6:35am. Phone vibrates. “Hello.” Oksana replies, “hey!” “Hi!” “Ready for adventure?” she asks. “Always!” I reply.

We headed out to meet our facilitators and the driver, to take us to Lyuda’s region. As we drove out of Kyiv, Oksana said, “say goodbye to the stores! You won’t be seeing them!” So, we drove out of Kyiv, on Ukrainian highways, ridden with potholes, bumping all the way.

At some point as we left the city limits, I realized I was not, in fact, ready for an adventure. I wanted to yell, “STOP, TURN AROUND AND TAKE ME TO THE AIRPORT.” It wasn’t about Lyuda or the adoption– but sitting down in the car, watching the world whiz by in a literal fog (heavy fog outside and foggy van windows), I realized that I’d left my comfort zone back in Kyiv. I share this because I think anyone going through the adoption process has moments where they want to slam on the brakes and do a u-turn. Moments of doubt are normal.

I felt better by the time we stopped halfway for a break, in a small city, which is both Oksana’s hometown and where N, our summer host child, lives.

I fell asleep in the van and every time I woke up, the roads seem to be getting more snowpacked and smaller. The kind of roads we take at home to go to a remote campground or park, not the kind we drive on for 100 miles. Finally, we reached the town where we’ll be staying and we picked up the regional social worker.

We drove another 30+ minutes to the school/internat (orphanage). I saw a few boys I “knew” from hosting listings. The children were between classes and clearly fascinated that we were there! This first visit wasn’t at all like with Reed and Lena, or with Gus. We weren’t given any additional information on Lyuda. Instead, they simply checked our papers and called her in. She gave us both big hugs.

We sat around awkwardly for a few minutes, chatting, before I asked Aaron to go get the cards from the van. I let Lyuda pick which game, Uno or Skipbo and the social worker joined us too! I was glad she played with us, instead of just observing. Meanwhile, one of our facilitators helped her with the rules and the other and the orphanage psychologist observed us (a little bit awkward).

We only stayed for one game of Skipbo. Our facilitator need to get back to the town where we are staying to complete some documents. We said, “see you tomorrow” and headed out.

We spent the rest of our evening in our hotel room. I’ve worked. We’ve watched Doctor Who. We got room service (because the heat isn’t on in the hotel restaurant– we may be the only guests right now), which was a whopping $10 (for two bottles of water, and 4 dishes + a tip).

Tomorrow, we will visit Lyuda again in the afternoon, and we will have some paperwork. We need to make a decision about how long we’ll stay here in this small town. I believe we could leave tomorrow if we wanted, but we can stay as long as 6 days. We are leaning towards staying the full time.

Hopefully, we’ll have a longer visit with more photos tomorrow.

Today was good. The first news was that we wouldn’t have any delays– we would be able to pick up Lyuda’s referral in the evening.

My Ukrainian teacher took us on a little walk around the City Centre. We walked by the churches we saw yesterday (St. Sofia’s, St. Michael’s and St. Andrew’s) and half way down the Andriyivskyy Descent before we decided that we might be risking life and limb with how snow packed the sidewalks were and how steep the hill is. The Andriyivskyy Descent is an old, historic street which is lined with art galleries and people selling souvenirs. I think it would be a very interesting place to visit when it’s not covered with ice.

After we visited that area, we went to see the Golden Gate— a historic wooden gate in the middle of the city. We then walked down Kreschatyk, up a side street lined with performing arts– the philharmonic, a movie theater and a theater for plays. We walked up to the back of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, which unfortunately was closed off to visitors. We also saw the Gorodetsky House, which is right next to the Rada building.

After we said goodbye to Sveta, we met with Oksana, one of our facilitators, briefly to pay for their services (they wanted to wait until we had resolved the issues I mentioned yesterday) and also discuss our plans for tomorrow.

After Oksana left, we had a bit of time before heading to pick up the referral papers. I wanted to get a few things I hadn’t seen at the small grocery store nearby, so we planned an excursion. We decided to take the metro to a large store (imagine Costco size/style, but not buying items in bulk). We used to shop at this same chain when we were here during Reed and Lena’s adoption.

First stop was purchasing tokens for the metro. I had read in a guide book to simple say how many you wanted and hand them the money– each trip is 2UAH each, which is about 8 cents. So, a round trip ride will cost you a whopping 16 cents. I managed purchasing the tokens and despite me saying how many I wanted in Ukrainian, she confirmed in English. Lesson of the day: my accent always instantly exposes that I’m an American.

The metro was not too exciting, except that the tunnels down to the station are like entering the center of the earth. It made me a bit nervous, but I still took a few pictures.

We got off at a stop which is a market– it’s full of little stands selling everything you might want. This isn’t souvenirs, like by St. Andrew’s Church. This is clothes, food, even a little salon for manicures. When we cut through an underground tunnel, like the kind I showed a picture of yesterday, I felt a little extra pressure on my bag. I pulled it in front of me, but Aaron asked if I had still had everything, as he was a few steps behind me and saw the entire thing. Three teenager girls tried to reach into my bag. They didn’t take anything, but it was a good reminder to be vigilant.

