Day #6

Made it to Kryvyi Rih!
Vitalia picked us up at 8:20 last night and got to the train station a little early so went across the street to the super market and got some food for the train since we didn't have time before we left. Oh boy how many details do you want about the train?:) It def wasn't a first class luxury liner, but it served the purpose. Since it was an overnight train you buy beds instead of seats and Vitalia advised us to buy 4 so we could have the whole room to ourselves and are we ever glad we did, would have been quite less than ideal to have another passenger with us! :) there were 4 bunks in a room with a small table under the window and a little walkway between the 2 bunks. It was a very old train and left so much to be desired. The bathroom was horrible:(( You could barely squeeze in it and then it was full of something all over the floor which I really didn't want to know what it was beings the faucet didn't work so knew it wasn't from that and I have always considered toilet paper a necessity, but not required on this train :) Pey managed to sleep 4-5 hours, but Bill and my quality of sleep we did get was rather questionable. Arrived on time and was greeted by the regional facilitator, Yurina and her husband. We sorta kinda got all our luggage in the little car, had to leave the seats tipped forward because they wouldn't latch back and had Pey on my lap and big suitcase between us in the back.. was thankful we weren't in for a 2 hour ride! :) Got to our apartment and decided the train was a good start to breaking us in! I knew we had it nice in Kiev and wasn't expecting it out here, but wasn't expecting to rough it quite this bad either!! Maybe the description will have to come another day and will just say that this spoiled American is used to a LOT more luxury and space!
One really neat thing is our apartment is backed up to the orphanage!! I heard children outside before when I was out and tried peaking through a crack in the wall, but couldn't see past all the bed sheets flapping in the sunshine! If I knew our little one was out there I might get more serious about scaling the wall! HA 8:30 tomorrow morning has been successful in taking forever to get here!!!
We took showers and went to find the grocery store and hopefully a restaurant for something to eat. The market is right close to our apartment, but no restaurant. Didn't find any meat that we were brave enough to try, and no vegetables so not sure what all we gonna feast on for the next few weeks! Did pass several vendors selling a few fruits and vegetables, bought a big bag of potatoes for $.50  so might be having a lot of potato dishes :)
Finally got all of our clothes unpacked and organized. Will be so nice to not scrounge through suitcases to get ready!
The weather continues to be wonderful! This morning getting off of train and at apartment it was quite cool, but now when we walked to the market it had warmed up and wouldn't have needed our jackets anymore.
Think we are going to catch a couple hours of our missed sleep from last night and then want to do a little something special for Sunday. Hard to believe it's really Sunday! I brought stuff along to have SS with Pey so will try and have our own little church service way over here :)
Just remembering a funny from Pey... Bill turns the water on in the shower this morning and hollers out that we don't have much pressure and Pey sighs while looking around the apartment and calmly says, 'we don't have many blessings and joy here do we mama?' :) Didn't have his big words quite right, but I knew what he meant:)
Wishing you all a wonderful Sunday!!
P.S. I haven't been getting all the e-mails:( I have replied to every one I get so if you have sent or no of someone that has and I didn't reply that means I didn't get it!

