Day #4

Pey and I had a better night and Bill worse... Just hung out at the apartment this morning till about 10:30 then struck out for some fun :) Tried out the metro and first stop was a place for dinner that advertised vereniki. I ordered cabbage and Pey some potato and Bill got a meat platter that had several different kinds which sounded quite unappealing to me! Lamb, veal, rabbit etc. :( He didn't know what was what and said some were def better than others :) I thought the cabbage were delish and the potato were ok, just a little bland. From there headed to a big mall and did some window shopping as we quickly found out that's all our budget would allow! ;) Had arranged for Vitalia to pick us up there instead of apartment. He got stuck in traffic so gave us some time to watch people.. SOO interesting!! I think I mentioned before, but we have found the people quite friendly here. Most have a pleasant expression on their face and very much unlike Russia they will almost all look you in the eye, even when passing on escalator to metro etc. Speaking of metro... we were reminded again just how many people you can squeeze into one of those cars, WOW! The last stop we squished so many in we were completely packed like sardines and I don't mean just tight, I mean all sides were touching someone, but wait! next stop we had a few more people that needed on :) I had everything sucked in as far as it would go to lessen the poking and pressure of fellow passengers HA felt so exhilarating to step off that train!! :)
Vitalia took us back to SDA to pick up our official referral. Were quite a few families there and the ones we started talking to soon found out were adopting from the same region as us! They were a very nice couple and were from Montreal. Will be interesting to see if we are actually adopting from the same orphanage! We exchanged phone numbers and will probably be seeing more of them in the next few weeks. When the lady that issues the referrals finally arrived I wasn't overly surprised that we were the first ones called back ;-) About took my breath away when she opened our file and there was all of paperwork that we labored over for ? many months! The same papers that sat on my kitchen table and that I personally filled out we meet up with again in a little office in Kiev, Ukraine!! She filled out a paper and we signed and she handed over our dossier with our referral paper and out we go. Vitalia offered to take us around the city, but we opted to just come back to apartment. We relaxed for a little then went exploring again. Ate supper at a restaurant called The Burger. Vitalia had recommended it and said that a lot of Americans have told him its better burgers than they can get in the states. It was a very good burger, cooked to order with all the fixings and gigantic in size. Checked out the oldest farmers market in Kiev, but didn't buy anything as it was 2-3x more expensive than other places. Did some more walking and shopping and topped it all off with ice cream cone from McDonalds:) Also stopped at the little babushka that sits at the end of our street and bought some more raspberries. It's a big solo cup for $.75 and they are SOO yummy! My hubby who does not like raspberries declared that if all raspberries tasted like that he would like them:) She just won't be convinced that we can't understand her and continues to try to conversate and  get Peyton to talk to her! :)
Well we have some Melatonin in our systems and had a lot of exercise and fresh air and resisted all urges for naps today so hoping we will make great strides with this jet lag thing!!
Goodnight from Kiev! :)