So where've we been?

Life has been good of late, although challenges abound. This is not unexpected, and sometimes even not unwanted.

Galyna has seemed to adjust well to school. Her English is getting much better, and she is speaking very little Russian by now. We would say her English is at a toddler-esque level, with sentences structured like, "please Galyna has cereal?" She is learning well how to follow etiquette rules, like asking to be excused from the dinner table, saying, "excuse me," "please," and "thank you" appropriately. And best of all she likes school. She's even stopped wearing her hat in school, for the most part, meaning she's comfortable with who she is. There are a few kids who say things about her scars, but her sisters are quick to jump to her defense.

I think having her in school five days a week is helping her adaptation and her language skills. She's certainly getting more conversation practice than she would if she were at home. Play time at home is still more divided than not, as Tierney and Amissa play together using intricate and very verbal "scripts" they make up. Galyna isn't quite skilled enough in English to keep up, so she's often found coloring while the other two play. Tierney and Amissa do try to include her, but Galya self-selects coloring over play quite often.

She is popular at Sunday School, although we're fairly sure she's not grasping the concept of church quite yet. She enjoys going, and is happy to see her teachers.

The one surprising thing we've noticed is that she completely shuts down around Russian speakers, not even acknowledging them when they talk to her. Her translators at doctor's appointments, for instance, have not been able to get anything out of her; she ignores them completely. We're not sure, but we suspect there's a latent fear of going back to Ukraine. She's adamant about being an American, and her home is in America. She shows little interest in things Ukrainian, which I guess shouldn't surprise us. There are signs she's not quite sure this whole arrangement is permanent, and that would seem natural for those raised in an orphanage, especially those with an abusive/"neglective" background like hers.

Her emotions have stabilized somewhat, although she still flips switches faster than anyone I've ever seen in my life. It's fun to notice she is starting to feel more comfortable, although that comfort is leading to boundary testing. School and Sunday School teachers are seeing the brunt of it now, but we see some at home. She hates being told she's done something wrong, though (she shuts down or breaks down completely at any sign of discipline, even going so far as to try and ignore us and hope we go away - ha! not working with her Irish mother) so I expect this phase won't last too long.

Overall, more good than bad. There are frustrating moments, still, but she's understanding us pretty well. We're understanding her more each day, and as I said she's feeling more comfortable here. We hope that soon she starts to realize we're in this for the long haul, and some of her defenses will start to go down so we can teach her even more, and more effectively. Her smile and laugh are still contagious, and her sense of humor is starting to show. All in all, a good couple of months.

We hope all is well with you, and more will be updated as we continue on this little adventure of ours.

God bless,
Ron

Oh! One more thing. It's been fun too having people ask about our experiences. Sharing this story has been a blessing to us; if you have any questions at all, don't feel like you're intruding to ask.

2009: Year in Review (So Far)

I can hear you asking. It's a bit early for a YIR post, isn't it? Only if it's the only one. So nag me if I don't get another one out in the near future.

When last we "spoke" it was Christmas Eve. Much has spoken since then, of course, but to avoid turning this post into the novella format for which I've become (in)famous among some of you I'll cover just the basics.

Christmas went well, overall. As expected Galya was overwhelmed by many gifts (well, for her many; for her sisters it was a smaller "haul" than usual considering our lack of Christmas shopping time.) The attention and meeting family members created some long, but very good days. She also really enjoyed the Christmas light displays we got to see.

During Christmas vacation from school, the girls did get some time at our daycare provider Joni's house. Joni's son happens, of all the coincidences, to be a fourth-year Russian language student at the U of Chicago. This was nice as we were able to have him explain school, and that we wouldn't just be dropping her at some faceless building ne'er to return. She also heard a translated lecture about the inappropriateness of hitting as a problem-solving technique. She is a high-energy and fairly aggressive child, we're finding. We've heard this is typical of Ukrainian children in general and orphanage-raised children in particular. This is understandable, but an area we're working to address with her.

