Jeff and Sue: Day 13 – Our first snag

Jeff – Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Day 13 – Our first snag

Well, this is the day to sit on pins and needles. Our facilitator in Kiev is awaiting the final signature for the approval from SDA. Everything else is done locally – all approvals from the inspector, the orphanage, Nastiya’s relatives, etc. The appointment is set for noon on Thursday. The schedule, if all works out: attend the court hearing at noon, run over to the orphanage for the farewell party, jump into a car and drive two hours to Donets’k, and catch a 6 PM flight back to Kiev. Pretty packed afternoon with a tight schedule. So today is preparation day – if all goes well.

We started off for the orphanage at around 9:15. The plan is that we hang with Nastiya while our interpreter prepares for the farewell party. We are the hosts for the party, but she is doing all the running around to get toys, food, and other treats. But when we get to the orphanage, Nastiya has left the building – she is at the hospital getting x-rays. One of the hurdles on the second trip when we come to get her is a medical exam required by the embassy. The plan is to have all the pre-work done now, so that all we need to do is hand over the x-rays and other documents to a doctor approved by the embassy, and thereby have a half-hour appointment instead of a three hour appointment to meet the requirements.

So, since Nastiya is out, we decide to go along on running some of the errands. Poor Sue has really been hit by something. She’s talking very quietly because of the congestion in her chest, and she’s very low energy. Mostly we just sit in the car and wait.

Back to the orphanage around 11ish – Nastiya joins us, and we get the OK for her to show us around her “pod” – where she lives. She takes us down the hallway where we’ve watched her disappear each trip, up a set of stairs, and into a set of large rooms. The first room is basically a narrow hallway lined with cabinets. Everything in these rooms has a place – this room is cabinets full of outer garments: sweaters, jackets, hats and shoes. The next room is part classroom, part lounge. Half the room is set up with a couch and chairs with a TV, VCR, and DVD player. The other half is desks and tables arranged with a central teachers area.

Through another door is a bedroom. There are bunkbeds against the outer walls – I think about 4 total (8 beds) – I didn’t count accurately. The center of the room consists of very small beds in rows – another group of about 8. They looked like doll beds to our eyes – the smaller children are not given full size beds. It makes sense, given the surroundings and amount of space available for all these children.

The lunchtime visit went about the same as before. Anastasia is getting more comfortable with us, and she’s trying more English as we spend time with her. Obviously it’s still just a smattering – about the same as our Russian. But the communication level is still high – she tries English, we try Russian, and we meet in the middle with non-verbal! Though she did out-stubborn me when I tried to get her to speak English later in the visit.

We also were surprised by another visit from Nastiya’s brother. He showed up about halfway through our visit. Sue gave him some envelopes so that he could write to his sister, and he even sat down and played Uno with us for a while. It was fun watching Nastiya teach her big tough 15-year old brother how to play Uno. He had a good time with it and enjoyed sticking me with a +4 every bit as much as his sister did!

When we left, Sue was still under the weather, so we stopped at the store and got some pork to cook lunch/dinner at home. Our interpreter showed up with chocolate treats again – looked like tiny little chocolate ice cream cones, but they were closer to chocolate covered cannolis. We waited for the call regarding the SDA approval. Our facilitator in Kiev finally called around 6 PM – bad news. The vice director was not in the office on Wednesday, so the forms were not ready.

Our initial plan had been to go to court on Thursday, head back to Kiev, and stop at the embassy on Friday. We’re pretty sure that Sue will be coming back alone to get Nastiya on the second trip, so there’s a form that I need to sign at the embassy. Now we won’t be able to do that. But our facilitator says that I can fill out that form in the US, and as long as it is notarized, we’ll still be OK. There is another form for the local authorities that I will need to get notarized and apostilled – it’s going to be an interesting week next week!

But the good news is that we are still scheduled to be home Sunday night! It has been an amazing trip, and I have really enjoyed the time here with my daughter. Now I have a son who needs some time as well It will be fantastic when both my kids are in the same house!


Sue – Wednesday, Oct 28th

Day 13 – No Early Departure…

Jeff has a great blog about yesterday! Although it’s not really a “snag”, we were just getting our hopes up that somehow we could get SDA approval in Kiev and get a court date in Mariupol one day early. But we are praying that at least we get a date for Friday early enough to leave on the 6pm flight back to Kiev.

My impression of the orphanage is very positive! The children’s areas are all very clean, very neat, and, like my Grammy used to say”... a place for everything, and everything in its place”. Anastasia was very proud and happy, showing us where her bed was (upper bunk), where her clothes go, and where the outer coats and shoes were… Each little shelf in the large “Ikea-type” cabinets were labeled with the child’s name, so they can keep their jeans, shirts, sweaters in a pile on that shelf. I think they share the shoes.

She had us take pictures of her and the women who are here caregivers. It is a warm and caring relationship; you can tell that these people truly care for these children. They were kind of silly when we met them, a combination of shy and excitedly curious.
G., from CA, guess who is in her little group? Yup, V. was in the group, and was playing nicely with another boy. He recognized us right away and came over to say hi! He is looking healthy and happy, and is also using a few English words. Jeff took pictures, so they will be going off to David to be sent – I think he sent some already, from earlier in the week. V. even looks like he has grown a bit. It’s amazing what a shining countenance one can have when one has hope and love, and he sure has one now! He is practically glowing!

