Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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!
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