Brief Update

Every morning, I get up and rush to check my email, to see when our court date is.  And so far, every morning there is no email for me.  And again, this morning, we still do not have a court date.  We are trying to be patient about this, but we are anxious to go back over and complete the process.  We know that God's timing is way better than ours, so we pray as always, for His will to govern (which of course, it will) and that we will gladly conform our desires to match His.

The Stairs

I can't figure out how to get the stairs video on the blog.  See my facebook page if you want to see them.  "The Publisher"

Safely Home

We made it home without much fanfare.  It was a long day(s), which I will describe below.  It is 5:00 am, and Libby, Virginia and I are all up.  Can you believe Virginia is out of bed at 5:00 of her own free will?  Libby was up a little after 3:00 am and already doing a load of laundry from the trip.  Hopefully we will all stay awake all day, go to bed at the normal time, and get up at a more reasonable hour tomorrow.  At least we have no reason to be late for church!

We really had no choice on our departure time from Kiev.  It was the 5:45 am flight, or some other insanely expensive ticket ($4000 per person via Moscow!).  Our lack of sleep story really begins Thursday morning.  We got up at the normal time, had a normal day, then tried to go to bed early to prepare for the trip.  Of course, none of us could go to sleep.  But by 10:00 pm, we were all asleep.  Then the phone rang at 11:15 pm.  Back to sleep.  Alarm went off at midnight. Libby got up to take a shower, then Virginia.  I got to sleep in until 1:30 am, when I got up as well.  So we are all starting the trip on 2-3.5 hours of sleep.  Had to carry all the luggage down the pitch black stairs, with Virginia leading me down with the flashlight.  (I will try to load a video of our stairs)  Loaded everything, driver arrived at 2:45 am, to the airport by 3:30 am, to beat the 2 hour early arrival rule for international flights.  Checked in, sat around, left on time.  Fortunately we flew out on Lufthansa, so I had a place for my knees.  We dozed a little on this short flight.  To Frankfurt, through the maze of halls again, through security, where they half stripped-searched me (well, not quite THAT bad), and to our gate.  Libby spied out what she thought was another American family adopting, and went over to talk to them.  They were, but not the family she thought they were.  We may wirte about their crazy story in a future blog.  On the flight back across the pond, dozed a little, to Atlanta.  Through a crazy twist of really bad scheduling on my part,  ALL of my grown children had scheduling conflicts and couldn't come get us, so we rented a car, prayed like crazy that I would not fall asleep at the wheel, and drove home.  No problems.  I still can't think clearly enough to figure out our sleep to awake ratio, but it wasn't enough, whatever it was.  Jim cut the grass for me last night, so I don't have to do that today.  But my car isn't running, so that will be my welcome home task.

We will keep you informed of the new timeline as it develops, and we have a few leftover thoughts to share, but the blog will slow down until we go back over.

St, Sophia Museum

We are taking it easy and mostly resting, repacking everything to get ready for plane flight.  But we had wanted to go to the museum, so we did this afternoon.  This complex was founded in 1025, I believe.  It is a fabulous facility that has lasted a thousand years.  Looking through the frescoes and mosaics and other embellishments of the church, it is a strange thought to think there may be fellow believers from a different time, a different culture who I have never thought about before, who may be in heaven with us.  We walked on the same stones and in the same buildings that they did.  It is fun to think about what life was like, and what those people were like, and if we sat down and talked to each other, despite all the differences, we might have very similar core beliefs and values, and perhaps could be friends.

I climbed to the top of this tower today.  What a great view if the huge city of Kiev.  

Headed Home

We have done all we can do for now.  We had to go by the notary's office again to sign yet another official resolution, and of course sign in the official ledger.  Svetlana had to do two hours of prep work to get the document ready.  It is also necessary to obtain a document officially separating two minor siblings, so no issues arise from that.  Svetlana has been taking care of that, too, during her several trips over to Sumy.  So we had an uneventful (thankfully) trip back to Kiev.  We went on a long, rambling walk and found ourselves on top of a high bluff looking down on the river.  I had my normal camera for this outing, so you will have to wait until I get home to see pictures of this.  The most humorous (?) aspect of this day is the steps up to our apartment.  We are on the third floor, accessed by four flights of steep steps that double back on themselves with something akin to spiral stairs at each turn.  Hard to describe - I will try to take a picture.  We got home from eating tonight and it was dark - outside and inside.  No lights the whole way up.  We had to kick forward every step looking for the next step.  No handrail either, so we leaned against the wall to feel our way.  But we found our door, got it unlocked, and made it safely inside.

Clothes dryer

Washing clothes in the Romny hotel

To begin the process you soak a washcloth to serve as a stopper for the bathroom sink( the washing machine.)  Next you fill the sink with dirty clothes.  In one load I washed six pairs of socks, a t-shirt and a few undies.  You sprinkle laundry soap over the clothes and fill the sink with water.  For some reason there is not hot water for the sink.  It comes out lukewarm for a few minutes before it starts sputtering, which means there is air in the line and that is not good, so you switch to just cold water then.  You must hold the stopper washcloth in place with one hand while you agitate the clothes with your other hand.  After a few minutes the stopper will hold the water if you are careful and you scrub the clothes one at a time to make sure they are clean.  Now you can let go of the stopper and rinse the clothes.  I rinsed them one a a time to make sure all the soap got out.  Then you spread a towel on the floor.  You wring out the clothes by twisting them tightly to squeeze out as much water as possible.  If the item is large, like Andy's t-shirt, it takes two people to do the wringing.  Then you lay the garments on the towel, roll it up and this helps dry them a little more.  Finally you hang them  on hangers from the clothesline that my ingenious husband designed with loops tied in it to hold the hangers.  Any leftovers are left to dry flat in the window where the sun does its magic.  The next day the clothes are clean and dry!