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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.
3 comments:
The Judge is in my prayers now and will be again Monday night at bedtime which is the start of your Tuesday.
Enjoy every moment (even the frustrating ones) for soon you'll be back here and school will be starting, but you'll never forget what you did during the summer of 2007.
In His Love,
Ross
It sounds like you are savoring these bonding family times as you go through this waiting process - this is sooo good because you know how crazy busy life can get back in So Cal.... We're praying for tomorrow's court date.
the hunts
Hello! I work with a baby orphanage in a small town in Donetsk region (I am in the US, we have a volunteer group that works there) and I think I might know your D!!!! If so, I have a TON of photos of him from when he was about 3-3.5 So if your son was in the Artemovsk (also spelled Artemivsk) baby orphanage, and former last name started with G, please contact me at operationukraine@hotmail.com. I would love to tell you all I know from the baby orphanage director about his background, and also share all these wonderful photos with you!!!!!! Kelly in Omaha
PS. I'd also love to confirm if this is indeed the same boy, as we all loved him and would LOVE to know his is happily in a family now!!!!!!!
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