Wednesday, May 23, 2007

We really hoped that we would have good news to report today, but we are still waiting to hear back from the SDA. When we woke up this morning, we spent some time straightening our apartment and eating breakfast and then we headed to the center of the city. Svetlana told us she would meet us downtown at 1pm. We knew that Sasha would be taking our documents to the SDA around 11am and do we were anxiously awaiting his call. We figured we would do some shopping at the outdoor vendors as well as the mall. When we spoke with Khrystyna on her birthday, we asked her if there was anything special she would like us to bring her when we came to Ukraine. She asked for a necklace. We had been planning on bringing her a locket and having it engraved when we got home with the date of her adoption. We were told by our facilitator not to give our children any gifts of consequence until they are in our permanent custody. Unfortunately, anything that we give to them while they are still in the orphanage has to be left in the orphanage. They are not even allowed to take any clothes with them. We were told that we will need to bring clothes and shoes for the children we adopt when we pick them up at the orphanage for the last time! Since we have decided to adopt Amina as well, we didn’t think it would be fair to give Khrystyna a necklace and not give one to Amina, so we decided to wait until we got home. We wanted to buy necklaces for the girls that they could wear while they are here. We hoped to find something in the marketplace for under $10 each. On our way to the mall, we stopped at a street vendors table. She had lots of little silver(ish) necklaces with hearts. When I asked her how much they were, she told me in Russian. I was slightly confused, so I asked her again in English. She held up 3 fingers. I figured she meant 30 grivna each with is about $6. That seemed pretty reasonable to me, so we picked out two necklaces that were very similar with only a slight difference. Each were heart shaped with one small diamond-like stone. She said another number in Russian for the total….I figured she said 60 grivna, so we handed her 100 grivna. She looked a little annoyed that we gave her such a large bill. I figured she was just annoyed because it was so early in the morning and she didn’t have much change. When she gave her our change, we thanked her in Russian and walked away. We are so glad she didn’t understand much English. I told Fred that I thought she meant 30 grivna…$6. Each necklace really was only 3 grivna….60 cents. We are going to go back again tomorrow morning so we can try to buy 2 more of the necklaces we bought today. That way, when they leave the orphanage and have to take their necklaces off, we can give them another one. I’m sure it will probably turn their necks green, but they’ll enjoy it anyway! After spending some time in the mall, we headed to the park in the center of the city. We changed some money and waited for Svetlana to pick us up. We also were still waiting for Sasha to call. At 1pm, Svetlana picked us up and we headed for the orphanage. When we got to the orphanage, Mark and Christine were waiting, but the girls weren’t around. After a few minutes, we saw Khrystyna standing up in an upstairs window with her friend. They came running downstairs. Khrystyna introduced us to her friend Luba…the girl that has been in the hospital. She looked very healthy to us! After a minute, Masha joined the other girls. We stood talking for a few minutes while we waited for Svetlana to join us. While we were waiting for Svetlana, Ludmilla arrived at the orphanage. She is still not feeling well, so please pray for her health. Khrystyna and Masha each gave her a big hug and Luba went back inside. While the girls talked to Ludmilla, a group of children arrived home from school. Amina was one of the girls in that group. She immediately ran over and hugged us. While she was standing with us, Ludmilla asked Khrystyna and Amina if they would be good sisters to each other. They both agreed and she made them promise. I’m really glad that they are both looking forward to being sisters! When we left for lunch a few minutes later, Khrystyna asked why Amina couldn’t come with us again. I know she is really looking forward to having Amina be able to spend time with her every day. Ludmilla and Svetlana both talked to Amina today to make sure that she understood that we are doing everything in our power to adopt her and that we are just waiting to find out if we will get approval from Kiev. Lunch today was at a cafeteria that we have eaten at a few times with the girls. I think it is called LevottTime. Ludmilla said that the girls were supposed to eat soup for lunch since they would have a long dance practice after lunch. Svetlana explained that to them, but Masha and Khrystyna both got crab salad, soup, French fries, and bread. Svetlana seemed to think that was totally acceptable. Oh well, I’m sure Ludmilla just didn’t want them to get sick. After lunch, we had 30 minutes to do something fun before we had to get the girls back to the orphanage for dance practice. We