Day #5

Nothing adoption related to write about today, so for my memory will tell a few highlights of the day. We won't talk about the night or jet lag syptoms:( Did I forget what it was really like in Russia or does jet lag just have no mercy once you turn 30 or am I making things up or is Ukraine casting a spell on us or WHAT!
Did the usually lazing around the apartment  till about 10:00 this morning. First stop on our agenda was St. Andrews descent. St. Andrews church is I'm going to say one of the highest points in Kiev although I've never heard anyone say that. Nonetheless its clear at the top of a very high hill and then all the way down on both sides of the cobblestone street are vendors set up selling there wares. Comparable to Arbat street. Mostly would be souvenir type stuff. We happened upon a chocolate restaurant we were wanting to look up! It was really lunch time, but hey if your at a chocolate cafe with homemade chocolate who would ever be so ridiculous as to have to eat 'real' food first? :) Pey whimped out and got a strawberry milkshake, I ordered some kind of chocolate torte, and Bill had ? don't know what it was called but it was so ridiculously good there is no way to even describe it!! First off  don't forget the quality of chocolate here is quite superior to what you are used to, and then just imagine a coffee cup filled with melted chocolate that was extra thick, think thin pudding and then a huge dollop of whipped cream that is starting to melt on the bottom!! They served it with a spoon and every bite required your eyes to light up and a little sigh escape and a big MMMMM to escape as the delicacy oozed down your throat, no doubt 500 calories a bite! :) It will definitely be a priority to return as many times as we can squeeze in when we come back to Kiev!!!
Finished walking the street, buying a few souvenirs along the way and ended up at St. Andrews church, which BTW is right beside the SDA building. Took a look around inside and watched a baby being christened, with which he was very unimpressed with! Felt sorry for the little guy, crying his little heart out not having any idea what was going on!
Walked back down the descent, stopping at a neat little Italian restaurant for some 'real' food this time:) Bill ordered smoked salmon which came out in the form of grilled shrimp on skewers:) and Pey and I shared a very unique spaghetti dish. It was really thick noodles that had more the homemade taste and then thinly sliced ham and bacon pieces covered in a white cream sauce. Was very good, but just not what you think of when you think spaghetti! Did a few more miles of walking and some metro riding, which was nearly as full today! You could actually shift from one leg to the other if you wanted HA Had planned on going to a big 3 story place? it's called Dreamworld and sounds like it would be a childs paradise! Has about everything imaginable, the top story is a big waterpark and the rest is just fun fun fun :) Vitalia said it is two big buildings, but not sure if they are both children oriented or not. As the day wore on the feet and legs wore out!! Decided it would be best for the 4 year old in our midst and truth be told the 34 year old wasn't disappointed either:), if we would go back home and relax a little. We need to run down to the store and get some snacks to tide us through the night as I don't think there is any food available on the train. If time permits I would like to find a park around here or maybe scout out the big underground mall... definitely haven't run out of things to do or see yet so shouldn't be a problem filling a few hours this evening! :)
Next time I write we will be in our new apartment in our child's region!!! I am SOO excited to go to the orphanage Monday!! It's hard to know how to feel about this adoption with it feeling so...uncertain. What if we decide not to proceed with this child? Just so many unknows and what ifs at this point!! Will be so glad when all of that is behind us!!!

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! :)

Day #3

I'm just going to copy and paste my family email for this day so just overlook any info I already covered and the bad grammar etc. :)

Just got home from our SDA appointment!

Had quite an expected fitful night with the usual waking up at 2am hungry and raring to go :) Finally around 5-6 we all were in bed and slept till 9:30. Bill had just got back from running and Pey and I were still lounging around in our pj's when Vitalia calls and says Serge wants us their early and he will be here in 30 minutes to pick us up :-0 Had to really hurry since we are still living out of a suitcase and searching 10 minutes to find the iron which was in the bottom cupboard of the kitchen HA Was a little worried why Serge wanted us their early, but Vitalia said he never knows any personal information and all he knew was that Serge had said nothing was wrong. Got to the famous- infamous SDA building that looked very unimportant, with a little side entrance with the pink door:) Met Serge and then went across the street to a pizza place to talk. Since we hadn't had breakfast and was just going to walk down the street for some lunch when we were summoned to go, we were all hungry so ordered some pizza. Serge never did say why he wanted us there early, but he explained the procedure and that he had a 6month old baby boy picked out for us! He left us there then and went back to see if we could get in before our appointment, I will insert here that we have already found out this is a very respected man with the adoption officials and I think they jump when he says instead of the other way around! :) He soon calls and says we can come. We go up a couple flights of rickety stairs and enter a very nondescript room with not much in it but a desk in one corner and an L shaped couch in the other. We sit down and a lady soon brings out a file of the boy. Serge translated it for us explaining his diagnosis. It was some kind of heart condition were the lining on one side of his heart wall was thicker than normal. He all of a sudden stopped and said that his file said he has HIV. He said he did not know that, so he started calling around and found out his mother has it and the babies first test tested positive but then when they did the second more extensive test it came back negative, so just positive antibodies. He went and got 'THE' book of apparently all the available children and started leafing through it (I'm quite certain he wasn't legally suppose to have access to that book!:) all of the children had obvious problems with quite severe special needs. He said he had another boy that was 31/2 years old that he knew of that we could have for an option, but he didn't see anything in the book that would be of interest to us. So if we wanted to pursue this little guy he would proceed. We didn't have any special feeling that this was the right one, but no glaring reason why we shouldn't proceed and the other boy seemed at the high end of our age range so we told him we would like to go see him. He started trying to get the paperwork for an official referral and found out that a Ukrainian family had just asked for permission to see him! :( He gets on the phone and after awhile he said the family had decided not to take him, but their 'official' time was not up until 2 weeks! The family lived 4 hours away and refused to come and sign papers that they were not taking the child allowing us to get permission to visit. the family said it was nothing to them that we wanted to go before there time was officially up... :) Just remember this is all taking more than a mere 30 minutes and Peyton is sick and tired of sitting on the couch, trying to be quite and still, and had looked at all his books and written in his tablet till he was bored silly and was starting to get whiny, but of course refusing to sleep!!! I sense Serge getting very antsy and stressed and I asked Bill what time it was... I was hoping it was getting close to 2:00 and all our prayer warriors at home were on their knees!!!!!!!!!! It was 1:50!! HOPE:) If you prayed on our behalf take the credit!:) Serge all of a sudden had an idea, he babbles away to the lady and she leaves the room. Serge goes and gets 'the' book again and more slowly turns the pages to see if he had missed anything, the whole time his face is wrinkled and I can tell this was not going as he had planned! Eventually the lady returns with a file and a big smile and Serge says THIS is the one for you!! The wrinkles fade and is replaced with a very relieved look and smile! He said I have been knowing about this child and it is a GOOD one! I have been to it's orphanage and interacted and you will love it! He said he all of a sudden remembered this child was suppose to be coming available for adoption soon so he had the lady check to see when it was....and it was TODAY!!! Today folks!! Is that coincidence??? My heart tells me no! :) So we will be the first family to visit it and if we adopt it we can say it was adopted on the first possible day it could have been!! :)) 

