Thursday, December 16

Not much to write about except the freaky cold weather! It's negative 16 degrees C. in Kiev today, which is 2 degrees F. We went outside to get some breakfast, and the cold begins to hurt your hands and face instantly. (My brother summited Mt. Everest this spring; he'll probably tell me this is no big deal.) But it's cold, and your nose hairs freeze as soon as you take a breath! We wanted to walk a bit today and take some pictures of Kiev, but we're stuck in our apartment. Michael's drifted off to sleep. It's about two in the afternoon here. The good news is we found three English-speaking channels on T.V., which is a lot more than zero English channels in Sumy for eleven days. And we have WiFi in our apartment, so I shouldn't be complaining, right?

Our apartment is very livable. We are about a block from Independence Square. We even have a washer, but we can't understand the words and pictures on the buttons. We attempted to do a load yesterday, and three hours later the washer was still running! We found this apartment by ourselves. It is $50/night and much nicer than the ones our facilitators have found. I will be happy to share the phone number of the man we've been renting them through if other families would like it. We just tell him our budget is $50/night, and that is what we pay. I'm sure the tourist industry in Kiev in December is low.

DS called us yesterday from Sumy. They are through court but somehow are being held up again because there is a quarantine back on again in Sumy. I'm not sure how that would affect their 10-day wait. Also M and B called us from Dopro. Their court date is Monday. They are hoping to have the ten days waived.

Well, Michael is awake, and we are considering putting on multiple layers of clothing and going for a walk. Our friend Tania loaned us a whole bunch of English DVD's while in Sumy, but there's not much to do here.

Inna told us Alex's orphanage will not let any clothing leave with Alex, so yesterday we had to buy some clothing for him. We never dreamed we would be taking Alex home on this trip so brought no clothing for him. It's too bad. He has lots of clothes at home. We tried to find some American-looking jeans but couldn't. The only underwear we could find was the European style briefs that look like a girl's bikini, but I guess that's what he's used to anyway.

This may be the last time I can blog. We are leaving very early Thursday morning for Kirovograd. Not sure if we're going by train or bus. Probably train. Then we'll have to take a private car the rest of the way to the tiny village of Rivne. Igor and Natasha will house and feed us again. Natasha told Inna she's going to cook duck for us. Court is 11 a.m. Friday; then we're headed north to Alex's birth town to do the birth certificate paperwork. I can't remember the name of the town, but Inna has already called them, and they have the papers underway. I'm sure it will be a race to get it done. Then we have to do passport stuff, US Embassy stuff, medical stuff. Inna tells us she has friends in high places and not to worry, but I'm still worried whether it can all happen as quickly as we need it to.

We heard on T.V. today on the BBC channel that British Airways personnel will be striking December 22 through the beginning of January. It will affect a million people trying to travel for the holidays, and those people will all be looking for alternate flights. Oh, please, no. When I bought our round-trip tickets, I guessed our return date as December 22. Inna is guessing December 23, so that means a change of tickets, and of course we will have to purchase a one-way ticket for Alex. I have e-mailed Golden Rule Travel to ask about the situation, but of course they are probably just getting to work right now.

Well, if I can blog again, I will, but I don't know. Possibly when we get back to Kiev. See you all soon.