Outer Space

It is difficult to imagine what D is experiencing right now, but try to imagine what life must be like for him. He has spent his entire life inside the walls of an orphanage and then he is escorted away by yours truly, a man who speaks a foreign language. Things that you and I take for granted are amazing experiences for him. In the last 36 hours, he has ridden in a taxi, spent half a day on a train, gone potty in a public restroom, walked the streets of a cosmopolitan city, walked the isles of a grocery store, experienced the benefits of a luxury apartment like splashing around in an extra large bath tub and jumping on a King size bed, listened to an I-pod, watched cartoons on a lap top computer, flushed a modern toilet, washed his hands in a modern sink, slept on a King size bed, risen in a glass elevator, rode down an escalator, shopped in an underground mall, eaten pizza in a restaurant, and countless other things, all for the first time.

I hope I have not given you the impression that the orphanage in Mariupol is an inadequate place. After taking a tour, I was blown away by how incredible it is. The orphanage director and her staff have done an extraordinary job making the living conditions very comfortable and the schooling environment outstanding. The children are divided into small groups by their ages and intellectual abilities. Each group has about ten to fifteen children and has its own living area. In each living area, there is a large living room, dorm room with beds and lockers, and a large bathroom. The children have access to a large assembly room, a Ukrainian cultural room, a plush music and poetry room, a cooking classroom where children learn how to cook basic foods, a physical education room, an art room, and an ecology room. Besides the children’s rooms, there is a commercial kitchen, a laundry facility, a medical exam room, a sewing room, administration offices, and a staff lounge. Included among the thirty or so staff members are a doctor, a director, an assistant director, nurses, a social pedagogue, a seamstress, administrators, caretakers, cooks, laundry workers, and security guards. You can now see why I am so impressed.

We completed the medical examination on Monday and picked up his Visa at the US embassy today. So, the final stages of the adoption process are done. In other words, we are almost home. This has been an incredible experience, but I am ready to return to California. See you soon.

THREE DOWN AND TWO TO GO

After Tami and the girls spent more than 24 hours hanging out in airports and airplanes on Wednesday, I was quite happy when I heard that they had arrived home safe and sound. The first thing the girls did was check in on the cats. They missed them dearly and were excited to see them again.

While the rest of the family was traveling home, I was traveling on a train with Kostya from Kyiv to Gorlovka, Kostya's home town. Gorlovka is only two hours from Mariupol and thirty minutes from Donetsk. It made sense for me to stay in Gorlovka for a day while we waited to finalize things in Donetsk on Friday (today).

After arriving at Kostya's home yesterday morning, Olga made us a delicious breakfast, ham and cheese crepes, cheese and raisin crepes, and sour cream and raspberry jam crepes. She needs to open up a Ukrainian restaurant in So. Cal. Any investors? After breakfast, Kostya showed me around Gorlovka. He owns a comfortable apartment which is within walking distance from a grocery store, a bank, many parks, four large ponds, the city square, a bowling alley, and two large universities. It is nice place to live and raise a family. I even had a chance to chat with his 60 year old father about politics, sports, and the USSR. He too is quite a gentlemen and I was fascinated by what he had to say. I am grateful to have experienced Ukrainian hospitality first hand and in particular, the hospitality of Kostya's family. They treated me like King.

Earlier this morning, we hopped in a taxi for Donetsk, the capital of this region and the site of today's work. You see, it has now been ten days and D is our son. So, I now have the right to obtain D's birth certificate and passport. As a matter of fact, I just obtained D's new birth certificate which states his father's name, Matthew P. Armstrong, and his mother's name, Tamra J. Armstrong. Soon, we will be picking up his Ukrainian passport which is the final hurdle in the Donetsk region. After we get his passport, we will be traveling back to Mariupol and taking physical custody of D on Sunday.

It appears that we will be leaving Mariupol on Sunday afternoon by train for Kyiv. While in Kyiv, D will have to undergo a medical examination by a certified doctor and we will have paper work to complete at the American embassy. I am hoping to take D to his first soccer game on Tuesday evening to watch the Ukrainian national soccer team play against Uzbekistan. How's that for our first father/son outing? We will have quite a bit of time to play before we fly home on Thursday. I am sure it is going to interesting. I hope to see you next weekend. Thanks for checking in.

It's Official!!

Our court date went well, as expected, and hopefully, we will be able to take custody of D on Friday, August 17th. The judge was relaxed and only asked us a few questions. It was a very smooth and easy process, but relatively uneventful. The best part is just knowing that it’s all downhill from here, and D is officially ours!!

A Little Vacation and Coming Home

Even though we missed our annual summer vacation trips, we made up for it by taking a side trip to a little resort village about 20 kilometers west of Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. We joined Kostya, and his wife and son in a great little beach house that you can see in the picture. The girls had a lot of fun playing with Kostya’s son. On the last couple of days, we had strong winds which created some big waves, and we all had a great time swimming in the sea. It’s amazing how much fun the kids had together even though they don’t speak the same language. Kostya’s wife, Olga, spoiled us with her wonderful cooking, and we enjoyed great conversation with good friends. It was particularly special because K celebrated her 7th birthday while we were there.

