Arrived in the Ukraine Monday around 1:30pm. The flights were not fun. I was on a 757 which did not have personal TV screens, just one big one in the isle and it had horrible shows on. I mean horrible. Not to mention, there were at least 5 screaming babies and toddlers all around me. I didn’t say a word, but the woman on my row going to Latvia via Frankfurt like me to Kiev, she was really ticked off! At LEAST we had an empty seat between us. Then there were the foreigners who had gas problems across from me which woke me up from the only 2 hours of sleep that I got on that and 8½ hour flight. It was disgusting, and if that wasn’t enough, the food was as my son Valera says, “terrible!!! I noa lika dat food and I noa lika da smell, it maka me sicka”. Then there was the flight to Kiev after the 2 hour layover, which they put me on the exit wing next to the flight attendant. But I had a drunk to the right of me, a 6’6” Ukrainian, reeked of Vodka and had 2 beers with his breakfast! He decided to take off his shoes as did the woman behind to my left and I almost threw up!! And I had to endure that the rest of the 2 ½ flight to Kiev!!!! It was your basic nightmare. I had to keep my hand covering my nose so I didn’t feel nauseous. Really, it was that bad. I kept looking back at her and over at him trying to get them to catch a clue by my covered nose that there was a problem here… Houston, we HAVE a problem!!!!!
It was good to see Dima’s cheerful face when I got through customs. He let me get settled while he had to run to the embassy for visa work for the kids being hosted. I had laid down to read, fell asleep and he returned about 1 ½ hours later, and woke me up with the bell to ring him up to the apartment. Then we left for the grocery store. I got some cheese, crackers and water since I had not eaten on the planes; well an old roll on the first leg and another on the second until the neighbors’ shoes went off!!
We got back to the apartment, set up my internet and phone and then he left. I was exhausted and fell asleep for about an hour. Then I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night, I lay in bed from 11pm Ukraine time until 7am.
My apartment is far from what Arlin and I had when we were here together in September for Valera. And, the back alley I have to use to get here, although I am right off the square, up the hill, it's a little tricky. Because it gets dark around 3:30pm here, I’m not allowed out after that- too dangerous alone, so what do you do all night?
I didn’t have a great night. I felt depressed, lonely, bad headache, missing Arlin, Valera, and of course CeCe, just wanted to go home, be home and NOT here, totally not into it this time, then I started feeling fearful. That was strange. Although when you walk in this building it looks like it has been through both WW I and WW II, ripped up floors, the elevator barely fits one person and it is completely torn apart, the stairs are concrete and missing large parts, the walls atrocious, it’s really bad. The floors are broken up tile- I was afraid to see the inside of the apartment.
Perhaps it’s not THAT bad, at least the bedroom and living room floors are the original wood flooring, the rest is rolling linoleum that needs to be ripped out. It’s clean, warm, and overlooks one of the main roads. Absolutely NO charm, architecture or otherwise here, this is not camera ready for a VERANDA MAGAZINE shoot, I promise you that.
But after our appointment at the SDA, all the ladies there remembered me from the last time, remember those lovely meetings, Luba and the ladies all screaming on the phone about the sibs while we were fighting for them? Yeah well, they all smiled and chuckled a bit as I entered the first office. We made it through the first meeting just fine.
Dima had a little “chatty chat” in the hall under his breath with the woman who prepares the papers to go to the Ministry head to assign court. She told Dima that it is not going well getting the head of this ministry to sign off on court. The best for me to do is to schedule it for January 6th to be sure that I am not stuck here waiting until the 30th. I pushed him to find out if there was ANY way we could get court next week like we did for Valera. As it stands, after all the changes the last 2 months with the new ministries etc… it’s all become more difficult. End of meeting, we return tomorrow at 4pm to pick up the paperwork and head down to Mariupol by plane at 9:30pm, arrive 10:30 pm and then a 2 ½ hour drive to the orphanage, expecting to arrive at 1:30am or so, and have to be at the inspector’s office at 8am. There’s no rest I tell you…
I asked Dima if I could run all his business errands with him today so I had something to do. He obliged after we stopped for coffee. I still had not had anything to drink all morning besides water. Thanks God for cappucino!