After that most arbitrary of holidays, New Year's, we started Galyna in school. She was naturally apprehensive, but came back from the first day happy. Even better, she was glad to go the next morning again! We have her in all-day kindergarten two days each week, and then in two other programs designed to help struggling kindergartners catch up to the rest of the class. It's a blessing those two programs had space for her this late in the year, but we anticipate (and are seeing!) that she will learn English more rapidly than if she were just in school two days a week.

Since then things have been going fairly well. There are more ups than downs, though still a few challenges. This is not a complaint; far from it. We walked into this understanding there would be challenges, and nothing so far has really caught us off-guard. That said, a number of you are praying for us, and so I'll offer up some understanding of our challenges to date in the next post (he says, aiming to avoid novella-status for this one.) I'll also post some of the "wins" of the past few weeks, as well as an update from the physician. Oh, and if you ask nicely, I may get some more pictures up on Monday. The employer gave us MLK day off this year, so I'll have some time to catch up!

Thanks for your concern, prayers and support!

God bless,
Ron

Thanks Justin!

Justin Piehowski at MinnPost posted a nice story about this blog today in his column today.

Please go read it - unless you came here from there, in which case, WELCOME!

And again, to all of you, Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah!

Ron

Christmas Eve

It's our first Christmas with Galyna, obviously. The highlight for her so far is the Christmas tree. We were able to find an acceptable one this past Sunday at Home Depot of all places. The selection was slim, but that's what you get when you spend the bulk of your time since late November in Ukraine. She and her sisters decorated the tree up nicely, and now the presents are starting to appear. With all the snow, it finally feels like Christmas too!

Frankly, with the focus in Ukraine being on the adoption, we missed all the ramp-up to Christmas. It's the strangest feeling Christmas I've been a part of in that until this week, I've barely given it a thought.

It should be fun to watch Galya open presents that are FOR HER! I can't imagine she's had many opportunities in the past. Everything is so very new, and adopting in the holiday season accentuates the newness of everything. It makes cramming in last-minute Christmas shopping worth it.

One of our challenges will be the time with family. This is not to say we don't want to introduce Galya to the broader family; on the contrary, we obviously do. But adoption advice we were given by multiple adoption "professionals" was to keep things low-key in the first few months so the child doesn't end up not knowing who he/she is bonding with, or so the child doesn't end up not bonding altogether. Low-key is impossible at this time of year. We'll be trying to manage it carefully. As we found on the way home from Kiev, Galya is willing to latch onto anyone being nice to her. That is fine to a point, but if it ends up causing problems with integrating our family...well, you can imagine we don't want to take that on. So balance in all things is key.

On the plus side, she ate all her veggies at dinner last night, even declaring them "num-num." I take that as a good sign having cooked said dinner. She's also picked up a couple of words in English. She can count to ten, say "hello" and "good morning" in the proper contexts. She still parrots more than actually uses words, but I can see signs she's working on it.

At daycare yesterday (which she handled with aplomb) the Russian-speaking son of the daycare provider did find out Galyna knows what school is, and so won't be surprised in January when we take her there. She also got to go sledding and ice skating. She'll be a natural-born Minnesotan in no time!

That's the update. Today is another chance to learn about this new family dynamic and our newest daughter, as well as for her to start meeting more family. We'll see how it goes, and as always pray it goes well.

For you and yours, I wish you a very Merry Christmas. As much as we are focusing on Galyna, Tierney and Amissa, this time of year is about remembering and celebrating another child and why he was born. Enjoy the season, the family and the traditions. But remember first the real reason of Christmas.

God bless,
Ron

Galya's Tale

This is a story pieced together from informal sources. Much of what we know about Galya's background is hearsay at best, although from divergent sources so to some extent we feel like this story is fairly close to the truth. What we know for sure is stated, and what we do not know will be noted as such.

We do know, from her birth certificate, that Galyna Oleksiyivna Skora was born July 19, 2002 and abandoned at the hospital by her birth mother. From court documentation, we also know that her biological mother was a minor (we heard 17) at the time. According to verbal testimony, she is the daughter of a well-off family in the region, and did not want her family, especially her grandfather, to know about Galyna. Galyna was unplanned, unwanted and abandoned because her birth mother did not want to upset her family. A request was made to the court that everything be kept from Galyna's mother's family. Other than their names, we do not know any more than this about Galyna's birth parents.