We are having difficulty rescheduling our flights home. Our original return plane tickets were for Wednesday, August 15th, but we need to reschedule them for Wednesday, August 22nd. We contacted our travel agent, and Delta has no flight available with 5 tickets anytime near the 22nd. It looks likeI am going to have to come home with the girls on the 15th, and then Matt will come home with D the following week. We really want to fly home together as a family, but it looks like this is our only option. The girls cried when they found out they may be going home early, and Matt and I had a hard time deciding who would go and who would stay. We finally decided that I will come home with the girls early, unless the travel agent is able to come up with a better option. We’ll keep you posted.

DOWN BY THE SEA

After a week of living less than 500 yards from the beach, we ventured down the long pathway to the Azov Sea. As you can see from the pictures, we are living by a beautiful beach. It has plenty of sand to layout on and a view of the water which extends beyond the horizon.

While standing on the beach, you get three interesting views. When you turn to your right, you see one of the country’s largest metallurgical plants operating in high gear. You can see plumes of red smoke rising up into the air 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If Al Gore knew about this city, he would be busy making “An Inconvenient Truth 2”. When you turn to your left, you see an open coastline with tall trees and sand bars reaching out into the sea. When you turn around and look back up the hill, you see ugly Soviet era apartment buildings. When you think about the real estate on our coastline, it is strange to see buildings like this lineup the coast highway.

For those of you who are curious about the city of Mariupol, it has nearly a half a million people and is the tenth largest city in Ukraine. It is the largest producer of steel and iron in the country. The plant you see in the picture is absolutely massive. When driving by it at 60 miles per hour, it takes over five minutes to pass. The downtown area seems to have plenty of shops and restaurants.

D is doing very well. He has even mastered a few useful English phrases. His favorite so far is “Cookie please”, but he also appears to know the importance of a well balanced diet because he can say “juice” and “banana” equally well.

On Tuesday, we have our court day which is the day when the judge decides if we can make the adoption official. Several other parents who have adopted from this region have assured us that things should go smoothly. If everything goes well, we will have a ten day wait before we can pick D up. Then, we will have a few hoops to jump through in Donetsk, which is the Capital of the region, and in Kyiv. Please pray that all of the details fall into place.

We are having a lot of fun over here. Thanks for following our story.

The last few days

Visits with D continue to go really well. With each passing day, we see more of his happy, easy-going personality. We are still waiting for the moment when he really tries to test our boundaries, but that hasn’t happened yet. We fill the time each day playing with sand toys, books, crayons, Legos, and a few other toys we bring. He has become more talkative, and we are beginning to see just how outgoing he is. He will chatter on in Russian for a quite a long time. Sometimes I am able to catch a few key words, and figure out what he is trying to say, and sometimes I have absolutely no clue. I just say, “Ya nye paniyi-maiyu” (I don’t understand), and then he laughs at me. I’m sure he must be thinking, “Why did I get this stupid American mama?”. He learns a few new English words each day, and his English pronunciation is much better than my Russian.
Vanya spent Monday and Tuesday morning running around completing paperwork. On Tuesday afternoon, Matt and Vanya went with the orphanage director to an electronics store to help them buy an air-conditioning unit for their main meeting room. Then at 5:00 pm, Vanya took the train back to Kiev to take care of more paperwork at the SDA. He will arrive back here tomorrow (Thursday morning). In the meantime, if we need a translator, we can call Kostya (he is in another city with our Mississippi friends) or Vanya, and they will do it over the phone.
I know that you are probably having visions of a wonderful seaside resort town, but Mariupol is definitely not a resort town. The centerpiece of the city is a large metallurgic plant, which emits a stinky brown cloud that settles over the city. There are people swimming in the Sea of Azov, but Vanya says it’s polluted and we shouldn’t swim there. We actually live very close to the sea, but we haven’t ventured down there yet. I’m sure there is probably a pretty part of the city somewhere, but we haven’t found it yet. When we were in Kiev, Kostya said that the tax money from the other regions, all ends up back in Kiev and now I understand what he means. The public areas here are not nicely maintained like they are in Kiev.
We are renting a two bedroom apartment from a young, single mother. She actually moved in with the next door neighbor so that we could live here. Thid is very common here. It is very clean and charming in sort of a “grandma’s house” kind of way. She is charging us $30 a night (and no, that is not a misprint) which is about 25% of what we were paying in Kiev. We prepaid her for 10 days, and she immediately went out and bought a new sofa, because she said the old one wasn’t comfortable enough for us. She also said that cleaning, laundry, and ironing is included in the price, but when she came to do our laundry today, we paid her 100 gryvna (about $20). When we leave, we hope to be able to leave her a little extra to thank her for her generosity. The building that we are living in is a 9 story concrete blockbuilding. Vanya said that hundreds of these exact same 9 story buildings were built all over the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. They were built to alleviate the housing shortage during the 70’s. The best way to describe the outside of the buildings here is to say that they look like the “projects”. The outside of these buildings are not maintained, but inside they are clean and nicely decorated. There are several of these concrete buildings built in sort of a circle around a common “weed patch” area with benches, and a dilapidated playground. In the evening when it gets cooler, the older men gather in one area, the older women in another, and the moms (dressed up in their stiletto heels and short skirts, of course) take the kids out to play.
We have found a couple good restaurants in town, but we are mostly buying food at the market, and eating in our apartment. Tonight we bought a roasted chicken, a salad with cabbage, cucumber, dill, and a very yummy dressing, and French fries and ketchup for the girls.
We are hoping to get a tour of the orphanage soon, so I will write about the orphanage after we see it all.