We actually had a good day, we did A LOT of walking and I mean a lot in addition to the subways and buses, but it was good. We went first to an administration office where i had to sit in what i presume they would call a lobby, waiting for him to do some official paper work having to do with the hosted kids. Then we went to some apartment buildings where his parents owned an apartment to pick up the rent; they live in southern Ukraine but rent this apartment out. For those of you who have lived in NYC, the “hood” apartment buildings by comparison look like those right off 5th avenue! Now these were REALLY bad. We stepped in the building after going thru the locked doors; all doors into apartment buildings have a door that looks like you’re entering a prison to get in. The smell was terrible. Dima said, “I know, hold your nose.” This is where he lived for several years while he was translating and working with another facilitator on adoptions. But now it’s rented out. And for those of us crying over the devaluation of our homes after the crash, this lovely "place" only cost them $78,000.00 pre-crash now worth $34k. And Dima added that his apartment building further northeast of the city was just like these. "Well, they don't have the smell that you have in this one maybe, but they are all the same." "Dima, you've GOT to be kidding me, there is no way that your apartment is like this!!" I said. "Of course, what do you think? We're used to it, this is how it is Deborah." I kept repeating the question, I just could NOT imagine. But this, as he insisted over and over, is just how it is in the Ukraine. Now the newer apartments they started in 2008 run for $250,000-350,00 but they are mostly sitting empty and unfinished since the crash he informed me. Those are the ones I liked, until he told me the price... for ONE bedroom apartments. Now I know what they run in NYC, but this is the Ukraine folks, not exactly herds of people stampeding to get in!
From there we went to the tax office to find out when his quarterly taxes were due. He said you can’t do anything by internet here; you have to personally show up. Since they change the laws so often on reporting, you have to go regularly to find out so you don’t miss the date and get fined, which he says happens often. Theses tax people feel “uppity” as he put it, and even when you ask for help, they tell you the wrong answer so you end up missing your deadline and being fined anyway. Hhmmm, think of that, government thinking they run the show???? Sound familiar?
From there, we headed over to another office, I can’t remember what that was for, but all of these are very far apart and take time to get to, by sub, bus and then walking… Finally, around 3pm, we stopped for lunch. Iwas hungry. I had not been feeling well all morning to this point. I think the fresh air, exercise, and company helped tremendously.
We had a good lunch and then headed to the embassy for more paperwork and a final passport for one of the kids being hosted.
We had lots of good conversation throughout the day. Oh we spanned church history, Ukraine history, language history of Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew, Sirylic, which came as I waited in one office for him and continued staring at the Russian writing on the wall behind the front desk girl, how uncanny it was that their alphabet had Hebrew characters and Greek characters included in their lettering… which led me to chat about the Hebrew language as I had learned from my Hebrew teacher back in the 80’s at the Jewish Community center, then on to Greek, of course, the discourse about how the bible was Hebrew and Aramaic, wondering how Russian got a mix of a few of these in it, and then how the New Testament was translated into the Greek Septuagint, then the Latin Vulgate… I just kept jumping around as everywhere we went seemed to spark off an entirely new route of thought and conversation as I wondered about all these things. It produced a zillion questions… !!!!
Which then led to my asking his story from high school graduation which was only through grade 10 back when he was in school, to present day, his current job, which lead to the gospel, at which point while crossing another avenue he said smiling and with a little laugh, “Please Deborah, you’re not going to preach to me are you?”
But after having asked him if he knew what the gospel was and he said “No” I explained if he didn’t know what the gospel was, how could he possibly understand the point I wanted to make about his job, how he was doing it- the gospel I meant - by “taking care of orphans and widows” and being an agent of God despite the fact he doesn’t believe in God, simply by walking out the gospel. Of course I had to explain the gospel to him first so he got my point, which then obviously led us to church history, the dead sea scrolls, prophecy, the re-formation of Israel, back to the actual “Reformation” in the 1500’s, Martin Luther and that whole story, present day Orthodox in Ukraine, Catholicism in Western Ukraine which led to a quick recap of how catholicism got from the small “c” to the large “C” in Constantine’s time in the 330’s AD only AFTER clearing he understood what AD meant- AFTER DEATH- as in the death of Christ….Ukraine history, the western region having been Poland most of the time, you know, Catherine the Great, Nicholas the Czar, his murder, the revolution, Stalin, the entire lot of them….the church split from Rome, oh it went on and on as you can ONLY imagine with me!! He didn’t get one minute of down time mentally. I loved it!!! He probably wanted to kick himself in the rear for agreeing to let me tag along with him for the day! Such an accommodating guy.
