Day 18 - Happy Halloween

Today was very interesting. It appears my Ukrainian has started to either help or hinder. The director of the orphanage has been woking very hard to get our file processed. He was hoping to have us sign a bunch of paperwork this afternoon and go and see the judge (for what I have no idea). This is going on concurrently with running around getting a copy of Galina's birth certificate and some passport photos off to Kiev. Unfortunately, the director has asked us to do a couple of things that our facilitator does not understand. It was clear yesterday from the director that he feels my Ukrainian is very good and says we can easily get a few things done withot Victor our faciitator.

Victor is a hard to read. It seems we need to force his hand to get action from him. So today in the director's office I did just that. All of a sudden he now understands what is going on and has given us some good info to go ahead with.

Alas, the people we needed to see in the governemnt offices were out on a conference so all the running around we did will be worked out on Monday.

Day 17 - Making Progress

Today we spent the morning with Galina. She is starting to recognize us when we come in with a big smile. We will hopefuly hear in the next 2 or 3 days how her medical test went. She seemed extra quiet, but this was probably because she was out of her normal pattern for a couple of days.

We have been bringing treats to Galina (bananas seem to a big hit) and today were able to feed her lunch. It's funny how she stores all the food at the top of her mouth and cheeks like a chipmonk.

Today we are working on getting a couple of passport photos taken and getting them to Kiev on the old FedEx train.

Day 15 - We received our luggage from Kiev

This morning I went to the train station and waited for the train from Kiev to arrive. Igor (one of our facilitators) gave all our remaining luggage to the conductor and I needed to find her on car 12 to pick them up. I was not sure how simple this was going to be, but in the end, once I found car 12, asked for Ulia and identified myself and Andrew, she handed me all the luggage. This must be the Ukrainian version of FedEx.

We are off shortly to see Galina (hopefully she is in good spirits after being poked and prodded). We brought some treats to make her fell better (bananas and cookies). Afterwards, Lisa and I are off to have dinner at a lady's home. We met Nadia a couple of days ago at the orphanage where we see her every once in a while visitting with the children. She does not speak any english, so I will be putting my Ukrainain to the test.

Not much else to report.

Day 14 - All quiet on the western front

Today Lisa and I acted as tourists in Svaliava. People here are wonderful. Yesderday while having dinner at a restaurant we frequent, the cook asked if she could prepare a new meal for us that was not on the menu. Nerviously we agreed, she brought out an orange paste and bowl of feta cheese. The paste was a blend of corn and whipped cream. We were told that this is not really a dinner meal, more for lunch but she wanted us to have taste. Believe it or not, the paste was good, and even better covered in feta. The small dish is probably enough to keep a whole company of men warn during the winter!

We have downloaded some more pictures of around Svaliava. We spent a lot of time at the bazar today looking at children clothes. We purchased a new pair of leather shoes and a winter coat. We hope they are going to fit.

We were able to walk to the orphanage today. It took almost 30 mins but of course we did not take to most direct route. Lisa and I tried this twice before and both times got totally lost. Finding our way (even if it was the long way) is great. Now we can work on getting a shortcut.

We were not intending to go by the orphanage today because we wer told Galina will be away for tests. But since we were there, we decided to stop in. The director stuck his head out of his window as we arrived and told us Galina had left and will probably be spending the night at the hospital. He let us know that we should come back tomorrow afternoon. This is actually a relief to us, because it meant they actually remembered to send Galina away for the tests as we were told. Lisa and I have little faith in people sticking to the proposed timetable. We really hope all went well.

Our Hotel

Urainian self propelled lawn mower!

Day 13 - Updates

Our apartment is really a hotel room right in the center of town. The owners are amazing. They have bent over backwards to help us. An example of this is Andrew left our cell phone in a taxi cab yesderday the after a couple of hours of calling every one they knew and driving us to the cab company, we found it. We feel as though they are kind and genuine people.

Things here are really inexpensive. For $15.00 USD you can eat a great meal. Soup, salad, a main dish and drinks. The town is really a step back in time (about 50 years). More photos will be attached later.

We go to visit Galina twice daily (for a total of about three hours). All is going great. She has beautiful big brown eyes, a great smile and is tall for an 18 month old. She is pale, and has super short brown hair (because they shave their hair to prevent lice) and has an infectious giggle. We have seen her five times now and already see an improvement. She is not walking, but you can tell is really trying. She has no words yet, but just today started making about three new expressions and sounds. Galina recognizes us when we arrive and waves bye when we leave. Her caregivers seem to be very caring and helpful.

We have decided not to announce her new name or post pictures of her as we want to wait until we are sure all is in order to complete the adoption. All the medicals will be completed this week and this is a a major hurdle. Once we have a court date and all is good to go, we will make our announcement. Sorry to make all of you wait.

We will continue to provide updates, but there will may not be one tomorrow. Galina is off to Uzkarad (bad spelling) and we will not see her, so there will not be much to tell. But we will try to post more pictures.

