toast, dance, go outside and talk, eat more, toast, dance, and toast! My neighbor gentleman made sure my plate was always full, often times with stuff I would have never selected or knew what it was, and that my glass stayed full. I tried everything and pushed the things I didn't like around on my plate alot to be polite! The evening finished with fresh fruit added to the table (huge green grapes from Turkey, small purple grapes from the Crimea in Ukraine, and watermelon - where is Duncan?) and several cakes (tortas).
What a night and what a headache this morning! Vodka is drunk by the shot and sipping is considered rude - finish it in one gulp and then chase it with juice or water. After several obligatory toasts, I had John hide my little shot glass and then told our host that I don't drink. They tried to switch me to wine or beer ... no luck. They then poured what I thought was grape juice from a soft-sided box ... I took one gulp and yup ... wine! John was fine and held his own. Dancing is one-on-one or in a group circle. There was no folk dancing, which I hoped would occur, but you just sway and move your feet in place while facing forward into the circle and talk to your neighbors. Very convivial!
We finished up the evening showing pictures, to our end of the table, of life at home on John's computer and they asked questions such as how much money John makes, how much gas costs, how much our house is worth, how much our mortgage is. All fairly private questions in the US - but par for the course here. We had read that these questions are normal and just a way to level set their understanding. They often ask each other these same questions. We answered as honestly as possible and I think they understood the salaries are comensurate with the cost of living after hearing how much our mortgage is a month.
Before the evening ended, our host, Victor, invited us to come mushroom picking (more like cutting) in the morning. After breakfast, they arrived to pick us up and drive us to the forest several miles outside of town. The woods are very thick with pine, oak, birch, and other trees. The leaves are turning in earnest now and the oranges, golds, greens, and browns were beautiful! Victor brought his daughter Nastiya (11) along. She is learning English and we were very touched that she missed school to come with us on this outing! She did a very good job with her mushroom picking English lesson - she taught me all about the mushrooms and we spoke entirely in English! Victor is a champion mushroom spotter and Nastiya came in second. There were around 20 varieties of mushrooms in the forest around us. We were shown which one single variety was edible and how to cut it away from the ground. There are several "imposters" that look very much like the edible one and Victor was very careful at the end to inspect our bags to be sure we had only safe mushrooms.
Nastiya spotted a little grey-green snake with orange cheeks and called me over. I saw a woolly-caterpillar and some black beetles. There are no bears left here, very few deer, a few foxes, some wild boar, and some beavers. Heavy hunting over several hundred years or more has pretty much decimated the edible wildlife. Except for the chirp of a few birds the forest was quiet and beautiful. The moss is so thick and cushiony under your feet it was like walking on pillows most of the time. The mushrooms peek their heads just up through the top of the moss and look like little brown nuts poking out! It was an experience we will never forget and a very special memory of the motherland of two of our children!
Tonight we are invited over to Victor, Larusa, and Nastiya's home for you guessed it, mushrooms! We will have to find out what is appropriate to bring to such an occasion and pick something up!
We will blog again as soon as we can. We hope everyone at home is healthy and safe. We miss you all and look forward to coming home! I get to call Aimee once a day on our Ukraine phone and hear what is up in Mariupol and that helps keep me sane!
PS Misha is being treated daily for lice and he still has his hair!
Friday, October 3, 2008
Misha’s Building
Sorry for not blogging yesterday, the “Bazaar”/Huge Open Air Market only comes on Thursdays and we needed the day to find clothing, coats, shoes, undergarments, jamies, etc. to get the kids home in. None of the stores here sell these items and we had one chance – beyond taking naked kids from the Orphanage! We were planning on returning home during our wait and I have Mari’s bed piled with stuff for Trip #2 – including all of their clothes! I will write a Market blog for you next week, but this is Friday and we won’t be able to get back to you until Monday as the Computer Center will be closed.
The little green building at the far back corner of the Orphanage grounds is Misha’s building. We also call it the “Baby House” even though the children are all over 2. The children sleep, eat, have “classes”, and play here. The building, and the playground outside, is their entire world. Sometimes, some of the older children (mainly girls) will knock on the door, when they are out of classes and the children are up from naps, and ask if they can play with the small children. It gives the caretaker, always only one on duty, a break! The caretakers are wonderful women: Jonna (also teaches the children art and has painted murals from Ukrainian fairy tales all around the dining room – see photo through the kitchen window), Luda (teaches the children music – the “General” as we like to call her), and Luba (their teacher in the morning for history of Ukraine, alphabet, etc.). They are all very loving in their own way and the children call them all “Mama”!
