Safely in Romny

. . . And that is not something to be taken lightly!  Stas made another high-speed run from Kiev to Romny, part of which I slept through.  I woke up, looked out the front window, and promptly closed my eyes again.  I figured if I was going to die, I'd rather not see it coming, and just let it surprise me.  Libby says our faces may look like we have exceeded Mach, or been in astronaut training after this ride.  After arriving, we went over to the orphanage and found Julia.  We really surprised her this time, so it was fun, again, to have her give us big, strong hugs and hear her squeal.  We took her and Svetlana to supper, and went over the details of our court appearance tomorrow.  She spent a lot of time prepping us, both at supper, and later on in the evening with just Libby and me.  Then Svetlana left us, we went to the store, and then walked home, just the three of us, to spend some alone time together.  While we were together, we were able to FaceTime Mary Beth and Virginia, so the sisters got to see each other. We communicated some by google translate, and are encouraged that Julia seems to be able to read English reasonably well.  So there is some level of foundation already laid in her English education.  Tomorrow is the big day - court at 11:00 am.

Good night's sleep

We were determined to "obey the rules" and stay up until normal bedtime, but we both failed.  Libby was asleep by 7:30, and despite having BBC on the television, surfing the net, and messaging Laura, I was falling asleep at the wheel at 8:00, so I gave in, too.  We both woke up just after midnight, and thought we were done sleeping, but after a little tossing and turning, we both slept well the rest of the night.  We were so tired, we didn't realize how bad the mattress was until we tried to get up and walk. But we are up and moving, a nice hot shower, and packing again to head to Romny.

Back in Ukraine

We made it! This time we flew US Airways to Philadelphia (which is a very nice airport, by the way), then Lufthansa to Frankfurt, and Lufthansa to Kiev.  We were worried about the short layover in Phili, but the combination of the pilot flying fast (the flight attendant told us the pilot drove Harley's), and our Lufthansa plane arriving late, made the Phili layover a non-event.  Then we were worried because the check-in guy in Atlanta told us we had to retrieve our bags in Frankfurt and go through Customs there.  That didn't sound right to me, but who knows.  It turns out he was wrong, so that also was a non-event.  The Frankfurt airport was the same old maze, but somehow it seemed quaint or quirky this time instead of annoying.  German security was the same as always, and this time they hauled Libby off to an isolation room to interrogate her.  I stood outside the door peering in like some pitiful lost puppy hoping the didn't handcuff my wife.  She got tagged by US security for the same item.  She had a fancy bar of soap in her carry-on, and all the security guys freaked out over it.  But she made it through both times.  As we were leaving the Kiev airport, going through the last security check, a female customs agent right out of the 1970's James Bond movies (pretty, too much makeup, looked like she could squeeze your guts out with the leg scissors hold - remember the one I am talking about - on the train?) came up to us, stopped us abruptly, asked to see my passport, asked me how much money I was carrying . . . And then lost interest and took off after another victim.  So this too turned out to be no big deal.

The plan is to leave Kiev Wednesday at noon and drive to Romney, get settled and hopefully see Julia, and then court on Thursday morning.  The Fox family is still in Romny, so we are going to finally meet them and hopefully eat supper with them tomorrow night.

This is the view out our kitchen window.  We are right on the square near St Sophia's.  it would be wonderful to stay here, but it is only for one night.

Ready, Set . . . . Stop!

The day started sunny and cool.  A pleasant start to the next phase of our adventure.  A leisurely morning, with the girls getting ready for church.  We packed on Saturday, so all we had to do was get dressed and ready to go by 11:00 am.  Jim was on time, we got out of town in good shape, and headed to Atlanta.  Arrived at the airport, checked in, went through security, got to the gate and camped out.  About a half an hour before boarding time, they made an announcement that they were having trouble getting the fuel in the plane, and boarding would be delayed 10 minutes or so.  My thought was, "take all the time you need! We are about to fly over the Atlantic Ocean.  Put LOTS of fuel on the plane". Ten minutes later, they came back on and said they were still having trouble fueling the plane, and it would be another 20-30 minutes.  Hmmmm.  But right on time, we stated boarding.  Everyone was on the plane, carry-on stuff all stowed, final checks being done . . . And all the power went off.  Normally the power blinks a little when you go from auxiliary power to internal power, but this was a no kidding total power loss.  And it got warm fast!  But in maybe five minutes, power was restored.  The warning flashers started going off in my head, and i started praying for our safety.  Fuel problem and electrical problems?  I didn't want either of these over the ocean.  But then, just a few minutes later, the Captain came on and said there were too many mistakes (maybe just a poor choice of words by a German pilot?) and they were canceling the flight - sorry for the inconvenience - everyone get off the plane - thank you.  Everyone quietly got off, headed back to the check- in counter, calm chaos ensued for hours as people tried to get hotel vouchers ( one line, if you want to call it that), and changed flights in the other line.  I got my hotel voucher, a piece of paper with a 1-888 number for Lufthansa, and headed for the door.  Since we were at the international terminal, we had to pack ourselves into a shuttle to the domestic side, unload, fight our way onto the hotel shuttle, get off, get a room, get some dinner, call Lufthansa and finally make it to bed shortly after midnight.  Not a great start to our trip, but God did honor our request for a SAFE trip.  So we start again on Monday.

Here is a picture of the new international terminal, if you have not seen it yet.

Here we go again!

When I saw everything laid out on two different queen-sized beds, I thought there was no way we would get everything packed.  But amazingly, we have everything packed and we are under weight, so we are ready to go again.  We are on the exact same flights, so we pretty much know what to expect.  All that is left now is to take a 2.5 hour car ride, 2-3 hours of down time, 9 hours flying to Frankfurt, 5 hour layover, and 3 hours to Kiev.  There is a the possibility of us having another family with us in Romny - the Fox family.  We would love to get to know them, since we have been following their progress their entire trip (they are about 2-3 weeks behind us in the process).  They have met many more people than we did, have found a church to attend, and several English-speakers in town.  They have 3 small children with them, so it would be fun to help each other. Libby has been sad today - it suddenly hit her that she has to leave all of her "babies" and grandbabies behind.  But we are both happy that we will be adding another "baby" to our clan.  We look forward to having Julia home with us.

Hurray!

We have our court date!  It is September 19th in Romny, so Libby and I are starting to spool-up to get ready to return to Ukraine.  I already have airline tickets, so that is done.  We have been occupied lately, watching the reports of another family who is also in Romny right now, working on adopting a friend of Julia's. (Svetlana).  They have hit a snag of an unknown Uncle who isn't sure he wants to give his consent to the adoption.  So they are working through that right now.

I checked the climate data, since we will be there into October, more than likely.  Mid-October normal temperatures are high of 55 and low of 38.  Libby was not real happy to hear this, but I think it sounds great.  Maybe it will even snow while we are there!

Left over thought #1

I had my fun making fun of the old Soviet era building the notary worked in, but the fact is that Ukraine is a modern country.  There are remnants of the Soviet influence, with nasty looking old apartment buildings, but there is tons of construction going on, with new good looking apartment buildings going up, roads being improved, no water or power outages (despite all the warnings we had about this :) ).  Kiev is a city of nearly 3 million people, that has existed for over 1000 years!  They had their struggles following the fall of the Soviet empire, but they have their feet under them now and are moving forward.  You have to look out past the foreground in these photos, especially the second picture, but most of what you see out on the horizon is new.