decided to walk over to the park in the center of town. It has a good sized playground that is well shaded and 2 really huge inflatable bouncey things. The bigger of the 2 bouncy things had all kinds of things you could climb as well as 2 slides and lots of places to jump. For 10 grivna, you got 10 minutes on the large bouncy thing. Khrystyna and Masha had a great time. When their 10 minutes was up, we headed over to the playground. The girls swung on the swings, climbed across the monkey bars, went down the slide a few times, and then decided to play on the merry-go-round. At first, Masha and Khrystyna tried to push themselves, but Mark quickly jumped in and pushed them. They went really fast and were having a great time. Fred took a turn pushing the merry-go-round after Mark. When it was time to go, we told the girls they had to get off the merry-go-round. They were really agreeable and quickly got off. Fred and Mark decided that they should have a chance to ride it, so they jumped on and had the girls push them. After only 30 seconds, a very ANGRY looking old woman came over and started yelling at them in Russian. Apparently, the playground is only for children. I think Fred and Mark act like children…doesn’t that count? Fred and Mark quickly got off the merry-go-round and we all headed back to the orphanage. There was a vendor set up selling inflatable Scooby doos on the way back. Khrystyna asked for one and we told her no. We had brought 3 bags of cookies with us…1 for Khrystyna, 1 for Amina, and 1 for Masha. We told Khrystyna we would give her cookies instead of Scooby Doo. We gave Khrystyna and Masha their cookies right then. When we got back to the orphanage, we said goodbye to Khrystyna and Masha. We also gave Khrystyna a bag of cookies to give to Amina. As hard as it is for Fred and I to wait to hear back from the SDA about Amina, I’m sure it must be even harder for Amina. Please pray that the SDA will make an immediate favorable decision! We are praying for a miracle! We are praying that the SDA will decide that we don’t need to come back to Kiev for the referral and that they will be able to fax the paperwork so we can get the process moving along more quickly! After saying goodbye to the girls, Mark and Christine headed back to their apartment and Svetlana, Fred, and I headed for Amstor. I wanted to pick up some more bread from their bakery. We were able to pick up our groceries in less than 15 minutes and Fred and I headed back to our apartment. Svetlana had the driver drop her off in the city center by the shops and told us she’d walk home later. By the time we got home today, we were quite tired so we took a little nap. We also laid around and read for awhile. I decided I should probably cook dinner around 7. I had picked up some pasta and tomato sauce earlier this week, so I thought we’d have spaghetti with some fresh bread. While the pasta was cooking, I opened up the jar of tomato sauce. It had the look and consistency of ketchup. I tasted a small bit and it tasted quite strange…not at all like spaghetti sauce. I decided that I should probably make a cheese sauce for the pasta instead. When Fred came into the kitchen, I told him that the pasta sauce tasted funny and that I was going to make a cheese sauce instead. He tasted the sauce and said it was fine. I told him I wasn’t sure, but he insisted that it would taste good. When I finshed pouring the sauce over the pasta, it looked like a big pink blob. It didn’t taste horrible (I was starving), but it did taste rather strange. Fred only ate 2 bites before he decided that it tasted funny and he didn’t want anymore. I made quite a bit of it because I thought we’d both enjoy some spaghetti with yummy bread. Fred ended up eating mostly bread for supper. When Svetlana came in the kitchen, we were dumping the remainder of the spaghetti in the trash. I didn’t want to seem rude, so I told her that normally we would offer her some, but that it tasted really funny. She asked if the pasta was different than what we were used to in the states. I told her that the pasta was the same, but I thought that the spaghetti sauce tasted really different. She asked if I used the can that was sitting on the kitchen table. I told her that I had and she started laughing really hard! She told me that the sauce I used isn’t really a pasta sauce, it’s some kind of special tomato sauce that is used in making borscht! She told me that she would help me find pasta sauce later on in this week. Fred told me that he thought that this meal was one of the worst meals we’ve had….he said that there was a strange breakfast that we had in Kiev that was worse, but that he didn’t think it was my fault that the spaghetti turned out horrible. Oh well, I guess we’ll go back to eating out while we’re here. It costs about the same to cook or eat out here. Our meals at the cafeteria for the 2 of us have typically been about $5. After dinner, we relaxed a little more. I wanted to blog about our day before heading to bed. We are hoping that we will hear something first thing tomorrow morning so we can plan the rest of our trip! We’ll keep you posted!