Day 12

Still another mostly uneventful day.  We had Yarek's goodbye party today even though I won't be able to spring him from the internat until Friday or Monday.  I sure hope it's Friday.  I am so ready to go home it's not funny.  Speaking of Friday(s), thanks C and JB for the info on where Friday's and Papa John's are in Kiev!

The funny thing about Yarek's party, was he was ready to have it all to himself!  I brought four big bags of chips, six or eight small bags of candy and three 2 liters of soda and set them out on the table in the common area between the bedrooms.  He brought two chairs and kept trying to get me to sit in the less rickety of the two.  It wasn't until I said, "Don't you have any friends?" that he got the idea and went and invited a bunch of other kids to come.  I made sure to tell him to save some for T and K, but he opted to jump up and go out and find them right away.  Good news for K, her ankle is doing much better, no more cast and no more crutches!

Thirty minutes later the chips sat unopened, one bottle of soda had been drunk and every bag of candy had been opened and half of them were empty.  The kids decided to save the rest for the evening after dinner.  Then they changed their minds and kept eating it!

I brought two soccer balls, which were discussed profusely by the boys who also examined every inch of them.  How much did they cost, they wanted to know.  None of your beeswax!  (Unfortunately I can't translate that yet.)  Apparently they passed inspection, but no one wanted to take them out of the plastic bags they were in.  They wanted to keep them pristine as long as possible, I guess.

The 3 in 1 game was an immediate hit.  It only took a few seconds to decide they wanted to play checkers, then chess.  At least six boys crowded around the little board; two of them played against each other while the other four gave hints and tips to whomever they wanted to win.

J and D, I don't know if I will be able to see T again, or not.  If I do, do you want me to leave your phone number with her in case she can call you from someone else's cell phone?  Try sending me a text message, it's the quickest way to get me info.  If you can't do it from your phone, maybe ask S or T if they can send it from their phone.  S replies to most of my texts, so I know she knows how to do it.

We still haven't gotten Yarek's dad's info.  I don't know who has it, but I will make sure to ask before I pick him up for the last time.  My new facilitator is Ser.  He will be here tomorrow morning around 9am.  He called me just a few minutes ago to tell me that he had spoken to someone at the court, and she said whoever needs to do our paperwork won't be available until 11am.  He wants to go there as soon as they open anyway, and be a thorn in their sides until they give us the decree.  Who knows, maybe we'll get it at 10am instead of 11am?  Then the drive to Donetsk begins!  Maybe after lunch, though.  Boy, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.  Another hot meal!

When I left the internat today, I told Yarek that I may not be by tomorrow to see him.  He seems very fine with that; especially when I told him that I would be doing paperwork tomorrow.  He wanted to know if I would be signing him out tomorrow, I told him no, but soon.  At least he didn't ask about the Ukrainian cell phone today.  He's still very concerned about new tennis shoes, though.

Gotta go lurk in blogland now.

Natalie

TX

Day 11

Not a bad Day 11, it's just that I can't pick up the court decree till Thursday.  It's been warmer lately, almost all of the snow and muck is gone, replaced with mud now.  Even the sun tried to peek out from behind the clouds for a few hours, then the clouds were back with a little bit of rain for everyone.  Just because we need more moisture here, I guess.

I took some of the clothes that I had brought for Yarek over to the internat today.  I gave a couple of sweatshirts and one pair of pants to the deputy director and told her to keep them for the kids.  The sweatshirts won't be needed in 70+ degree weather in Houston and the pants, well you can't play soccer in them, so Yarek doesn't want them.  They're heavy blue dress pants.  They'll get much more use out of them at the internat anyway.  But, we did keep the jeans, two button down shirts and the Texans sweatsuit that I brought him.  Good thing the jacket fits, he'll be wearing it till we get home.