The building has hot water 2 hours in the morning and from 7-9 at night. We come and play and bring food and drinks/prepare/clean up after afternoon snack and then play outside if the weather permits. We purchased a blue plastic drain rack to help the dishes get dry. John is wonderful and always takes care of the dishes – just like his Dad! Not sure how clean the cold water gets the dishes/silverware and this just adds to the germs that are passed from child to child while they are surviving in 57’ temperatures in the building. Almost every child has a runny nose and no Kleenex – hands and sleeves will do! The kids all have three layers on while in the building. When they go outside, even on warm days (we have had one or two lately where the sun has blessed us with an appearance), they are bundled in two coats and a hat! A sweater that was on Misha one day is on Aloosha the next day – and where Misha wiped his nose is the next spot for Aloosha! A true germ factory! The first thing we do when we get to the hotel is to wash up really well, hot – hot water and lots of soap!
One of the saddest moments I have had while here, the middle new brother came up to me after snack time and said “Mama, I am cold”. They/we are not allowed to wear shoes inside and most the building is either painted concrete floors or linoleum. The cold just permeates the place from the floor on up. There are a few large rugs in the play area and the bedroom. I put the little guy’s hands on the skin of my stomach to help warm him quickly and just held him. It broke my heart that these kids have so little, and then to be cold on top of it! The next day, John and I looked at portable large radiators at the Sony Store (stores are called Magazines). We purchased two along with extension cords – one for the cavernous bedroom and one for the dining room. We were going to get one for the playroom when the caregivers approached us and asked us instead to buy them a new compact vacuum cleaner – theirs had quit working (we figured out the universal inhaling while holding your hand to your lips and then not inhaling!). Who needs language to communicate? I tried to see if they wanted John to look at the broken one first, he is very handy, but we couldn’t communicate this (he is going to look at it this weekend anyway). We bought a new one day and you would’ve thought we showed up with electricity! It was during the time when one Luba was leaving and Luda was coming … they are amazed and very excited and very thankful! The first thing Luba did was vacuum the entire rug in the playroom. All the kids were in on the excitement and running around with the attachments – which I very meanly had to collect and place in the laundry room so that they weren’t lost or destroyed! Although our Facilitator has given the Director a donation, it is nice to impact their world in an immediate way and one that we can see their appreciation.
The other photos are of the kids playing with the pink play tunnels we bought that pop up and down and store easily – they turned them into “tube people” and proceeded to knock each other down. They play very rough and this is one thing we will have to watch with Misha when he gets home. We also brought pirate eye patches, hats, and earrings for Pirate Day – they lasted a little while. You have to know what a pirate is and where he wears his eye patch to figure things out! Target had a great portable 101 Dalmatians Play House that we brought over … now John knows what was in those four 50.7 lb (23 KG) suitcases – ladies, fight for your .7 lb per bag with your airline – it is worth it to bring more stuff over for the kids! The fish, “River fish” the ladies explained, used to eating bread crumbs and not needing their tank cleaned, live in a huge tank in the corner. Two hamsters live in their cage nearby. One day they were getting their cage cleaned, so I snapped their photo in a bucket.
One day after snack, John played the “Tower of Terror” Game. It started because they have swing set structures outside, but no swings. John put Misha on a chair in the dining room and was swinging him forward and backwards using John’s legs. Then he pulled the chair up and slowly let the chair down again. Misha was giggling up a storm and I warned John that if he started this carnival ride, he was going to have 7 customers in line! By the time they were done with “Papa”, he was exhausted! The kids eat John up as they don’t usually see men – especially a loving man if their father was otherwise!
The area where they brush teeth and wash up before meals is also in the dining room. I wondered where the new toothpaste was that we picked up in Kyiv – not by their brushes … and Jonna showed me a little pocket up on the opposite wall – full of the toothpaste that we brought! Apparently Misha eats the toothpaste if they leave it down – “All the children” I asked motioning eating toothpaste? “No, just Misha”! We have a toothpaste eater! Reminded me of the old commercial for Life Cereal – ok, I am dating myself here and you younger generation won’t understand – “Let’s see if Mikey will eat it”, “No, not Mikey, he’d eat anything!”, “But he likes it”!
