Jeff - Day 17 – Return to California

Jeff – Sunday, November 01, 2009

Day 17 – Return to California

Yeah – we skipped day 16. You don’t really care about the details for our return trip through London. We had dinner with friends in Surrey, and they put us up for the night. Thanks, you guys!

I’m starting this update while on our final segment on the way home – Boston to SFO, where a friend will pick us up. I am absolutely exhausted again – we woke up at 11 PM PST in London, and we get home around 11 PM – almost exactly 24 hours of travel with car time to and from the airports.

Now we get to the next phase – preparation for the return trip to bring our daughter home! The plan is to fly into Donets’k on Monday night. Tuesday morning starts with a sunrise drive (two hours) to Mariupol, where we get Nastiya, the new birth certificate, and the court resolution. Then another car ride straight back to Donets’k (the capitol of the “oblast”) to get a new passport. If all goes well with that process, then Tuesday ends with a flight to Kiev. Wednesday and Thursday are spent with the US Embassy to get a visa to bring Nastiya to the US. Leave a little buffer and head home on Friday afternoon.

Sue and I had made the decision early on that she would go back alone to get Nastiya. Our son did a masterful job of jumping from one family to another while we were away – he stayed with three different families. But it was tough on him. So one of us goes and one of us stays. Sue would really love to push this task off on me – imagine getting right back on a plane less than seven full days from now to again spend 30+ hours traveling, spend 3 days and then do it all over again. This time with a 10 year old girl who will be speaking VERY limited English. I’ve done the world travel enough that I have the experience with the endurance required for this, but we really both know that Nastiya will far prefer coming home with Momma – she could find the idea of four days of travel with Papa to be fairly daunting experience. So Sue goes back.

This does add a wrinkle however. There are two places where both parents are required. The first is in Mariupol for the receipt of either the birth certificate or the court records – I wasn’t clear on exactly which. The other is the Embassy – they need two documents signed by both parents. Fortunately, both of these will take a power of attorney instead of a physical appearance by both parents. But of course the power of attorney for the court in Mariupol needs to be both notarized and apostilled. This means I need to create all three of those documents, get them notarized, and get the one apostilled – all this week before Sue goes back. The good news is I know how to do this now! Not a big deal after the previous paper chase, but one more hurdle.

We’re dying to get that little girl home where she belongs!

Probably not much to say this week – and as Susie will be going back herself, check back on trip 2 next week! She leaves again on Sundy (hint hint to anyone who has stuff to send to kids over there!)

Notes to those who are traveling (the rest of you can ignore this section):
1) The phone that was loaned to us started just powering off sporadically, so our interpreter loaned us her spare razor. After the fact, we had a good laugh – Sue has a razor. We could have just swapped sim cards in her phone.
2) REMEMBER: 0001 to call the US – with three zeros an 18 minute call cost me about 70 grivna (9 bucks). The normal international method cost me about 470 grivna – almost 60 bucks – for about 15 minutes.
3) I blogged about the internet card – Sasha will have it when we’re done next week. If you take a laptop, you can use that card. If someone is going in November, there’s still a fair amount of bandwith on the card. If later, then the card can be recharged the same way the phone is – our interpreter helped me acquire the card and knows how to charge it. I recommend the 250 grivna plan – about $30 for 10 GB of bandwidth. Then keep an eye on the meter that starts on the connection utility. I was fairly careful about browsing and so forth – we only used about 500MB in a week, so you may be able to chose a cheaper plan. If you’re gonna use skye – get the 10GB plan!
4) Oh yeah – about our decision to fly. I still do not regret the choice to fly instead of taking the train. But in the spirit of full disclosure: when our court date pushed back a day and we needed to change the tickets, we had to pay a bit more. There was a scary moment where they said it was going to cost us an extra $100 per person, but they finally figured it out for about another $50 each - $150 total. So be ready for that if you do choose the flight option.