Our arrival in Svaliava

From Kiev we decided (no, actually were told) we should fly to Lviv and then make a decision on how to travel the last 200 km to Svaliava. The flight was great. One hour (as opposed to 12 hours on train) and the pilot fly with out with military pecision. We started the engines at our departure time, began to taxi and immidiately off we went. We fly in Lviv and I have taken longer taxiing a Cesna at Buttonville airport then the 737 did. Off the plane and an old cart waited for us at the terminal entrance with all the bags on it.

Lisa and I spent the evening with some great new friends we met; Joe and Martha. Both are currently triing to adopt a little boy Lviv through the same agency as us. We spent the evening talking about our experiences, sharing photos and laughing about how some things work here in Ukraine. In the morning we drove to Svaliava, which took 3.5 hours and brought us within an inch of our lives. We would probably best describe driving here as street racing (except without the care of getting caught).

Our first exposure to Svaliava was seeing horse drawn carts, chickens, goats and ox being walked through town. After meeting with the town child services rep, we discovered the Svaliava was celebrating its independance from Nazi rule. All the governement services were shutting down. After pleading to have the proper paperwork generated, we tried to find the orphanage director. Finally tracked him down and met him. All went very well. We went to the infirmery to see Galina for the first time, but she was not a happy camper. We saw her for about 2 minutes and then off we went to do more paperwork.

After running around for a solid 3 hours, we needed to find a place to stay.

Day 12 - We have Contact!

Hello everyone. Lisa and I arrived in Svaliava yesterday around noon and it has been a hectic past 36 hours. It has taken all of this time just to find a connection to the world via the internet, so we apologise for the brief post. Now that we found this bar (it's in the basement of a row of houses in the middle of some back woods part of town) we will try to give lots of details tomorrow.

All that to say, Lisa and I have now visited the orphanage 3 times to meet a beautiful little girl named Galina (which is to become her new middle name). She seems very healthy and already recognizes us when we arrive with big smile.

Lisa and I could not be happier and already miss not being around her.

We are living in the one commercial hotel in town (about 20 mins walk to orphanage) and the owners are amazing. If everything is open tomorrow, we will provide a pile of details for you all.

Day 10 - Leaving Kiev

Finally, we got a call from Victor with our approval to visit the little girl. We will be flying to Lviv in about 2 hours and spending the night with our new friends from Canada Joe and Martha (they are from the same adoption agency as us in Toronto). Tomorrow morning we will hop on a quick train ride to Svaliava and go directly to the orphanage. We will be spending the weekend in Svaliava and hopefully lots of time with the child. Sunday night, we will be heading back to Kiev on an overnight train with Victor, the caregiver and the little girl for a medical examination on Monday. After that point (if all goes well) we then will head back to Slaviava to spend the rest of our stay in there.

Well at least we can finally get moving, but NO SWAN LAKE FOR YOU.

Day 9 - Still waiting

Just heard from Victor and we still do not have permission to travel to Svaliava. It is become very apparent that although the we own the watch, they own the time.

Lisa and I spent the day touring the south end of the city. More photos below. We have really started to love this city (as much as we are trying to leave it). We would describe it as very clean and safe. It is funny watching people young and old sitting around every walkway drinking beer and laughing. Yet all of the rubish ends up in the trash bins. The people here really have pride in their city. We found out from some locals that Kiev in similar to Toronto, in that it is the city most Ukrainians loves to hate. I guess that is what happens with all economic centers.

We will be digging deep into Ukrainian culture for dinner this evening. We will be eating "varennike" or perogies as we know them in Canada.

Hopefully we will be on a train tomorrow and therefore no post for the blog. We shall see.

Photo's of Kiev's Botanical Gardens.

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The Opera House -They will be performing Swan Lake on October 25th - We will try to get tickets.

Day 8 - Thinking through our travel plans

Lisa and I spent the morning researching our options to travel to Svaliava this week. Train seems to be the best option (14 1/2 hours overnight). But at least we will have our own sleeper car with sink. We are still waiting for formal authorization from the SDA to travel, so we can't make firm plans yet.

We just came back from grocery shopping, had a quick snack and are off to sit in the square, drink some pivo and people watch. Hopefully we will get word of more news later tonight.

Random Photo's

2nd Appointment - with good news!

Lisa and I just left our appointment at the SDA with Victor. We had to meet him at 4:00 but found out that our apponitment was really at 5:00. So we waited. We went into the small room and listened to 3 women and Victor have conversation in Russian. They handed Victor a hand written form with a very small photo stapeled to it. This was the one file they were prepared to propose to us. It was of a girl, born April 2, 2007, (18 months) in the Town of Svaliana (Lviv Region). All reports show her to be healthy.

Victor is planning to call us tomorrow afternoon to discuss travel arrangements. This is a overnight train ride to Lviv (12 hours) and then another 2 hours to Svaliana. We exspect to be there for 1 day only just to meet the child and confirm our intention to adopt her. Then we return to Kiev (probably the next day) for medical from an intenational doctor.