Thank you for all of the comments and well wishes. We are going nuts here with boredom and from BBC World News it looks as if things are “going to hell in a hand basket” as my Grandma would say back home!
Lots of love from Twyla, John, Mari, and Mikey (The Toothpasteinator)
The little green building at the far back corner of the Orphanage grounds is Misha’s building. We also call it the “Baby House” even though the children are all over 2. The children sleep, eat, have “classes”, and play here. The building, and the playground outside, is their entire world. Sometimes, some of the older children (mainly girls) will knock on the door, when they are out of classes and the children are up from naps, and ask if they can play with the small children. It gives the caretaker, always only one on duty, a break! The caretakers are wonderful women: Jonna (also teaches the children art and has painted murals from Ukrainian fairy tales all around the dining room – see photo through the kitchen window), Luda (teaches the children music – the “General” as we like to call her), and Luba (their teacher in the morning for history of Ukraine, alphabet, etc.). They are all very loving in their own way and the children call them all “Mama”!
The building has hot water 2 hours in the morning and from 7-9 at night. We come and play and bring food and drinks/prepare/clean up after afternoon snack and then play outside if the weather permits. We purchased a blue plastic drain rack to help the dishes get dry. John is wonderful and always takes care of the dishes – just like his Dad! Not sure how clean the cold water gets the dishes/silverware and this just adds to the germs that are passed from child to child while they are surviving in 57’ temperatures in the building. Almost every child has a runny nose and no Kleenex – hands and sleeves will do! The kids all have three layers on while in the building. When they go outside, even on warm days (we have had one or two lately where the sun has blessed us with an appearance), they are bundled in two coats and a hat! A sweater that was on Misha one day is on Aloosha the next day – and where Misha wiped his nose is the next spot for Aloosha! A true germ factory! The first thing we do when we get to the hotel is to wash up really well, hot – hot water and lots of soap!
One of the saddest moments I have had while here, the middle new brother came up to me after snack time and said “Mama, I am cold”. They/we are not allowed to wear shoes inside and most the building is either painted concrete floors or linoleum. The cold just permeates the place from the floor on up. There are a few large rugs in the play area and the bedroom. I put the little guy’s hands on the skin of my stomach to help warm him quickly and just held him. It broke my heart that these kids have so little, and then to be cold on top of it! The next day, John and I looked at portable large radiators at the Sony Store (stores are called Magazines). We purchased two along with extension cords – one for the cavernous bedroom and one for the dining room. We were going to get one for the playroom when the caregivers approached us and asked us instead to buy them a new compact vacuum cleaner – theirs had quit working (we figured out the universal inhaling while holding your hand to your lips and then not inhaling!). Who needs language to communicate? I tried to see if they wanted John to look at the broken one first, he is very handy, but we couldn’t communicate this (he is going to look at it this weekend anyway). We bought a new one day and you would’ve thought we showed up with electricity! It was during the time when one Luba was leaving and Luda was coming … they are amazed and very excited and very thankful! The first thing Luba did was vacuum the entire rug in the playroom. All the kids were in on the excitement and running around with the attachments – which I very meanly had to collect and place in the laundry room so that they weren’t lost or destroyed! Although our Facilitator has given the Director a donation, it is nice to impact their world in an immediate way and one that we can see their appreciation.
The other photos are of the kids playing with the pink play tunnels we bought that pop up and down and store easily – they turned them into “tube people” and proceeded to knock each other down. They play very rough and this is one thing we will have to watch with Misha when he gets home. We also brought pirate eye patches, hats, and earrings for Pirate Day – they lasted a little while. You have to know what a pirate is and where he wears his eye patch to figure things out! Target had a great portable 101 Dalmatians Play House that we brought over … now John knows what was in those four 50.7 lb (23 KG) suitcases – ladies, fight for your .7 lb per bag with your airline – it is worth it to bring more stuff over for the kids! The fish, “River fish” the ladies explained, used to eating bread crumbs and not needing their tank cleaned, live in a huge tank in the corner. Two hamsters live in their cage nearby. One day they were getting their cage cleaned, so I snapped their photo in a bucket.
