Well, we’ve been back for a few days. The 10 days have been up for a while and the holidays have passed, so it’s about that time we return to Ukraine and pick up where we left off.
We look forward to catching up with new friends; all of us continuing on through the process in a fresh, new, year. We may miss Super Bowl Sunday, but, football is not one of Mari’s favorite sports and the Vikings got knocked out of the playoffs early. Get a dozen skaters on ice with sticks, well that’s a different story (We went to a fight and a hockey game broke out)…
This trip started at about 6:30 Monday morning when Andrew dropped us off at the Omaha airport on his way to work. A four hour layover in Chicago followed by a two hour or so layover at Washington Dulles, right in the middle of the inauguration festivities, and we will be on our way back to Ukraine to (hopefully) finish this off. Isn’t it just grand that the airlines can disrupt perfectly good layovers with flights?
Against our better judgment, we volunteered to be one of the “designated mules”, bringing back clothes, games, etc, for the families waiting for court dates, adoption decrees, or a friend in need of a replacement camera or whatever. The bonus plan is that it gives us another bag to drag stuff back in.
Something we were actually looking for, but weren’t sure if it existed in Ukraine or not was bubble wrap… Yes, Martha, I am serious about that, so of course it occupies space in one of the bags. It will also occupy time in the event of total boredom… I start at one end of the roll, Mari at the other and we just pop away at it!
We literally did hit the ground running Tuesday, getting the birth certificate… Internal ID was not so easy. Still have a couple issues since she was de-registered from Internot 4 when she started at the trade school and failed to register a residence. Essentially she is a non-person in the eyes of Ukraine, so how can she apply for a passport. This appears to be a fairly quick remedy and will be resolved on Thursday.
So for most of Wednesday, we spent our time exchanging currency, eating, grocery shopping (the one dude that works there takes his job WAY too seriously and is REALLY scary), and souvenir shopping.
About 2 or so, Alyona calls & says they will be picking us up around 5 to take care of some things… 5 pm arrives and it’s off to the races again. Five people do not fit very well in a Daewoo sedan… The Passport office was about a 10 minute walk… Well, 15 for someone with a bad knee… Once again - How can a non-person apply for a passport? Don’t ask, I sure wasn’t going to. Alyona must have some pretty good contacts, because the applications was completed on Wednesday and the registration issue was finished on Thursday.
The supporting documents were shipped via FedEx to Omaha on Thursday, but the tracking number did not appear on the web site until Friday evening. So much for a Monday delivery, but we are still optimistic about being on our way back by next weekend.
Last but not least… Something I know Vera’s been looking forward to: English lessons that have been put off for the past four weeks. We will ensure a captive audience for the English tutor. (insert evil laugh here)
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Was wondering how you guys were doing. Hope your adventure comes to a quick end by next week! When you get home and are wanting to work on English you might want to try Rosetta Stone English on the ocmputer. The English program is really good. We have Russian also (not so good!) Justin loves doing it and it has very practical applications.
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