All this discussion left me with one dilemma. I wondered why his sister who had attended language school before him in whose steps he had followed, why she didn’t also do what he was doing, facilitating adoption as a facilitator and translator. It was a way to make a good living, especially since the “crash” as he put it, when so many had lost their jobs, salaries had dropped severely and inflation hit so hard. He mentioned that she was “too right” to do this job. I asked what that meant. He in a roundabout way explained that she didn’t like the tips (let’s say for discloser purposes) you had to give out along the way in this process.
I said, “I don’t know how all that works out with God, you know, something not exactly “kosher” with the officials, yet accepted, expected, and moves the adoption process along, actually allowing it to happen. I need to go home and check that out with God, not sure what He has to say about it, but still you’re taking care of orphans by getting them adopted. NO?
Thoughts anyone???? I’m going to bed… enough for one day. :)
It was good to see Dima’s cheerful face when I got through customs. He let me get settled while he had to run to the embassy for visa work for the kids being hosted. I had laid down to read, fell asleep and he returned about 1 ½ hours later, and woke me up with the bell to ring him up to the apartment. Then we left for the grocery store. I got some cheese, crackers and water since I had not eaten on the planes; well an old roll on the first leg and another on the second until the neighbors’ shoes went off!!
We got back to the apartment, set up my internet and phone and then he left. I was exhausted and fell asleep for about an hour. Then I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night, I lay in bed from 11pm Ukraine time until 7am.
My apartment is far from what Arlin and I had when we were here together in September for Valera. And, the back alley I have to use to get here, although I am right off the square, up the hill, it's a little tricky. Because it gets dark around 3:30pm here, I’m not allowed out after that- too dangerous alone, so what do you do all night?
I didn’t have a great night. I felt depressed, lonely, bad headache, missing Arlin, Valera, and of course CeCe, just wanted to go home, be home and NOT here, totally not into it this time, then I started feeling fearful. That was strange. Although when you walk in this building it looks like it has been through both WW I and WW II, ripped up floors, the elevator barely fits one person and it is completely torn apart, the stairs are concrete and missing large parts, the walls atrocious, it’s really bad. The floors are broken up tile- I was afraid to see the inside of the apartment.
Perhaps it’s not THAT bad, at least the bedroom and living room floors are the original wood flooring, the rest is rolling linoleum that needs to be ripped out. It’s clean, warm, and overlooks one of the main roads. Absolutely NO charm, architecture or otherwise here, this is not camera ready for a VERANDA MAGAZINE shoot, I promise you that.
But after our appointment at the SDA, all the ladies there remembered me from the last time, remember those lovely meetings, Luba and the ladies all screaming on the phone about the sibs while we were fighting for them? Yeah well, they all smiled and chuckled a bit as I entered the first office. We made it through the first meeting just fine.
Dima had a little “chatty chat” in the hall under his breath with the woman who prepares the papers to go to the Ministry head to assign court. She told Dima that it is not going well getting the head of this ministry to sign off on court. The best for me to do is to schedule it for January 6th to be sure that I am not stuck here waiting until the 30th. I pushed him to find out if there was ANY way we could get court next week like we did for Valera. As it stands, after all the changes the last 2 months with the new ministries etc… it’s all become more difficult. End of meeting, we return tomorrow at 4pm to pick up the paperwork and head down to Mariupol by plane at 9:30pm, arrive 10:30 pm and then a 2 ½ hour drive to the orphanage, expecting to arrive at 1:30am or so, and have to be at the inspector’s office at 8am. There’s no rest I tell you…
I asked Dima if I could run all his business errands with him today so I had something to do. He obliged after we stopped for coffee. I still had not had anything to drink all morning besides water. Thanks God for cappucino!
We actually had a good day, we did A LOT of walking and I mean a lot in addition to the subways and buses, but it was good. We went first to an administration office where i had to sit in what i presume they would call a lobby, waiting for him to do some official paper work having to do with the hosted kids. Then we went to some apartment buildings where his parents owned an apartment to pick up the rent; they live in southern Ukraine but rent this apartment out. For those of you who have lived in NYC, the “hood” apartment buildings by comparison look like those right off 5th avenue! Now these were REALLY bad. We stepped in the building after going thru the locked doors; all doors into apartment buildings have a door that looks like you’re entering a prison to get in. The smell was terrible. Dima said, “I know, hold your nose.” This is where he lived for several years while he was translating and working with another facilitator on adoptions. But now it’s rented out. And for those of us crying over the devaluation of our homes after the crash, this lovely "place" only cost them $78,000.00 pre-crash now worth $34k. And Dima added that his apartment building further northeast of the city was just like these. "Well, they don't have the smell that you have in this one maybe, but they are all the same." "Dima, you've GOT to be kidding me, there is no way that your apartment is like this!!" I said. "Of course, what do you think? We're used to it, this is how it is Deborah." I kept repeating the question, I just could NOT imagine. But this, as he insisted over and over, is just how it is in the Ukraine. Now the newer apartments they started in 2008 run for $250,000-350,00 but they are mostly sitting empty and unfinished since the crash he informed me. Those are the ones I liked, until he told me the price... for ONE bedroom apartments. Now I know what they run in NYC, but this is the Ukraine folks, not exactly herds of people stampeding to get in!