***
Our church has been sending mission teams to Donetsk, Ukraine, for a number of years. We primarily go to serve at Donetsk Christian University (DCU) in teaching English, and at The Good Shepherd Shelter. In the summer of 2006, one of the children at the Good Shepherd shelter was a little girl named Galyna Skora. She had been brought to the shelter after being taken away from her guardian. That same summer, the team from Grace Church made the usual visits to the Shelter.

***
Galyna was placed with a guardian after her abandonment. The undocumented story is that Galyna was, at approximately three years of age, left for reasons of punishment, in a shed with a number of animals. She was too young to defend herself and she sustained bites from rats and possibly other animals. These bites left scars over much of her body, and required grafts on her head which now leave over half of her head uncovered by hair. She is missing a fingernail on one finger, which also has a mis-aligned knuckle so the finger tip is at an angle to the rest of her finger. Galyna spent, we were told, a year in the hospital receiving medical care for her injuries. Medical care in Ukraine is not up to the standards of that here in the States, and when we look at her we see little to indicate the cosmetic reconstruction attempted, if any, was done with the care that would have been provided here. We try to be fair to the physicians who treated her, but Galyna is a deeply scarred little girl.

***
While the team from Grace Church was at the shelter, they met Galya. She was smiling, happy and friendly. Among the many children, she especially touched their hearts. As children coming to the shelter have their heads shaved (to keep lice, etc...out of the shelter) she had even less hair than she does now. But she had her smile. Team member Tina Coleman, especially, fell in love with Galya on the spot.

***
Gib and Tina Coleman are friends from church. Their children, all grown, have families of their own. Tina would have adopted Galyna herself had she been able to. Tina brought the story back hoping that one of her children would want to adopt Galyna, but barring that, that a family from the church would be so touched as to pursue adoption of this little sweetheart. Fully loaded with pictures and Galya's story as Tina knew it to that time, she brought Galyna up to a number of people at the church asking them to pray that Galyna would find the family she needed.

***
There is a reason that when you search on "Ukraine" in Google that the sponsored links are for Ukrainian brides and the like. Ukrainian women tend toward the beautiful. Appearance is prized. In last summer's English Intensive, members of our team heard from a young woman who said they eat little to stay thin to "look good for their husbands." Dress is much less conservative than in the States. Clothing, while expensive, is carefully maintained and chosen to highlight sex appeal. In such a culture Galyna had no future. We heard from many there that she faced a future on the edges of society, a bad place to be and rife with poverty and abuse.

***
Shannon and I heard Galyna's story at different times, but both from Tina. We started thinking about it without first talking to each other. When I came to the conclusion that we should look into the possibility, I asked Shannon what she was thinking. Her response was that she was thinking as I was. So we started taking the steps of looking into what it would take to adopt a foreign orphan - and oh did we start to pray.

***
I first went to Ukraine in the summer of 2007. I had no plans to visit Galyna, who'd been moved to the public orphanage by then. Children could not be adopted from the Shelter, so her move to the orphanage was necessary if not necessarily to a better place. (This isn't saying anything about the orphanage, which we think has done well by Galyna; rather, it is a testimony to the love and grace exhibited at the Shelter.) Our team would be working with the kids at Good Shepherd. Of course, Tina wasn't going to let the opportunity pass, so she set up a side visit. I first met her that summer on one morning in the orphanage director's office. We went with Olga Z. to translate (yes, Olga appears in many places in the DCU/Galyna story!) and found out that the next week was her birthday. So of course we returned with a birthday gift the next week. We took pictures and video, did a craft together and talked. The picture she drew for me that day still hangs on our refrigerator, next to the pictures and story Tina first brought back in 2006.