As Jeff said, I have been knocked out with this stupid chest cold… in spite of taking vitamins, Airborn (vit C stuff), using hand sanitizer whenever there is no soap, getting around 8 hours sleep a night (mostly…), and trying to eat a balanced diet! So I’m peeved about that! At least, I do have the cold medicine, and I’m taking the Airborn several times a day to help chase it away. One thing I should let you know… the air in Mariupol is very, very smoggy. You can smell it when you leave in the morning, or if you open the window in the apartment. There are many, many factories here in Mariupol, and they run seven days a week. So, if anyone has allergies, asthma, or other respiratory issues, please bring your full arsenal of medicines with you! I get allergy shots weekly for three different things. I suspect that my allergies were irritated, and that opened up a pathway for whatever cold germs was flying around. And I had a bit of something that I shook right before I came, so I suspect my immune system was a little weakened. So if you have this type of tendency, like I do, bring the supplies!

While we’re on the subject, here’s what I brought: Vitamins, Airborn, Dayquil, Tylenol, Immodium, Tylenol Severe Chest Cold Stuff, Tylenol PM, Melatonin, prescription Ambien, hand sanitizer, tissues. We used the Ambien the first several nights, sometimes with the Melatonin, to try and overcome the jetlag. Otherwise, you wind up waking up at 3:00am, unable to get back to sleep. Now I am taking my cold medicine, and a melatonin, and I still woke up at 3, 4, 5am, but it was mostly my coughing and the chest cold keeping me up.

On the Ukrainian airplane coming here, there was a HUGE article about medicines here in Ukraine, and that up to 20 percent (yes, 20%) over the counter medicines on the shelves today is NOT what is labeled on it. There are big scams going on, where the pharmacies think they are buying the right thing, but whet they are getting is the “knock offs”, sometimes with nothing in it, and sometimes with “other ingredients” in it. I’d be happy to photocopy the articles, and David can forward it to the other families coming over. Antibiotics are the most faked medicine. So, just bring your own things with you.

Back to the orphanage. We enjoyed our trip upstairs, and I was very pleasantly surprised at the cheerfulness of the environment. Even the stairwells are painted with bright cheerful colors and murals of flowers, or animals. We enjoyed being able to go up, so we can make a memory book for Anastasia.

I am trying to interact with her without making her sick!! She keeps hugging me, and wanting to kiss me, but I don’t want her getting sick too. So we gave her her Halloween present – a Hannah Montana wig, and a Hannah Montana clip-on radio, with four songs, and a wire that goes to your head with a mike on it (it’s a toy). Well, this has been the biggest hit yet!! She loved wearing her Hannah wig, and had to run around showing the assistant director, the social worker, the other caregivers… We explained that it was like a “costume” for Halloween, and she understood perfectly! It was great seeing her dressed up, since it will be a year until we can celebrate Halloween with her, and everyone who knows us knows we do a BIG Halloween thing! So I got a huge thrill seeing my daughter in her first costume! And what little girl doesn’t like to “dress-up”? She was so cute! A little shy, but thrilled to be Hannah Montana.

I’m getting a little tired of the Green Room, but it was overcast, and with me so sick, I didn’t want to go outside. Jeff and Anastasia didn’t want to, either, since it looked like it could rain at any moment. The weather is now “normal”, cold and a little windy and damp and bitter. Feels normal for this region, the kind of weather I had expected originally. We had been “treated” to an Indian summer experience, and we really enjoyed it! So we had fun with her costume, she had fun showing everyone, and then we went to the … you guessed it… the green room! We brought her Uno Deluxe from back home, and she asked for another one, but the stores here do not have it. It’s a great game, because you can learn numbers and colors from each other, if you say the color and number each time you put it down (yes, I HAVE been known to be sneaky a time or two in my life…). I’m going to bring another Uno when I return, and we will definitely play this game at home. Have to think of others where you don’t need language, but can learn to count and speak some (Backgammon, Scrabble, Dominoes, Cribbage?).

Speaking of counting, I received some disappointing news. It turns out, best as I can tell, that the children here attend 1st, 2nd, 3rd grades, then they just skip 4th, and go right into 5th grade… so if your child is in 5th grade and up, just subtract one year from their grade. We tried having her do the “times” math problems, and she knew what it was, and how to do it, but could not come up with the right answer. While she knew 3x2=6, she did not know 7x3=21. We tried this for awhile, and basically, she does NOT know her multiplication tables. So I am going to get some old fashioned Flash cards, like my Mom had for me. Yes, we all hate to do it, but isn’t it nice when we memorize them, and it’s behind us.
This puts us on alert for what grade to put her in back home… she does get along with the younger children, but since she has a January birthday, she would be almost two years older than the average 4th grader. Some options would be to home school for the rest of this year, private tutors to catch her up, sticking her in the correct grade for her age, and summer school/tutors.

So we have much to think about! It is a joy to see her, but the overwhelming desire is for this chapter to be done with, and to get her home and all of us moving forward with our lives. I don’t like being away from Connor this long – I miss him so much! I have now missed all his band competitions this year!! Last year, I only missed the one last November when I went back east for my Aunt’s funeral, and one the first year for a dear friend’s wedding. I don’t like being away this long from him – we love him so much!
He is the center of our lives, him and his grades, the drumming lessons, the band competitions, the dinners at home. Oh, I really want to sit down at my own dinner table with my family again! I am missing Connor a lot!