One day after snack, John played the “Tower of Terror” Game. It started because they have swing set structures outside, but no swings. John put Misha on a chair in the dining room and was swinging him forward and backwards using John’s legs. Then he pulled the chair up and slowly let the chair down again. Misha was giggling up a storm and I warned John that if he started this carnival ride, he was going to have 7 customers in line! By the time they were done with “Papa”, he was exhausted! The kids eat John up as they don’t usually see men – especially a loving man if their father was otherwise!
The area where they brush teeth and wash up before meals is also in the dining room. I wondered where the new toothpaste was that we picked up in Kyiv – not by their brushes … and Jonna showed me a little pocket up on the opposite wall – full of the toothpaste that we brought! Apparently Misha eats the toothpaste if they leave it down – “All the children” I asked motioning eating toothpaste? “No, just Misha”! We have a toothpaste eater! Reminded me of the old commercial for Life Cereal – ok, I am dating myself here and you younger generation won’t understand – “Let’s see if Mikey will eat it”, “No, not Mikey, he’d eat anything!”, “But he likes it”!
Thank you for all of the comments and well wishes. We are going nuts here with boredom and from BBC World News it looks as if things are “going to hell in a hand basket” as my Grandma would say back home!
Lots of love from Twyla, John, Mari, and Mikey (The Toothpasteinator)
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Mari's Buildings
Although we spend the majority of our time bonding with Misha, we do spend part of each visit with Mari. She lives on the third floor of the large building across from the main Administration/School Building. She shares a room with Christina, Marina (visited the US with a host family with Mari’s program), Ina (sick in bed our first few days and now at the Hospital), and Alina (also visited the US with a host family on same trip).
Her Caregivers/Teachers, Svetlana and Julia (one is on duty at all times), are responsible for Ѕ of a floor of her building. The kids are around the same age, and include boys and girls. This may not quite be a problem at this age, but apparently there is some bed hopping in the older kids. We would rather see the girls on one side of the wing or all on one floor and the boys on another. There is several couches and a TV, with DVD player, in one room and a large closet system in another room, the kids share a bathroom with three toilets (no seats) with a sink outside the restroom door for handwashing.
Next to the toilet room is a shower room with two large showers. When Mari saw that we were bringing Misha’s group shampoo, bath soap bars, and toothpaste, she asked “What about me?”. None of the kids in her area had any toiletries. Teeth are brushed with water, hands are washed with cold water (hot water is not available in town except for 8-10 am and 7-9 pm), and no shampoo. We are now toiletry fairies and leave the kids soap and toothpaste under their pillows (where they “hide” all of their personal things). The shower room floor was flooded and clothing was thrown into the water the first day I was there.
The hallway was a mess. Unknown to me, Svetlana was busy painting the room that had yet to receive the new closet system. Baseboards had been pulled out and wallpaper stripped. A broken dresser, without drawers, was at the end of the hallway. I though this was the normal state of existance. In one room, all of the suitcases from the kids who had been in the hosting programs over the summer were piled onto one side, about 8 feet deep – and they were still full. One smart boy, sitting on the floor in a foot deep of new clothes, was busy opening zippers to pillage the contents within the suitcases (looking for candy and other goodies). It sickened me to see this pile as I knew how hard I worked to wash and iron and make matching outfits for Mari for her return. I also packed presents for her teachers, school supplies, wall-mount pencil sharpeners (the metal ones, $15 a pop at Staples), and a bunch of toys for Misha’s group (which I have still not seen).
The first day, the Caregiver – who I had not me yet – accosted the little boy, Mari and myself and yelled at us for being in the room. She then locked the door behind us. We didn’t know what to think of the room of suitcases and the mess. As the week wore on, we saw the hallway slowly get cleaner and realized that Svetlana had been busy preparing the room across the hall for a new bunch of cupboards with doors (floor to ceiling) which have been installed. The “suitcase room” is now half-empty, the floor swept, and the remaining suitcases that have yet to be unpacked are stacked on the opposite wall. The room is kept locked unless Svetlana is working on it. We were very releaved to see that the clothing is being used for the children and that it was just an organization project!