***
At the English Intensive in 2007 was another American, a young lady named Shauna. Shauna was helping at the Intensive, and through casual conversation we found that her parents had recently completed an adoption. While staying at DCU. And using the services of Angelina as a facilitator. She gave us Angelina's phone number, and we were able to arrange a meeting where Angelina walked us through the process and documents we'd have to submit. I came to Ukraine with no plans to even meet Galya, and I both met her and learned a great deal about what we'd need to do to adopt her. See, this is why we pray! This past summer, I visited Galya in the orphanage again, this time with Angelina. She was much the same, a little taller and a little less shy, but still smiling.

***
According to Ukrainian law, a child must be adoptable within the country, to Ukrainians, for one year before being adoptable by foreigners. We thought the clock was ticking from the time she went to the orphanage. After a few months and a letter to the Ukrainian government, we found that our inquiry had revealed that Galya's mother had never formally been deprived of her parental rights. This was done in May, 2007, so Galyna was not adoptable to us until June 2008. Our initial hopes of adopting her in the spring of this year were put by the wayside. Numerous glitches (mostly by other parties, a few by us) in the paperwork led to a delay in getting the full dossier into the Ukrainian government until this fall. The day it was submitted, finally, we found we had three weeks to be in Ukraine for the initial hearing. A long time waiting for a very short time to get things done. God's timing is rarely clear, but as always it worked out for the best.

***
Last spring we heard from Angelina that an Italian charity had paid for additional surgeries for Galyna to restore some of her hair. She spent a month in the hospital after two surgeries. I notice no difference from when I saw her the year before the surgeries. Her surgeon said she'd need more to see results, maybe up to 6-7 surgeries in total. The next round was due to start this fall, about the time we brought her into the family. Perhaps the timing was to allow for the next surgeries to be done here? We also heard that two families were given the chance to adopt her this summer (while our paperwork was dragging) but both refused when they found out about her scarring. Much went on in the past two years, but all of it ended where we wanted: with Galyna in our family.

***
It is impossible not to be touched by Galya's story. One of the jurors in our adoption hearing showed a look of disgust and disbelief when told of Galyna's treatment that summed up my feelings perfectly. We don't understand how anyone could abandon a child, or how anyone could neglect or abuse a child. Galya's guardian, we were told, is criminally responsible for her actions in her treatment of Galyna but she is not in prison. It's not our place to judge another culture or system. Nor do we believe we'll know the "why" behind Galyna's treatment. But we know that for all the ill it brought her, it also brought her to us. While we do not know the "why" behind her coming into our family, we do believe that someday this is a "why" we will be able to answer.

***
Galya will need to have some additional surgeries to try and "fix" her scarring. I won't post pictures of her scars as we have no desire to (a) play the martyr/hero family, or (b) play off sympathy for Galyna. We adopted her because she needed a family and we want her in our family. We did not adopt her to play up her story or to make us look special; we aren't. We don't feel that way, and we know there are others who would have done the same thing. But we do love her, and to the extent medical treatment can help her live a better, fuller life, we'll do what we can to help. We are looking into what kind of surgery options are available, and how to best schedule and fund the needed treatment. We also know that she will need therapy of many sorts, as do many adopted children, to deal with the long-term, if not yet symptomatic, effects of abandonment, neglect and abuse. This blog and this adoption are not to garner sympathy, attention, publicity or money for any of those things. But many of you have asked for, and been interested in her story. This is all part and parcel of what brought this girl into our lives, so I share it for that reason. And feel free to pray for where God wants this to go next. Ask questions without guilt; we're okay with explaining the hold she has on us.

***
Grace Church started going to Ukraine in partnership with DCU. Without DCU, we would not have met Galya. Her story would never have made it back here; at the very least, it is likely we would not have heard of her. DCU, therefore, holds a dear place in our hearts, as does the Good Shepherd Shelter. Without DCU I would not have met Shauna, nor been introduced to Angelina. I'd not have met Galyna three times in two summers. Without Grace Church we'd not have met Tina and Gib, nor been to DCU. And without the many friends and family (i.e., YOU!) supporting us, none of this would have happened. I'm convinced everything happens for a reason. This episode confirms that again for me. Many bad things, many bureaucratic things, many coincidental things, many good things and many blessed things happened, in a certain way to lead to this moment. For that we give God the credit and the glory. Without Him, our family would still be four happy and content people who love each other very much. But it wouldn't be the same.

