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.