March 5, 2009 Thursday
Last evening, we went with Yulia to the State Department as planned. The taxi ride was “interesting”. Cars were going everywhere with no rhyme or reason. This was “Interesting” in the fact that I didn’t see one accident. I had read in the blog about the craziness of the taxi ride, but honestly, it must bother some people more than others. Although, I felt that there were “near misses”, I felt safe with the driver because it was obvious - - he knew what he was doing. Andy, be glad that you don’t have to learn to drive here in Kyiv?!?! So, as we drove through the city, which seemed like forever because of the rush hour traffic and arrived at the State Department, Yulia explained that we would not be traveling that night. Instead, we would wait in order for “A” to be transferred to “D’s” orphanage. Even though the orphanages were in the same area and only separated by a fence, they were different orphanages. Regardless, of if this works out or not, I think it is good that they will now get the chance to be in the same orphanage since they are siblings. I could look at this as a set-back, but I prefer to look at it as God’s Will in this huge journey. There are many positives to this happening; however, I will not speak of then right now. We will wait until we see if this works out. This would mean that we could possibly travel on Thursday night, but again, it is in God’s hands. So,……we arrived at the State Department, walked in, sat at a desk, showed our passports, signed a book that looked like a ledger, were handed the referral papers for “D”, said “spa-SEE-bah” (thank-you), and then left the building. We might have been there 5 minutes. It dawned on us at this moment; we have to do the same transaction for “A” in a couple of weeks. However, in doing his transaction, we will have to travel on an 8 hour train ride back to Kyiv from the orphanage city, to do a 5 minute transaction and then get back on the train and travel back to the orphanage city to await our court date. This seems very inconvenient, but it is not negotiable.

So now, Yulia took us to a different grocery store near our flat to get more food to last another day. We walked home from there. When we arrived back at the flat, the elevator was somewhat angry, I think. There was a woman and a preschool age girl also waiting. When the door opened and I started to walk inside the doors shut on me. We had to hold them back for all of us to get inside. This scared the little girl. I patted her on the head, she smiled. The women kept saying something to us in Russian, of which we understood nothing. Maybe ignorance is bliss, because what we don’t know about the elevator may be a blessing in disguise! I now will refer to the elevator as the chomping box! Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier that when you get on the elevator it drops about 8 inches when you step inside!!! Yikes!

For dinner, we made what was supposed to be hot dogs, but were a little bland for our taste. We also made rigatoni noodles in butter. Yes, again bland, but served its purpose. We watched another movie, read and went to sleep.
Now, it is morning….Paul has been up since 6:00 am and I got up at 7:30 am. We did our devotions and now I’m updating the blog. Hopefully, it will send, we are having trouble with a good connection this morning. Also, hopeful, we can get a better connection in order to Skype Evan. Now, we have the rest of the day to do whatever we choose. The train doesn’t leave until 10:00 pm each night and we are unsure if we will travel until Yulia gives us the call saying “get packed”! Hopefully, this will be the case!