Thanks, and God bless!

Ron

Picking up where I left off...

Thursday
Flight to America day! Otherwise known as the day that wouldn't end. Since a normal day last 24 hours, and we spent about 32 hours in Thursday's date, it felt long. Visa in hand (hooray!) we went to the airport. We think our driver was glad to get rid of us and our abundance of luggage, but he got us to the airport in plenty of time to make our first line of the day. We had to go through (a) passport check/security, (b) ticket agent for boarding pass, (c) immigration/passport control and (d) passport check with boarding passes to board. That was just to get out of Kiev! And it took us nigh on two hours, but we made the flight.

This was, again, a day of firsts for Galyna. She enjoyed the first airline trip, laughing and cheering when we took off. She also liked the headphones and iPods, spending most of the flight listening to music, coloring and playing with the Russian-speaking boy in the seat behind us. We think at one point she wanted to join his family as we caught her hugging the boy's mom quite a bit. Not sure if it was attachment disorder, the fact that the family spoke her language, or the fact that we were telling her no desert until she ate more of her meals. That last one may have been a bit unfair considering the quality of the airline's food offerings. Which, while tolerable for the most part, did cause problems for Amissa when the only only dinner option was pizza and cake, neither of which she can eat with her wheat/yeast intolerances. (Nothing against Delta's service; for the most part it was very good. The food and a lack of communication about the delay at JFK being the two exceptions.) Fortunately, well-stocked with granola bars and "relatively" healthy snacks we made it to JFK in New York with few incidents.

(Except for the immigration officer having us step aside for a bit while he consulted someone on Galyna's passport in Kiev, but he allowed us through after a short delay, no further questions asked.)

JFK was an interesting experience. We had a small dinner at the airport at a restaurant I won't name for their too-high cost for what you got. Then we waited. And waited. Our plane didn't arrive at the gate until well after it was supposed to have lifted off for Minneapolis. Amissa ended up falling asleep, and Galya played with the little boy from the first flight and his family (who were sharing our gate area for their flight.) We finally got on the plane, and made it to Minnesota around 1:00 Friday morning. There was one short time where Galya was crying in her sleep on the plane, but I put the iPod on "children's music" and put that in her ears, and she was fine the rest of the flight. The other two girls slept, as did Shannon and I for a very short time. All in all we landed after 24-26 hours of nothing more than a couple of cat naps. But we were home! The Coleman and Glirbas families met us at the airport with signs and balloons, then helped us home with the luggage. Our cars and expanded family mean we'll be packing much more lightly for trips. This isn't a bad thing, and considering Shan's aversion to minivans, we'll likely be in these cars for a while.

Off to sleep, and then...

Friday
We awoke, pretty much later than usual but earlier than we needed to. Galyna spent the day exploring the house and running back to us for hugs every little while. It was a good day. The girls went to school in the afternoon to see their classmates before Christmas break. Amissa's class screamed in joy when she showed up. Tierney's class was in art, so she wasn't able to introduce Galyna, but it was good to see her friends. Galyna was apprehensive when her sisters were dropped off, but overall in good spirits. Nice to see her loving her sisters. When Shannon started getting ready to go to the school to get the girls, Galya saw her and started asking what was up. As soon as Shannon said the names Tierney and Amissa, Galyna jumped up to get her jacket and boots to get her sisters too! The rest of the evening was dinner and cuddles on the couch as nobody had much energy for anything else.

The Weekend
Saturday was errands and playing. Shannon and I did some unpacking and cleaning (full disclosure: Shan did more than I did). It snowed, which the girls liked. For the ... well for every meal to date, Galya indicated she wasn't going to eat everything on her plate, not liking vegetables. She's finding out she doesn't get to negotiate her dinner choices, or how many bites she has to eat to get a snack later. If anyone has tips on getting a youngster to eat vegetables, let us know. Since Tierney and Amissa love veggies, this is new territory for us. On the other hand, Galya at least doesn't argue. She just doesn't eat it knowing there's no candy later. She does like meat, cereal, potatos, bread/butter and bananas though. That much we do know!

