We've had a few eventful days and we are now in Kiev. Hooray!
December 25th is a nonevent in Ukraine. Rodger took our son to apply for another document that we needed. Turning 18 years old has required lots of additional paperwork it seems. They were unsure as to how long the processing would take so we knew that we would not be going to Kiev this afternoon as we had hoped.
We knew nothing would be happening over the weekend so life continued as normal or as normal as it can be when you are in a foreign country adopting. The weather was beautiful, sunny and a high of 17. Considering that Odessa is not known to be a Winter Vacation Hot Spot this was impressive. We've heard from several people that this fall has been warmer than usual and being on the Black Sea means the weather is milder in Odessa than most of Ukraine.
Life is quite different from what we are used to. Here we walk to the grocery store and local market almost every day to pick up groceries for the day. The grocery store was just across the street and the market was about 2 blocks away.
On Monday morning Rodger, our son, and translator went to pick up one document and found out that they needed to apply for another. Screaming wouldn't help but we were ready to! Mid afternoon our translator called and said that there was a possibility that we could pick up the passports at 4:00 pm. Dare we hope that this could actually be? 4:30 - I got a FB message with pictures of the passports:) We checked for flights to Kiev but there weren't any available for that evening or the 29th unless we wanted to pay major big bucks - about the same as it would cost to fly fromKiev to Winnipeg! We heard that you could rent a taxi (minivan) for cheap. It would be a 5-6 hour drive and we could leave first thing the next morning. We booked the taxi and then it was time to pack.
6:00 am, Dec. 29 we were in the van and on our way. The trip was relatively uneventful until we were within an hour of Kiev where farmers had blocked the road. Apparently they had staged 24 rallies and a blockade to protest taxes. A short detour and we were on our way again. Traffic lights were out in Kiev near city centre so the last part of the trip was very slow but by 1:00 we had arrived. After a quick lunch we were off to the Canadian Embassy. They are working on the kids' visas which is the last thing we need before we can head home. This is a short work week with New Years but they assured us that the visas would be ready for Wednesday or Thursday at the latest so I booked our flights. We will depart on Jan. 7th and arrive in Winnipeg very early (1:00 am) on Jan. 8th. Even though it's a few weeks later than we had hoped we are very excited to be coming home. We can count down the days!
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| Odessa - Dec. 25 |
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