From there we went to the tax office to find out when his quarterly taxes were due. He said you can’t do anything by internet here; you have to personally show up. Since they change the laws so often on reporting, you have to go regularly to find out so you don’t miss the date and get fined, which he says happens often. Theses tax people feel “uppity” as he put it, and even when you ask for help, they tell you the wrong answer so you end up missing your deadline and being fined anyway. Hhmmm, think of that, government thinking they run the show???? Sound familiar?
From there, we headed over to another office, I can’t remember what that was for, but all of these are very far apart and take time to get to, by sub, bus and then walking… Finally, around 3pm, we stopped for lunch. Iwas hungry. I had not been feeling well all morning to this point. I think the fresh air, exercise, and company helped tremendously.
We had a good lunch and then headed to the embassy for more paperwork and a final passport for one of the kids being hosted.
We had lots of good conversation throughout the day. Oh we spanned church history, Ukraine history, language history of Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew, Sirylic, which came as I waited in one office for him and continued staring at the Russian writing on the wall behind the front desk girl, how uncanny it was that their alphabet had Hebrew characters and Greek characters included in their lettering… which led me to chat about the Hebrew language as I had learned from my Hebrew teacher back in the 80’s at the Jewish Community center, then on to Greek, of course, the discourse about how the bible was Hebrew and Aramaic, wondering how Russian got a mix of a few of these in it, and then how the New Testament was translated into the Greek Septuagint, then the Latin Vulgate… I just kept jumping around as everywhere we went seemed to spark off an entirely new route of thought and conversation as I wondered about all these things. It produced a zillion questions… !!!!
Which then led to my asking his story from high school graduation which was only through grade 10 back when he was in school, to present day, his current job, which lead to the gospel, at which point while crossing another avenue he said smiling and with a little laugh, “Please Deborah, you’re not going to preach to me are you?”
But after having asked him if he knew what the gospel was and he said “No” I explained if he didn’t know what the gospel was, how could he possibly understand the point I wanted to make about his job, how he was doing it- the gospel I meant - by “taking care of orphans and widows” and being an agent of God despite the fact he doesn’t believe in God, simply by walking out the gospel. Of course I had to explain the gospel to him first so he got my point, which then obviously led us to church history, the dead sea scrolls, prophecy, the re-formation of Israel, back to the actual “Reformation” in the 1500’s, Martin Luther and that whole story, present day Orthodox in Ukraine, Catholicism in Western Ukraine which led to a quick recap of how catholicism got from the small “c” to the large “C” in Constantine’s time in the 330’s AD only AFTER clearing he understood what AD meant- AFTER DEATH- as in the death of Christ….Ukraine history, the western region having been Poland most of the time, you know, Catherine the Great, Nicholas the Czar, his murder, the revolution, Stalin, the entire lot of them….the church split from Rome, oh it went on and on as you can ONLY imagine with me!! He didn’t get one minute of down time mentally. I loved it!!! He probably wanted to kick himself in the rear for agreeing to let me tag along with him for the day! Such an accommodating guy.
All this discussion left me with one dilemma. I wondered why his sister who had attended language school before him in whose steps he had followed, why she didn’t also do what he was doing, facilitating adoption as a facilitator and translator. It was a way to make a good living, especially since the “crash” as he put it, when so many had lost their jobs, salaries had dropped severely and inflation hit so hard. He mentioned that she was “too right” to do this job. I asked what that meant. He in a roundabout way explained that she didn’t like the tips (let’s say for discloser purposes) you had to give out along the way in this process.
I said, “I don’t know how all that works out with God, you know, something not exactly “kosher” with the officials, yet accepted, expected, and moves the adoption process along, actually allowing it to happen. I need to go home and check that out with God, not sure what He has to say about it, but still you’re taking care of orphans by getting them adopted. NO?
Thoughts anyone???? I’m going to bed… enough for one day. :)
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