Lisa and I are thrilled but are waiting to meet with the child and confirmation on medicals. We will try to keep you posted (but it is a very small town and we may not have internet).

Day 7 - 2nd Apponintment!

We just got a call from Victor our facilatator who informed us that our 2nd appointment is today Monday Oct 20th at 4:00pm. (that would be 9:00am your time) Yippee!

Photo's

Our Weekend in Kiev

Well, our landlord decided to disconnect our internet on Friday and it is still off. She will be surprised when she asks for the last bit of rent. Lisa and found a local restaurant with wi-fi so now we can put on a new post.

Lisa and I spent the weekend relaxing and wondering through the city. No perogies here, they are called varennike. And we have not had any yet! We are trying to eat in most of the time. Yesterday was raining so not much to report (other then Lisa has mastered Solitaire on the computer), but today is a perfect fall day (sunny, 14 degrees with a light breeze).

We visited the market today and found some great vendors. We will add pictures later.

Posting Problems

People are telling us that they are having problems with posting comments on our blog. We didn't realize that you had to create a new account. If it is not working for you then please just email us at our Yahoo, Hotmail and/or Facebook accounts. We are checking them as long as we have internet access.

arichiq@yahoo.com

velcro71@hotmail.com

Thanks to everyone, we have really appreciated all your messages.

Love Andrew and Lisa

Day 3 - Our first appointment

Today we had our first appointment at the SDA (the formal presentation of files of children). The meeting was short because they presented only one file; a young boy who after a call to the orphanage was confirmed to have HIV and therefore unacceptable. We did anticipate this so we are not very surprised. Now that the formal first appointment was concluded, we have been put onto a special registry (this appears to be where our facilitator earns his keep), we will recieve a call back for a second appointment when a child which meets our criteria becomes available. The SDA only does internal business on Fridays and is closed on the weekends so we know we will not be called before Monday. So now the waiting begins...again.

On a positive note, Luftanza found our lost baggage and returned it to us. As well, we went to 5:00PM mass at St. Micheal's Catherdral and it was spectacular. St. Micheal's is a 900 year old working orthodax church. It is busling with monks, priests and visitors. We have never seen such a beautiful church and grounds.

During our travels, we realised that Kiev is full of women in mini-skirts and thigh high stiletto boots, men with Ukrainian hockey hair (Lisa thinks some look like Baryshnikov so it's not too bad) and is a city built over a very large hill. Lisa and I decided to walk down the far side today only to find that you can spend 2 hours getting back up it. We could not understand how the women walk up and down these hills on coble stone roads dressed this way.

We plan on becoming tourists for the weekend and exploring more of what Kiev has to offer.

For Daniel: We are still looking for the beech!

Photo's of Kiev

Day 2 - Hanging out in Kiev

Well today we spent just walking around the city. We found Saint Sophia's and Saint Micheal's Cathedrals. They are stunning. This is defanately a walking city. It is clean and busling. The rule "cross the street at your own risk" here has new meaning. There are no stop signs and very few traffic lights. Pedestrian crossings are everywhere and we learnt that the best way to use them is to just walk out into traffic. All the cars speed up but then slam on their brakes so that you can cross.

We met with Victor our facilitator over lunch to talk about our appointment tomorow and pick-up a "pay as you go" cell phone. We were told our appointment is at 1200, but should not look forward to being proposed healthy children (this is consistant with what we were told from the beginning). We should expect a second appointment between Mon and Thurs of next week.

Lisa and I have posted a few pictures we took around Kiev.

We are enjoying reading everyone's emails and coments - keep em coming!

We have arrived in Kiev - finally!

Today has been full of surprises. First, we get to Pearson to find out our plane was delayed 1 hour (Ok, not the end of the world). Then we had a plane and all ready to board, but no crew (another 45 mins delay). This started to make us wonder. Our lay-over in Frankfurt was 2 hours. This could get tight. Enroute, they announced that those people with connecting flights will get instructions in the terminal once we arrived, whether that was hurry up or sorry, we booked you on another flight was unknown. This could have been a problem as Lufthanza only flys to Kiev once daily. Luckily we got our connection.

The quick turn around did not go without casualties (one lost piece of checked luggage). But all is good, we have everything we need for this week.

Victor and Igor were patiently waiting (they let me know it was an hour and a half) outside the terminal and took us to our appartment, a local restaurant, the grocery store and bank (yes in that order!). So after visitting the bank, Lisa and I were able to walk back to the grocery store, the appartment and the restaurant all on our own.

Our appartment is clean and located about 100 m from Independence Square (the center of Kiev). We have uploaded a couple of pictures of our apartment.

We have not slept for about 27 hours, and Lisa is doing better then I am. We are heading out for dinner and a walk around the square. Cheers.

Departure - Day

Well the day has finally come. Lisa and I are heading to the airport and would like to thank everyone for all their well wishes.

See you all on the other side!

Good news from other families

Today we heard good news from the second family sent to Kiev using Mission Of Tears. They were proposed a child within the requested age. They departed today for Donetsk to meet the child.