Mari attends school, at the Internot, right on the grounds from 9 am until 12:30 pm. She then walks to the Cafeteria Building for lunch. After lunch the kids have a few hours of free time, then they may have a class (sewing was this afternoon), and homework time (everyone back in the classroom at 5:00 with Svetlana helping them with any questions). At 6:00, she is usually done with homework and at 7:00 is dinner time.
When in school, the outhouse is used outside. The only indoor restrooms are in the dorm buildings. Sorry about the graphic photo of one of the outhouse holes. The bench is 1 ft. off the ground, to accomadate the littlest ones probably, although I would never sit on the bench after realizing it probably hasn’t been dry since it was built. The contents of the outhouse are about a foot from the holes – about time to dig a new pit and move the outhouse! There is no toilet paper outside and after helping Misha, who pulled his undies up after doing a no. 2 (I had to stop him and have him bend over for me), I doubt that the larger kids worry about this. Mix this with a shower once a week, without soap, and I am so thankful that I was born a middle-class American!
Thank you for your comments! They are our only bright spot, besides the kids, and the farm animals that we encounter every day! Our Facilitator is not with us as families usually return for the 10 day wait. After he met with the Regional Inspector and the Director and the Notary, he left us early in the trip. After almost a week he returned for the preliminary court hearing and the court hearing, to leave again. We are here without a driver also, our choice as we would rather pay the local taxi daily then for the driver’s lodgings.
It is hard enough to communicate with the taxi driver on daily needs let alone sightseeing. I have been writing it out for clarity, that we want to be picked up and taken to the computer lab, where John works for a few hours, and then we shop for fruit (bananas, watermelon, grapes, or peaches), snack foods (cookies, crackers, chips, or cereal), milk or juice. We then carry everything about a mile to the Orphanage.
John is my pack mule and I always feel bad as he has his computer in his backpack on his back also. The taxi driver then picks us up at 6 pm every evening at the Orphanage Gates. Without Stefanie and Bill at the onset of the trip, we would be lost as to how to navigate in this community. We are now braver and just walk up to a building we are curious about and open the doors! So far, we have found a ballet class, a large auditorium, a store than sells yarn and embroidery floss, several 7-11 type stores, a store that sells womens clothes, and a hardware store.
Everyone looks at us and we are known as “the Americans”. We are even referred to as this at the Hotel – where we have lived for two weeks now and know each of them by name. We are strangers in a strange land, and viewed with suspicion rather than curiousity (remnants of the Cold War). Very few people return our smiles, although everyone returns our “Hello” in Ukrainian. A few of the very old babuskas, who are gardening or sitting by their gates, are the only ones who eye us with curiousity.
The younger generation thinks Americans are rich and have Ferraris – we were told this at dinner one night by one of the locals who was kind enough to try to talk to us in English. I know we keep our two parked in the garage. Mine is a very special Honda Odyssey Minivan/Ferrari that I just love! They must have us confused with the Italians (or the residents of Kyiv, where there are more Mercedes than in Stuttgardt where they are manufactured)! Not sure what they are watching on TV to give them this idea - other than music videos!
Lots of love from “The Americans”!
Her Caregivers/Teachers, Svetlana and Julia (one is on duty at all times), are responsible for Ѕ of a floor of her building. The kids are around the same age, and include boys and girls. This may not quite be a problem at this age, but apparently there is some bed hopping in the older kids. We would rather see the girls on one side of the wing or all on one floor and the boys on another. There is several couches and a TV, with DVD player, in one room and a large closet system in another room, the kids share a bathroom with three toilets (no seats) with a sink outside the restroom door for handwashing.
Next to the toilet room is a shower room with two large showers. When Mari saw that we were bringing Misha’s group shampoo, bath soap bars, and toothpaste, she asked “What about me?”. None of the kids in her area had any toiletries. Teeth are brushed with water, hands are washed with cold water (hot water is not available in town except for 8-10 am and 7-9 pm), and no shampoo. We are now toiletry fairies and leave the kids soap and toothpaste under their pillows (where they “hide” all of their personal things). The shower room floor was flooded and clothing was thrown into the water the first day I was there.