Sunday we went to church, and she was again introduced by her proud sisters. Galyna made it through two hours of Sunday School without us there, so it seems that she's able to hang with her sisters for some amount of time without us. This is VERY good, although it doesn't yet get us to the point of her lasting a full school day yet. It was also good to see so many of YOU who read this blog and let you meet Galya in person. Not to mention the joy of hearing a service in English.

We're going to be working with the daycare provider tomorrow as her son (a 4th-year Russian student at the U of Chicago) will be there to help. We want to see if he can help explain the concept of school, and that just because we won't be there doesn't mean we won't be picking her up. It's got to be so very hard on Galyna not understanding everything yet; we can sympathize as we don't either. But she, like her sisters, has proven to be a trooper. We also picked up a Christmas tree, to her delight, which will be decorated today.

There have been a few mishaps, as we've had to work through the idea that makeup isn't for chewing on or dumping on the floor, and ownership of some toys is yet unclear. But overall her adapting to the family, and vice versa, is as good as we could have expeted in the first few days. Our prayer is it goes as well in the coming months.

***

As a heads-up, this will be the last of the "daily recap" types of posts. From here on out I'll be blogging here more about milestones. If you're on Facebook, or subscribe to updates from this blog (via RSS or something similar) you'll get notices. Otherwise, check back from time to time. I'll also update my other blog when I update things here. Posts will probably still be frequent through the holidays, but start to taper off as we get into more of a routine.

If you have any questions about how things are going, or what we're up to though, feel free to drop us a line. Or better yet, subscribe to one of the blogs or become my Facebook friend!

God bless,
Ron

So How've You Been?

Long time no blog, though readers of my normal blog wouldn't be surprised if they've been paying attention over the last year. It's been an interesting and fun, albeit busy week. In review:

Tuesday
I think I left off with Tuesday (aside from the note that we arrived home.) If not, call me on it in the comments and I'll fix the problem. Tuesday did have a bit more detail than I posted then. The day started with doing some packing while waiting for Angelina to call. She did eventually, and picked me up to sign some papers. We went first to the courthouse, where she picked up the court decree. From there to the orphanage, where I had to sign two documents. For two signatures, I'd been gone nearly 90 minutes. Yep, this was going to be fun!

We left Makeevka, and on the way to Donetsk for some more paperwork I called Shannon to let her know that we'd be ready and back to the apartment by 3:00 to go pick up Galya. Angelina wouldn't be with us, but we told the orphanage folks while we were there what the plan was. In Donetsk, we went into a freezing building (side note: in Ukraine, apparently they will choose to do some heating water pipe repair when it's cold out) to get Galya's new birth certificate. This was another long wait, but I did get to do the signature thing so I felt like I was at least contributing. Then we headed off to one last errand - the passport. Unfortunately, the passport office was closed until 2:00 for the lunch break, so we stopped at McDonald's to kill some time and grab a bite to eat.

At two, we were able to get to the passport office, and by 2:30 we had everything the Ukrainian government owed us. Yippee! Angelina dropped me by the bus stop where the girls were going to meet me for the marshutka ride to the orphanage. She was going to go fax the passport page copy to the U.S. embassy so we'd be okay to get a visa interview on Wednesday.

Tuesday, Angelina proved her worth in all of these stops. Conversations in the past few days showed that many adoptive families can wait up to two weeks to get the passport. We got ours the day the court decree became official. It helps when the person you hired knows everyone and everything about the process. If you're ever considering adopting in Ukraine, let me know and I'll get you in touch with her.

So...as I said, it was cold. Even for us Minnesotans it was a bit chilly, and the marshutkas were running very full. There wasn't room for us on the first handful that went by while we waited, so we were all very glad when one came by with space.