Yarek keeps asking me if I have new tennis shoes for him.  The answer is still yes, but he seems to think I'll bring them by the internat for him to wear immediately.  NOT!  I only have one pair of shoes left for him and I would like to have a pair for him to wear on Friday (which I hope is Gotcha Day).  He also keeps asking for a Ukrainian cell phone.  He wants one that takes pictures and plays music.  I told him he could take as many pictures as he wants with my camera and that I will think about getting him an MP3 player at home, if he does good in school and earns it.  He seems very concerned that the American MP3 player will not be able to play songs in Russian or Ukrainian.  He thinks computers only know one language.

Two neato/weird things happened this weekend.  Weirdo thing number one was the power went out at about midnight Sunday night.  That was kind of freaky, since I was still awake.  It was absolutely pitch black in the hotel room.  Even darker than at work.  Luckily I was the only person on the second floor, so even though I could hear people below me, no one came upstairs while the lights were out.  The power stayed off until about 2am.  Then, one of the hotel employees came upstairs and checked each of the empty rooms to make sure everything was okay.  They didn't bother me, I guess they thought I was sleeping.

Second neato thing that happened was I got so bored that I turned the TV on and found an English channel!  Woo hoo!  Channel 48 (here) is called English Club.  They teach English to anyone who watches, they also play movies in English without any of that nasty "dubbing" (ie - shouting) they do with other movies.  They are still not able to match up the video with the audio.  Kind of like those bad dubbed Japanese movies of our childhood, people's mouths moving with no sound coming out and sound when they shut their mouths.  They have a website where they sell DVDs, but I haven't checked it out yet:  www.english-club.tv  I'll have to get Yarek watching it when we get to Kiev.

Other than that, nothing much.  Just biding my time and running out of plastic bags to put my trash in.  We'll have the going away party tomorrow whether they want to or not, I'm bringing a bag of candy/chips/soda and a bag of soccer balls and a game.

Talk at ya later.

Natalie

TX

Happy International Women's Day

Not that today has been any different than the last five weeks, really.  Yesterday I made the trek to the big outdoor market to buy more soccer balls. As I was walking there, almost every man that passed me in the other direction had a bunch of flowers and/or a gift for the special woman in his life.  Economy, shmaconomy, those flowers must be bought!

The guy at the toy place where I bought the soccer balls thought I was nuts to buy two of them, but he didn't complain when I pulled out the cash.  Together they cost about $11.  Just 10 griven more a piece than the busted one from Saturday.  It's well over 24 hrs now and neither of those has busted yet.  Bill opined that maybe they had filled the other ball outdoors in the cold and the air expanded in the heat of the hotel room.  Yes, he still agrees that I am a professional buster of balls, even from halfway across the planet.

I talked briefly to Ig on Saturday afternoon as well.  It turns out he is not flying out of the country just yet, his wife has an issue she has to deal with.  However, he needs to stay in Kiev to help her, so N will be coming down this week to finish up the paperwork down here with me.  Another brief delay, in that the decree will not be ready tomorrow as it should have been.  I will have to wait until Thursday to pick it up.  It seems they could not complete the paperwork before the beginning of the holiday weekend.  Ig is still optomistic that we can complete all of our stuff here in region on Thurs and Fri, so we could be on a train to Kiev either Fri night or Sat.

With that in mind, I decided to move Yarek's going away party to Wed night.  He seems okay with that.  I told him either Thurs or Fri I will sign some paperwork for S, and he will leave the internat forever. He seems even more fine with that news.

Last night I was finally able to figure out how to move over 150 photos from my camera to my MacBook (Macs don't talk well with Sonys it turns out).  So, this afternoon, I took my computer over to the internat to show Yarek and his friends the pictures I had taken and the new videos he had recorded over the weekend.  Move over Squirty, I think he wants to bring Spoongnik with him to America.  Cute little dog, kind of a super miniature version of Goofy, but NO MORE DOGS!!!  Thank you!