Sorry all the juicy details on the child are deleted for now... will share as soon as we see the child  and decide on our answer! :)

Peyton is extremely excited and doesn't think he can possibly wait another day to 'play' with HIS new sibling!:) Bill likes this option better than the first because he thought 6 months was too young and for me.... I deal with emotions by putting up a wall and therefore I'm neither here nor there with it yet! :) It was not love at first sight with Peyton and I doubt I will let myself with this one either! :( Like I said I was very impressed by the facial expression, l think there was a lot of personality behind those beaming eyes! :)

So what from here? We go back to pick up our official referral and permission to visit the orphanage tomorrow and then leave on the train to the region Saturday night at 9 and arrive at 6 Sunday morning. The region which translates 'crooked horn' is in central Ukraine. Vitalia said it is a long city of about 10 kilometers with only one street through the middle:) 

One note of interest and I know this is getting a little random, but I'm very tired and emotionally drained so it is what it is:) When we left we took the official that helped us at the SDA to some bldg way on the other side of Kiev and then picked up another lady and took them both back to the SDA. I asked Vitalia what was up with that and he smiles and said we do these kind of things so we can get what we want with the adoptions! ;-) I told him in America we have a saying that it's not what you know but who you know and he said Da Da that is right!! :)

After dropping the 2 ladies off we went and got our train tickets and it was the same story there...tickets were all sold out, but for some reason we could get in a line with only one person in it while the other lines had 50! Our line had tickets available:) Vitalia got questioned down by several people who were not impressed with his powers HA

So now we are back at the apartment and had us a little snack and Pey is sleeping, Bill reading and after awhile we are going to go out on the town and enjoy this awesome fall weather!! We have a metro stop at the end of our block and its only $.20 a ticket so think well ride that out aways and see what we can find. Just like every big city it's not lacking for things to do!! 

If you have any questions about something I didn't cover just ask away :)

First days in Ukraine

OK so I am doing just what I hate when other APs do it!! Get in country and STOP blogging! :(( I am so non techy and had fits getting everything set up private and sending invites and of course the first time I had it all done we had to leave and when we got back everything was...gone. But think were good to go now. If you know of someone that is still wanting an invite have them email me for an invitation.