And this brings us to the orphanage. I'll bet you're all expecting a big dramatic moment, tear-jerking narrative and emotional broadsides. We were too. It was nothing like that. In the dictionary next to anticlimactic you see a picture of Galya leaving the orphanage. After all these months (years, really) of time since we first heard of Galyna, the moment felt oddly normal. I'm guessing that seeing kids adopted out of the orphanage before made this something rather standard, but it was a surprisingly low-key event.

We went in and Julia, the social worker for whom I'd signed papers earlier in the day, was coincidentally by the door talking to someone else. She pointed up to where Galya was, and we walked up there to get her. She saw us, and apparently knew what we were there to do as she stopped her studies (yeah, we picked her up mid-school day) and grabbed the entirety of her earthly possesions: five little notebooks worth all of about $.30 that we'd picked up for her on the various Amstor stops. Not even a toothbrush. We brought some clothes with us, but she did walk out with a t-shirt and some tights that she was wearing that day.

I've never felt so unbelievably blessed and humbled to live in this country, by the way.

She said goodbye to her class, and a couple of the kids gave her hugs. Some of the teachers too, but it was "business as usual" for most of them. They all said goodbye and went back to their tasks. Two of the girls did seem excited that she was going to "America!" which I'd think is a big deal considering what we suspect they think about our country - that we're wealthy and far away from problems. One of two isn't bad. I for one will never complain about being poor compared to anyone here. Being firmly middle class in this country is being in the wealthiest population on the planet.

So we left, after a few hugs and two classrooms saying goodbyes, but it was the oddest departure I've known. There's been more emotion and hubub when someone leaves the place I work. But we walked back to the marshutka for the ride home. Galya was absolutely giddy, and happy. This was a good sign. We were able to get to the apartment in time for me to get the blog post out, and finish dinner before heading to the train station. We caught the train, Angelina and Shannon in one compartment, the girls and I in the other. The girls slept better on this train trip than on the first, but we still awoke in Kiev tired and unwashed. The train was about 80 degrees all night, which was okay, but a bit warmish for what we're used to. The highlight for the girls, I think, was eating some dried octopus snack thing that Angelina ordered from the attendant.

Wednesday
This post is overly long already, but I'll give Wednesday a go. Maybe I'll catch up the rest of the week tomorrow:)

We went from the train station to an international clinic which provides medical exams for children being adopted. Their report is part of the package of papers we needed to bring to the embassy in the hopes of getting the visa. We were there early, as the clinic didn't open until 9:00 and we'd come right from the train at 7:30. The girls hung out and colored in the hallway, and us adults tried to stay awake. The exam went well, and the doctor was about crying when she thanked Shannon for "adopting this little girl." Seems hard for many Ukrainians to understand the motive to help someone in this type of circumstance.

We went from the clinic to the embassy to drop off our last documents, and to confirm the visa appointment. As we'd sent ahead the documentation necessary to do the background check with Washington D.C., we were hoping that we could get the visa Wednesday. Even so, we weren't sure as nothing on the trip was really easy to predict. The visa interview was at 2:00, and we dropped off the paperwork by about 11:00, so we went to a little cafe to have lunch. It's interesting finding out about Galya's eating habits. She won't starve in our house, but she won't necessarily enjoy all our meals. We have yet to find a non-potato vegetable that she likes, and we eat lots of veggies. Let's hope she grows to love broccoli.

The visa interview was quick, and best of all they said they'd gotten the paperwork in time to do the background check - we got the visa the same day! This happens often, we gathered, but it isn't guaranteed. We were very glad to have our tax dollars going to something that the government does well!

This meant, too, that we were finally ready to hit the apartment. We were put up at the same building as the first visit in Kiev, and we went to the same restaurant for dinner as we'd done the first visit too. The girls all got the mashed taters/chicken dinner with the chicken dressed up with vegetables to look like a real chicken. Tierney took a picture, which I'll post in my next photo update. This went over well with Galya, except for (a) the vegetables, and (b) me not letting her drink all her pop until she'd finished her meal. Other than that, it was peachy. An early bedtime for the girls, and repacking for the plane for me, and it was off to the land of nod.

We awoke Thursday, but that's enough for this post.

TTFN,

Ron