While I was showing the photos to Yarek, we came across a picture of his friend Kolya.  Without my even asking why I had not seen him in weeks, Yarek told me that Kolya has run away from the internat!  He's only 13 yrs old.  Please pray that he is safe, warm and fed.  Yarek does not know why he ran away or where he went.  I fear that if he is found, he will be sent to someplace much worse than this internat.  From what I read, many of them are worse than S's internat.

Natalie

TX

Busted

The new soccer ball I just bought this morning, that is.  I had to walk to the grocery store to exchange some more money, so I decided just to visit the smaller of the two open markets.  I was looking for a soccer ball and maybe something else that I could leave with Yarek's friends at the internat.  Imagine my surprise when I saw a very nice looking soccer ball for only 35 griven!  The ones at the bigger market cost 65 griven.  So, I thought I would save a few dollars and buy the cheap one.  I also got them a three in one game thingy of chess/backgammon/checkers.  I decided to just walk back to the hotel, instead of visiting the other market as well.  I really didn't want another two hour walking day.  About thirty minutes after I was back at the hotel, I heard a loud "BANG!" almost like a gunshot.  I looked down at the bag and the innards of the new soccer ball were now the outtards.  They must have pumped it up too much and the cheap outer skin could not contain the inner tube.  Dagnabbit!  Now I have to walk to the bigger market tomorrow morning and buy another one.  Maybe I'll buy two this time, just in case.  The ball only cost me about $4.50, but it's the principal of the thing.  It's probably best that the ball self-destructed in the hotel room and not ten minutes after I gave it to the boys.  If it was that unstable it definitely would not have lasted more than one kick from the bigger boys.

Other than that, not much to report.  Warmer today, but only up to about 40 degrees.  Houston, I hate you right now.  I could be home in 80 degree weather, but no, not me.  Oh, and the sun went into hiding again.  They are predicting clouds and rain for the next few days.  

Because of the ball busting episode (too bad I wasn't the one doing the busting; Bill says I'm a professional), I will have to have Yarek's goodbye party on Monday.  If I get up in enough time tomorrow, I'll go buy the soccer balls and then walk to the grocery store for some chips, candy and soda.  Only two or three bottles at most.  I'm not carrying back more soda than can fit in my  backpack.  It hurts too much to carry heavy stuff in the plastic bags I have.

Counting down the days.  Hope to be out of here on Wednesday night and maybe out of Ukraine by Thursday the 19th.  Oooh!  Maybe I'll be in Kiev for St Patty's Day!  I'll have to make sure to celebrate it at that pub up the street from Independence Square.  I'm drawing a blank on the name right now.

Gotta go, time running out.

Natalie

TX

I have my own Camalyot and you don't!

Camalyot (airplane).  Fighter airplane to be exact.  Okay, so it's only about nine inches long and it's made out of paper, but so what?  Yarek gave it to me the second I walked into the internat today.  My first, 'I made it for you, Mama' gift!  That gave me a chance to ask about the other airplane we had given him for Christmas that he insisted on bringing back with him.  It was a small remote control plane made out of laminated cardboard.  Apparently it didn't survive the trip.  I just hope this one makes it back in more or less one piece.

I have been thinking of having a going away party for Yarek.  I think Monday might be best, even though it's International Women's Day.  I think Tuesday and Wednesday might be too busy with driving back and forth to Donetsk and Luhansk for the birth certificate and passport, after we pick up and proof read about a dozen copies of the court decree, of course.  I guess I may run out of time to go to the director's house, like she invited me.  Unless we do it one of the next four days, it's probably not gonna happen.  I sure hope we're done and on the train Wednesday night.

I also hope Yarek's pants still fit him.  The ones I gave him to wear to court are a little bit tight right now (maybe it's all the candy, chocolate and bananas I keep bringing).  I'm sure he'll be in a size 16 before we know it.

Oh, and I got my first and second, "I love you, Mama" yesterday and today.  Just out of the blue as I was leaving.  Not like I haven't said it to him before, but this is the first time he's said it to me (not counting saying it after I have already said it to him).  The first one came almost immediately after I told him we could be in TX in two weeks.  Maybe.  Hopefully.