The hallway was a mess. Unknown to me, Svetlana was busy painting the room that had yet to receive the new closet system. Baseboards had been pulled out and wallpaper stripped. A broken dresser, without drawers, was at the end of the hallway. I though this was the normal state of existance. In one room, all of the suitcases from the kids who had been in the hosting programs over the summer were piled onto one side, about 8 feet deep – and they were still full. One smart boy, sitting on the floor in a foot deep of new clothes, was busy opening zippers to pillage the contents within the suitcases (looking for candy and other goodies). It sickened me to see this pile as I knew how hard I worked to wash and iron and make matching outfits for Mari for her return. I also packed presents for her teachers, school supplies, wall-mount pencil sharpeners (the metal ones, $15 a pop at Staples), and a bunch of toys for Misha’s group (which I have still not seen).
The first day, the Caregiver – who I had not me yet – accosted the little boy, Mari and myself and yelled at us for being in the room. She then locked the door behind us. We didn’t know what to think of the room of suitcases and the mess. As the week wore on, we saw the hallway slowly get cleaner and realized that Svetlana had been busy preparing the room across the hall for a new bunch of cupboards with doors (floor to ceiling) which have been installed. The “suitcase room” is now half-empty, the floor swept, and the remaining suitcases that have yet to be unpacked are stacked on the opposite wall. The room is kept locked unless Svetlana is working on it. We were very releaved to see that the clothing is being used for the children and that it was just an organization project!
Mari attends school, at the Internot, right on the grounds from 9 am until 12:30 pm. She then walks to the Cafeteria Building for lunch. After lunch the kids have a few hours of free time, then they may have a class (sewing was this afternoon), and homework time (everyone back in the classroom at 5:00 with Svetlana helping them with any questions). At 6:00, she is usually done with homework and at 7:00 is dinner time.
When in school, the outhouse is used outside. The only indoor restrooms are in the dorm buildings. Sorry about the graphic photo of one of the outhouse holes. The bench is 1 ft. off the ground, to accomadate the littlest ones probably, although I would never sit on the bench after realizing it probably hasn’t been dry since it was built. The contents of the outhouse are about a foot from the holes – about time to dig a new pit and move the outhouse! There is no toilet paper outside and after helping Misha, who pulled his undies up after doing a no. 2 (I had to stop him and have him bend over for me), I doubt that the larger kids worry about this. Mix this with a shower once a week, without soap, and I am so thankful that I was born a middle-class American!
Thank you for your comments! They are our only bright spot, besides the kids, and the farm animals that we encounter every day! Our Facilitator is not with us as families usually return for the 10 day wait. After he met with the Regional Inspector and the Director and the Notary, he left us early in the trip. After almost a week he returned for the preliminary court hearing and the court hearing, to leave again. We are here without a driver also, our choice as we would rather pay the local taxi daily then for the driver’s lodgings.
It is hard enough to communicate with the taxi driver on daily needs let alone sightseeing. I have been writing it out for clarity, that we want to be picked up and taken to the computer lab, where John works for a few hours, and then we shop for fruit (bananas, watermelon, grapes, or peaches), snack foods (cookies, crackers, chips, or cereal), milk or juice. We then carry everything about a mile to the Orphanage.
John is my pack mule and I always feel bad as he has his computer in his backpack on his back also. The taxi driver then picks us up at 6 pm every evening at the Orphanage Gates. Without Stefanie and Bill at the onset of the trip, we would be lost as to how to navigate in this community. We are now braver and just walk up to a building we are curious about and open the doors! So far, we have found a ballet class, a large auditorium, a store than sells yarn and embroidery floss, several 7-11 type stores, a store that sells womens clothes, and a hardware store.
Everyone looks at us and we are known as “the Americans”. We are even referred to as this at the Hotel – where we have lived for two weeks now and know each of them by name. We are strangers in a strange land, and viewed with suspicion rather than curiousity (remnants of the Cold War). Very few people return our smiles, although everyone returns our “Hello” in Ukrainian. A few of the very old babuskas, who are gardening or sitting by their gates, are the only ones who eye us with curiousity.
The younger generation thinks Americans are rich and have Ferraris – we were told this at dinner one night by one of the locals who was kind enough to try to talk to us in English. I know we keep our two parked in the garage. Mine is a very special Honda Odyssey Minivan/Ferrari that I just love! They must have us confused with the Italians (or the residents of Kyiv, where there are more Mercedes than in Stuttgardt where they are manufactured)! Not sure what they are watching on TV to give them this idea - other than music videos!
Lots of love from “The Americans”!
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