Ashan, the big store, was fun. I was a bit like a kid in a candy store– everything was quite cheap. I failed my attempt at asking if they had the first Hunger Games book, but I’m going to assume that the sales associates hadn’t read the Hunger Games, so they had no idea what I meant when I held up the second book and said, “first book?”.

After Ashan, we decided to take the Metro back and get off a stop early. We had a bit of time before our SDA paperwork pickup, but I was hoping to buy some traditional Ukrainian clothing for Reed, Lena and Gus at the shops outside the SDA. When we got off, I realized that we were at the bottom of Andriyivskyy Descent, not the top. For a moment, I was exhausted at the thought of making out way up, but then I turned and saw the Funicular. The Funicular is on my Kyiv bucket list and I was excited to have this perfect opportunity to ride it.

So, what’s the Funicular? It’s a little cable car that carries you to the top of Andriyivskyy Descent– up a very steep hill. That guy is not jumping under it– they were shoveling snow off of the tracks and the steps on either side.

The Funicular dropped us off at the back of St. Michael’s church, which is just a short walk to the SDA building by St. Andrew’s church (yes, there are a lot of beautiful churches in close proximity). Our SDA meeting was easy. The woman who we met with yesterday is nice and speaks English very well. I asked her if many families came without their facilitators and she said, no, we were brave. Ha! But, it was not a big deal at all. She thanked us again for the pictures of Reed and Lena, saying they were right by her keyboard and they looked so happy, healthy and American.

And, drum roll please… we got the official letter needed to see Lyuda with the intent to adopt her!

After we had the papers, we headed back to our apartment to drop off the papers before we had one last adventure. I wanted to go to the book store to pick up another book for Lyuda in Ukrainian. We had another small language confusion, but there was an English speaking woman at the bookstore who helped us find what we needed.

I wanted to go to the top of the mall that overlooks the Maidan. More stairs, but it’s a lovely view at the top. It’s hard to believe that there was a violent revolution here two years ago. Until you see the man collecting money for soldiers and all of the big signs asking to help the soldiers. It’s a sobering reminder that the war is still going on.

Oksana had strongly recommended a restaurant, Puzata Hata (“Fat House”), for us to try. This was our last stop for the night and we loaded up Ukrainian food. I picked a bunch of things, not sure what I’d like. I ended up only eating about a quarter of it, but Aaron ate the rest of my food and all of his.

If it sounds like we did a lot today… we did. We walked over ten miles. However, tomorrow will involve sitting in the car and lots of meetings, so I was glad to pack a lot into today. We’ll leave at 6:30 in the morning to drive the 4-5 hours to Lyuda’s region. We will meet with the regional social worker and then we’ll go to the orphanage where we’ll meet with the director and psychologist before we get to see Lyuda. It will be an interesting day!

This morning was our SDA appointment. We met our facilitator just outside of our apartment and then we walked to the SDA. We are less than a mile away, but it was almost entirely uphill in the snow. And, Ukrainians walk very fast. It was exhausting!

The SDA appointment itself was a bit disappointing. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was hoping for more information.. I didn’t get the more information I wanted. Instead, we learned some information that may require some extra paperwork and delays. Or very possibly, it’s all fine and we’ll be back to things as usual tomorrow.

We had lunch with our facilitation team at a restaurant decorated like it’s a flash back to Soviet times. It was both cute and strange… very strange.

After we said goodbye to our facilitation team, I wanted to walk around and take some photos. It was snowing heavily, but our time in Kiev is limited.

This is the Maidan, Independence Square, where the revolution occurred in 2013/4.

This picture is taken at 180 degrees from the above one. The furthest building on the left is where our apartment is.

On the left, these tunnels that cross under major streets are very common. We used them frequently in Donetsk and in Moscow. On the right: I’ve made a hobby of reading signs in Ukrainian as we walk. Often, restaurant or store names are English words transliterated. This one, “каркас” or carcass, sounds less than appealing to this vegetarian.

We walked up the hill towards the churches. On the left, is St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery in the distance. On the right is St. Sophia’s cathedral. I wanted to head down to St. Sophia’s to see if the Christmas tree was still up– it was not. I’m guessing we just barely missed it, as you can see it’s base in the bottom middle of the picture– the red and gray blocks.

At this point, we headed back to our apartment. We’d done about five miles of walking and it was still snowing.

A ton of people were waiting for the trolleybus as we walked back– I couldn’t resist taking a picture.

Tomorrow, we should know if we’ll have any delays, or if we can pick Lyuda’s referral up in the evening. If we can, we will head to her region and see her on Wednesday. If we cannot, we will need to get some new papers sent from the US and I’m not sure how long that will take.