More good news on the home front, when I called Bill on Wednesday, he was in my car on the way back from Man's Best Friend.  He had just dropped off the Goofball for two weeks of intensive doggy school!  And they didn't even flinch when Bill asked for a discount since this was the third dog we've brought to them.  The manager said it now costs almost $1500 for their lifetime program (what we did with the other two dogs, Miko and Squirt), but that he would have no problem charging us the $1100 it cost us to have Squirt trained three years ago.  To top it all off, Bill didn't even have to pay him anything to drop our now 111 lb yellow lab off!  The assistant who took Goofy back to the kennels said, "That's one strong dog!" when he came back up front.  Well, no sh*t, Sherlock, he's 111 lbs, and over 5 and a half feet long from head to the base of his tail.  He's pudgy, not really fat, yet.  I think he's one of those big boys who really should weigh about 100 lbs full grown.  I just wish he'd stop growing.  He's already over two inches taller (standing on all four paws) than our 10yr old lab, also a male.

Excellent news on the home front came yesterday when I talked to Bill.  He is finally seeing some work flow through from his new venture.  He decided to cut out the middle man and become the boss of his own crew installing satellites.  He took a management job from a guy last year (doing pretty much the same stuff), and his boss royally screwed things up, to the point of not paying about 10 guys right before Christmas.  Bill was the one really handling the day to day problems.  He did not handle payroll, though.  So, he contacted his boss's boss (or something like that) and asked what he would need to do to take over his boss's job.  So, a couple of months, a partner and some liability insurance later, here we are.  His crew got 24 installations assigned on their first day of work.  Installations pay a lot more than service calls.  Bill got a reputation for handling the difficult calls last year after the hurricane came through, so it seems somebody higher up in the company likes him.  I hope this trend continues.  Bill says he would like to get 100 jobs per day and have about 10 subcontractors working for him.  Cool.  He can pay the bills for once, and I'll make the fun money! 

Natalie

TX

Another Day of Sunshine

That makes 5 out of 33 days.  So, I took another, shorter walk today and just went to the big market by the courthouse.  I took a short detour of about half a block to take a photo of a building I like and then I walked into the "reenok," aka the market.  Most of the vendors were not there today.  I guess they just mostly work weekends.  Some of those that were there were packing up right around lunch time.  I wonder if they were just packing up for lunch or was business not so good, so they packed up for the day?  I was able to buy a notebook (because I forgot to bring one with me and I want to take some notes from my Bradt Travel Guide and give y'all some history lessons one of these days) and some new wristbands for Yarek.  Don't know why he wanted new wristbands, but they only cost about $1.25 or $1.50.  Then I just walked back to the hotel for a few minutes before my driver came to pick me up.

It's funny how if the sun is shining, these kids want to be indoors and if it's cloudy and snowing they want to be outdoors.  Today we just watched a few videos I took last year of me walking Miko and Squirt on one of the trails in our neighborhood.  The kids 'oohed' and 'ahhed' everytime the camera panned to the puppies.  Then we watched remote control car wars between Bill and Yarek over the holidays.  And then we watched a few minutes of drag racing from last year's stop in Houston.  I told Yarek that in about three weeks they would be back in Houston racing again.  He just looked at me like, "Okay."  Then I told him that maybe we could be home in about two weeks.  Maybe.  He seemed okay with that news.  I don't know if he knows he'll be sprung from the internat next week.  I haven't told him a definite date yet.  I'm not sure if we'll have time or need to pick him up on Tuesday, but we'll definitely need him on Wednesday for his passport photo.