Let's see how far back I can remember here :) Mom and Mom-n-law took us to Bham airport and we had a very non eventful flight over here, getting all our luggage and not missing any flights or any of that extra excitement sort of stuff:) One funny I'm just remembering is when we were in Zurich Pey played a long time with a group of kids in one of those kids cornerz play yards and all of a sudden he came running over and whispered  some gibberish and said he was talking English! :) Was fun to watch all the children all talking their own language and still getting along just fine!
Got to Kiev and made it through customs fine and the officer VOLUNTARILY smiled first!!! I loved Ukraine already:) We have found the people as a whole here to be way more friendly and open than in Russia! For example the  lady at the front desk here at the apartment smiled the first time we walked in the door and will wave at Pey, while the security people at our apartments in Russia took a very diligent effort at smiling and greeting them every time we went bye and if we were lucky the last day or two would get a half smile and feeble nod out of them! So walked through the last set of doors and there stood Vitalia holding the Nichols sign :) I recognized him from pics a friend had sent who was just here (thanks Kristin:) He is a nice looking, 33 year old man, and knows very good English! I hope we get as lucky with our driver in region as we did here! We packed all our luggage in Vitalia's little suv and headed out on our Ukraine adventure!:) I remember this from last time...everything you do is such an adventure and so packed with emotions!!! (fertile ground for a migraine:( I'm happy to say that as of this morning we are all feeling normal and good! No migraine, no "mommy my tummy hurts, it just feels so funny inside" ) We stopped and exchanged some $ and also stopped at a big supermarket for some groceries. We didn't stock up to heavy because we didn't no how long we would be in Kiev, so just got snacky stuff and some things for breakfasts. BTW it is WAY more fun to go grocery shopping here where you can get a buggy of food for under $20! Come U.S. catch on be like UA, get your prices down were people WANT to buy food! :) Actually can't imagine how many obese people we would see waddling around if they had to pay half price for their food!
Vitalia told us we would like our apartment, and that we do! Brand new and very nice! It's 6 complexes of 31 floors each. It looks like our complex is the only one open yet, the others are still under construction. We don't dare hope for one this nice in region, but hey it doesn't take a big king bed and touch screen cooktop and tile shower to get a lovely child so we won't complain:) This country bumpkin doesn't mind the luxury while she has it thought either ;-) Got settled in a bit and had to keep very occupied to resist the urge to crawl in bed and SLEEP! :) We went down to the playground for awhile and then in the eve we went exploring down the streets. Pey has been a trooper with all of our walking for which we are VERY thankful!!! We made it till 7:30 before we succumbed to dreamland! :) Shall I tell which hours I gazed out at the beautiful Ukrainian night or the hours I looked at the back of my eyelids, not sure which one got the most hours? :-/ Jet lag is such a cruel creature!!

Going Private

So it's the last day before we leave! I'm waiting on this last load of wash to finish drying so I can pack a few more clothes and zip these big bags up and set them by the door! And then I'm ready to GO! I'm tired of this waiting around and hours dragging into days and stomach churning:) let's just get gone and get the show on the road! Oh I wish we could fast forward to next Monday and just skip over the looooong flight, jet lag, grueling SDA appointment where we are required to PICK a child that will be ours for the rest of our lives and then wait for an entire 3 days before we can even see the child!!! So much waiting and unknowns! :(((

For obvious reasons I am making this blog private and will need to know who is reading it, so if I haven't sent you an invite and you want to follow this part of our journey shoot me an email and if you pass the criteria of a most loyal, loving friend that is always supportive and makes lots of comments on blogs, and knows the importance of not sharing any of the very sensitive information that will be posted about the child then I will add you to the 'invited readers' list! :)

SDA appointment date!!!!!!!!!

YES!!!!!! we got our date :)) We were expecting to hear last week and didn't and then the first of this week and didn't and when our agency got to investigating they found out the lady that issues the dates is on vacation till next week Monday and then of course will be backed up and we didn't know when we would finally hear! That was yesterday..... now today when we were trying to decide what to do about all of our papers that are fixing to start expiring, we called the agency for advise and she stutters around a little and then finally says, we have a tentative appointment date for you but, it may be too soon. Excuse me!! too soon?? Yesterday wouldn't be too soon LOL She said she would have confirmation in a couple hours. So 15 minutes later she calls back and said appointment is confirmed for September 11 and we need to fly out on Tuesday, less than a week!!! So now I panic, scream, cry, gulp, laugh, jump up and down with Peyton and then just sit there and try to let it sink in!! BTW I told Bill just yesterday that I had given up and didn't think this adoption was going to work out, so I had a long ways to come from that mindset to leaving in 5 days HA Don't ask me what all happened between yesterday and today, but I'll accept it and run! :-)
Now just a few more drama filled days and then on to the REAL adventure!!!! Stay tuned the best is just around the corner :))