We arrived in Kiev early this morning. Here's a semi-brief recap of the last few days:
Thursday 03/12th:
S arrives early morning and calls the court where they tell him paperwork will not be ready until afternoon, maybe 1pm at earliest. They've had two extra days to get it done, what's the delay now? So, S, being the ever resourceful facilitator, goes to the local market, buys some chocolates and flowers and puts a little incentive in a card, returns to the court and asks to see the clerk. She graciously accepts his gift and says she could maybe get the decree finished by 11am. Better than nothing. At 10am, S and I head over to the court just in case they're done early. By 11:15am we had the copies of the court decree and were off to the races. Err..., off to the potholes, I mean. He asked a taxi driver for the quickest way to get to Donetsk and the road that driver told him to take would've made any rust-belt state mortified to claim as its own. It took almost three hours to get there. Most of our time was spent stopping so that opposite direction traffic could run the gamut of potholes and then we would go the exact opposite way. When you see a semi-trailer truck driving off the road on purpose to avoid the potholes, you know it's serious.
We were able to get everything done that day in Donetsk, which was good, but nothing else. We got Yarek's new birth certificate and another document (I can't remember which one) that had to be done there, got everything properly notarized, etc. We had to get some new documents signed by the internat director before we left, so S used that opportunity to take a digital picture of Yarek for both his new passport and his visa here in Kiev; we had them developed while we waited for other documents to be finished/notarized in Donetsk. By that time it was after 5pm, so we stopped to get food (for the first time that day) and then took a different way back to Stakhanov. Definitely much a better road that time, although it still took 3 hours. We got back around 9pm, went to the hotel and inquired about the restaurant being open. One of the two restaurants was open and we got some more much needed food before crashing at the hotel.
Friday 03/13/2009:
No longer known as Friday the 13th, but now as GOTCHA DAY!
We got up early again on Friday and were at the market before 8am for coffee and a danish looking thingy. Unbeknownst to me, the last food I would have for over 12 hours. After that we went to the passport office at about 8:30am where they looked over our documents, told us they needed a paper stating that Yarek (with his new surname) studied at the internat (and therefore qualified for a Ukrainian passport - reasonable, I thought); also needed his old passport returned and the new tax ID number that we would get for him later. Se. called Sa. at the internat, told them what we needed, and we made another trip up there, without bringing Yarek back with us. We did see Yarek and told him that we would be back later in the day to take him home forever. He seemed to have an ongoing party with his buddies after that - riding bikes instead of going to class, horsing around, etc. We got the couple of documents we needed at the internat, but when the question of his old passport came up we hit a snag. It seems it was lost in Kiev last January when they came back from their last hosting trip. Even if it was found immediately, it wouldn't be here until Saturday morning at the earliest. Se called the passport office and found out Sa could come down and sign a statement that the passport was lost and they thought they could still issue a new one the same day, but not in Stakhanov. That office closed at lunchtime and the workers went to Lughansk to deal with paperwork there every Friday. They promised to wait for us to get the tax ID number, and then take the paperwork to Lughansk with them; we would then pick the passport up in Lughansk and take the train from there to Kiev on Friday night. Well, that was the plan, anyway.
As soon as we were done at the passport and tax ID offices, we sped up to the internat to spring Yarek forever. That was about noon on Friday. Just as we got there, Se got a phone call. He had to go back to his other family (remember, he was just filling in for me in an emergency), because they now had an emergency! Poor guy! The only thing left for me was to sign Yarek out of the internat and then go to Lughansk to pick up his passport and blood work info (that had been done two weeks earlier), then hop on a train to Kiev. Se asked me if I would be comfortable having the taxi driver that has taken me around for the last 5 weeks help with that portion of the adoption (assuming he was willing to do so). I said, absolutely (it was the same driver I menioned a few posts ago about how much he loved the kids and they loved his visits so much they would come running over when the taxi pulled up with huge smiles on their faces). His name is G. So, Se called G and G agreed very quickly. Se told him he would also have to help me buy the train tickets. No problem. Only 15 minutes after we got back to the hotel with Se, G was there to take us away again, so no lunch for Mama or Yarek.
Off we were to Lughansk, quickly we had two 1st class tix on Fridays train, then Yarek's bloodwork results and off to the passport office. G told me to stay inside the taxi (because half our luggage was visible in the back seat), and he took Yarek into the office to pick up his passport. Thirty minutes go by, nothing. Forty five mintues, I'm still by myself. Almost an hour later, Yarek and G come out - no passport. It seems that the letter Sa wrote about the lost passport was faxed to Kiev and dated Friday; therefore they could not issue the new one on the same date as the faxed letter. It was possible (hint, hint) that they could issue it on Saturday (yes, they're open Saturday), but probably not until Tuesday. G got Se on the phone for me and he told me he'd talked to the people and the passport office and they told him absolutely no way would we have it Friday. After several phone calls from G to Se and several phone calls to/from several other people, it was found out that Yarek's lost passport was lost no more. It was put on the evening train from Kiev to a town nearby Stakhanov and would arrive at 9am Saturday morning. The passport office agreed that if we turned in the old passport, that they would have the new one ready sometime on Saturday. So, back to Stakhanov we went. Hungry, too. Starving, actually. It was now about 6pm and no food for 10 hours for any of us.
Our driver, G, is priceless. He spent most of the hour drive back on the phone alerting the hotel that we would be back for one more night (it was Friday night, and the local night club is right next door), telling his office that he needed to be back in the morning, calling Sa to let her know that she would be needed to pick up the old passport at the train station the next morning. Ten minutes later, Sa called back and said we would not be staying at the hotel that night, we were staying at her house and that was final! So, G drove us back to the internat where we met Sa and her hubby, V, and they drove us just a few minutes to there house. I don't know how she did it, but Sa set a table with more food than humanly possible in just over an hour. We enjoyed our selves and fell asleep before 10pm. Then it was up again early Sat morn, back to the train station (btw, I lost half the cost of Friday's tickets because I cancelled them just before the train took off) to get Yarek's passport, then over to Lughansk to the passport office. Just a few minutes after that, G was back out where he told me that it would be done at 1pm and something about an internet cafe. Funny thing was, I understood pretty much everything he was telling me (in Russian, of course), but I just couldn't understand what an internet cafe had to do with anything. So, on the phone to Se again, he explained that K wanted the documents emailed up to him to start their translation early. More griven given to G, and he had the stuff emailed to K less than an hour later. Then we went in search of food. We ate pizza at a roadside stand. Absolutely the worst pizza I've ever had. We still had an hour left when we got back to the passport office. So we waited and listened to music. At 12:30pm Se called and told G to go in early, just in case. By 12:45 I was upstairs signing paperwork saying that I had received Yarek's passport and we were off to the train station again.
When we got to the train station (3.5 hours early), G helped me buy the tickets, told the head of the station that I didn't speak much Russian and she promised to help us get our bags on board and show us where to stand when the train was due. NOT. The woman did absolutely nothing. I sure hope G didn't give her any of the 120 grivna tip I gave him. He really deserved it. I probably should have given him more. Yarek had a little emotional release right after G left. I guess it really sunk in that he was leaving forever. I tried to comfort him as best I could. Less than 30 minutes later he was done. I told him, with my little translator thingy, that leaving was hard. He actually smiled and said, "No, it's not." Everything seemed to be fine after that.
We got on the train by ourselves easily enough. I'll have another post about first class later. Promised Yarek 30 minutes ago that we'd go outside again, and he keeps reminding me, "Na oolitsa Mama!"
Natalie
TX