T came in and wanted to call "Mama and Papa," so I let her.  Katya came in with her and spoke to K for a few minutes as well.  After Katya hung up with K, she asked to use my translator.  She couldn't get it to find the words she was looking for, so she just gave it back.  Luckily, I had my new notebook with me, so I gave her a pen and told her to "peesheesh."  Aka, write it down in English.  Her writing is beautiful compared to Yarek's.  I think he is a prime candidate to be a doctor some day.  I was heartbroken when I realized what Katya wrote.  She wanted to know if she could call the woman who hosted her over two years ago.  I knew who she was talking about, but I don't have their phone number.  I asked her if she knew it, but of course, she didn't remember it.  I felt so bad for her.  She must wonder what is going on if almost everyone else (except for S, and T) has been adopted away and not her.  I hope she gets a family soon.  She's a wonderful girl and she deserves it.  If we could've adopted two (or three in her case - I hear she's got a brother), we would definitely have chosen Katya.  She's a bit of a tomboy at heart, like me.

Sorry to end on such a sad note.  Got only a few minutes to go lurk in blogland.

Natalie

TX

Sunshine Again!

I figured it out today, I've been here about 32 days and I've seen the sun three times.  There's still lots of snow on the ground and some slush and lots of ice, but at least the sun was shining.

I took another two hour walk this morning.  I didn't really plan on it, but I had to go to the store to exchange some money (that's about 3 miles all by itself).  Since it was so nice out, I decided to take my camera with me and get some pictures of statues and some of the homes and buildings that I like.  Unfortunately, they are in the opposite direction from the store.  I knew that the clerk takes lunch from about 1:30 until 2:30 each day, so I went there first.  I didn't want to be late and out of grivna.  Then I walked back toward the hotel and kept going past the Lucky Blues, where I would normally turn left.  I kept walking up the main street, past the street you turn up to go to the courthouse and walked one more block to the street that leads to the internat.  I turned left there and took several photographs of a statue in a park of a woman and also the theater building right across the street.  Then I continued walking down that street until just past the street the driver usually takes from the hotel.  There is another small park just as you make the turn on the right hand side.  There is a statue of some guy who lived in the 1800s.  I don't know what his name is because his name sign has fallen off.  I also took a picture of two small snowmen someone made on either side of the statue.  They're the only two snowmen I've seen in the weeks of snow here.  Then I just went back up the street and turned toward the hotel.  I was going to take a picture of the rich guy's house, but there were several people standing nearby and I didn't want to look suspicious.  Again, total distance about 6-7 miles and just under two hours.

I got back to the hotel just in time to shower and change clothes for the orphanage.  While I was on my walk, someone driving up from behind began tooting their horn, so I turned out of curiosity.  It was my favorite driver (who takes me to the internat most days)!  He's really nice, and he seems to know everyone in town, but I don't know his name.  He sits in the car and waits for me; several kids get in the car each day just to talk to him.  He's kind of like a father figure for them.  Just today, as we were leaving he told me they were all really good kids there.  That's somewhat of an unusual statement, as I've been told that many people here believe there is something wrong with the kids at the internat.  Too bad, they don't know what they're missing.

Today we tried to play one of the video games on my computer.  It's some blow it up blast mine thingy where you try to get this little yellow square dude from one side of the screen to the other by blasting him around things.  You only get one shot, and he screams the whole time he is airborne.  We still have not successfully gotten him where he needs to go.  Then we spent some time watching videos of Yarek and some of the other kids trying to break dance and then some videos from TX of Yarek riding a bike.  Yesterday I got the exquisite pleasure of watching the boys play soccer in the snow.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Soccer in the snow.  It's quite interesting.  No one goes inside dry.

News from the home front - Bill tells me Goofy is trying to be Mr A-One Dominant Dog in the house.  Everyone else is okay with that (the dogs, that is).  The problem is Goofy doesn't seem to get the signal that the other dogs are clearly giving off of, "It's okay, be the alpha dog!  I don't care, just leave me alone!"  Seems Mr. Goofball needs a couple of weeks at Man's Best Friend.  I asked Bill to call them and find out how much it costs.  We'll see.  I'm guessing it's at least a grand, but my sanity is worth more than that.

Gotta go lurk in blogland now and check on prices for tickets home.

Natalie

TX