Update from Kiev

Anya in her "Traveling Suit" on the train Today is Friday we are in Kiev. Papa and Anya are watching "Polar Express" and and eating Pringles, I have a few minutes to myself, this has become increasingly rare since Anya is now with us always. I feel like I have been on a non-stop emotional roller coaster since about Sunday before we left Mariupol. I am hoping that by writing some, it will allow me to recover and get back on track. Please forgive me if my thoughts are a little hard to follow, I am sure those of you who have been thru this process understand how it gets at the end of the trip. Sunday we went with Anya to visit her Grandmother's grave. This was one of the hardest things for me to observe since we arrived. We picked her up about 10:00am and first stopped to buy flowers to place on the graves. Both of her grandparents and a cousin where buried there, so she bought three sets of flowers. As most of you know already Anya was very close to her grandmother, who was the one person in her life that cared for her consistently and protected her from her mother's fits of rage. It was very sad to watch her grieve and say goodbye again. She cried in my arms and I felt very inadequate with the language barrier to comfort her. All I could do was hold her tight and let her cry. Monday was Anya's going away party at the orphanage this too ended up being a very sad emotional day for her. I came into this knowing that this child has experienced lots of trauma and loss, and that she will be grieving the loss of her identity and culture as we leave Ukraine, but I never fully expected it to be so difficult for me personally to see her in this type of pain and experience all of this first hand. The party itself was very organized and several of the children did dances and two of them sang songs. They are many talented kids in Anya's group. Anya wore a beautiful formal gown and she and an older boy did a nice ballroom type dance for us. Anya was OK during this portion but after she was done dancing and sitting next to me, the tears began to fall and did not stop for over an hour. After all the singing, dancing, and speeches were made and we were passing out fruit,Nastiya (Matthews) was hugging me and Ludmilla asked Nadiya to tell me that this was her last day here. She told me that tomorrow she would go with her mother. After the party Nastiya tried to talk to me more about this, she told me with her facial expressions and limited English words that she was sad for Mama & Papa meaning Dan & Joyce. I tried the best I could to let her know it was going to be Ok and Mama & Papa would be OK too. I told her to do the best she could and that her Mother was trying to love her and do the right thing, not sure she understood. I will miss her, she is such a sweet girl, always so happy each day we saw her at the orphanage. Also after the party ended we had some pictures to give to Lyena that we had printed to leave with her. When we found her upstairs it became apparent that she had been avoiding Anya and us in order to not deal with her own sadness and loss. When we gave her the photos she and Anya hugged and Lyena broke down. Her and Matt were saying goodbye, and both of them were crying. I would find out later from Matt the details of this conversation. He had told her it was going to be OK and that we would come to visit her in Indiana once she was home with Masha and the Niles family, and she kept saying Maybe Indiana, maybe Not, Maybe Christine and Mark maybe Not. She had fallen back into the insecure thinking that they may not come to adopt her. Matt assured her they would, and if they did not then we will. He also made sure she understood that we along with Anya would call her and write to her often. We will all miss Lyena very much, she will always hold a special place in my heart. Tuesday we arrived at the orphanage about 9:30 to pick up Anya for the last time. We had too wait for a while because Nadiya was still at the court house trying to pick up the court decree. During this waiting time we were given a tour of the rest of the orphanage and were taken to see the infants, toddlers and preschool age children. I would guess about 75 % of the kids in this orphanage fall into this under 4 category. This too would impact me in a way I never expected. We began in the room with infants under one year old. There were many cribs with 2-5 babies in them. We took lots of pictures and posted some for all to see. All the caregivers seemed to love the babies and take care of them well, they were holding some of them and feeding others. But you could still tell the little ones were craving attention. Their little faces just lit up as soon as you touched them. One little boy held my fingers so tightly and so long that a care giver had to eventually come over and pry his hands of of me, it was so sad. I wanted to take them all home with me of course. Next we would go to a room for older babies who are already walking from about 12 months-24 months. Their were 12 smaller cribs in here, each with only one baby and all of them were sound a sleep. So we did not take photos of them or stay long we did not want to wake them up. After this we went to the room for toddlers all of these kids were between 2-3 years old. They were just sitting down for a snack when we arrived. So the caregivers interrupted this and turned on the music and tried to get them to sing and dance for us. Some of them did do their little dances for us. It was very cute. We took some videos of them. There was one little boy who was very afraid of us and he was crying and clinging to his care givers, so we did not stay long in there either. Last we went to the preschool age kids 3 & 4 year olds. I posted some photos of us with this group. The one little girl in this group reminded me a bit of Liliya. I was immediately her mama, and she would not let go of me. The care giver had to pull her away from me and tell her I was Anya's mama not hers. This was also hard, so many of these kids need good families, and knowing we can only do so much and we can not ever fill all of the needs for those we will leave behind. Nadiya was still waiting for the court decree when we finished the tour, this was now after 10:30 so we decided to have the driver to take us and Anya to get something to eat while we waited. I am certain what the hold up at the court was all about but Nadiya was originally supposed to pick up the decree at 9am and this did not end up happening until almost 1pm. Then we went thru the same type of hurry up and wait process to get her birth certificate too. We spent too many hours sitting in a small taxi with too many bags waiting and wondering when we would move again. What was supposed to be one quick stop at one office ended up being four long stops at three different offices in which we would take one piece of paper from each place to the other to get either a signature or a stamp from someone. It was a difficult way to spend the afternoon to say the least. I would suggest to any of you families who are yet to travel, ask your facilitators to leave you in your apartment until this final signature is done and you are ready to travel to the regions capital for your passport! Or else bring lots of snacks, drinks, books to read and lots of patience! In our case the region capital was Donetsk, which is about 1 and a half hour drive for us from Mariupol. The office where we would pick up the passport was due to close at 5:00pm. By the time we were done securing the birth certificate and beginning our drive to Donetsk it was 4:30. Only because Nadiya knows people who work in this office was she able to call ahead and ask them to please wait for us. We asked our taxi driver to drive as fast as he could, and he did! We arrived in about 50 minutes. And at this point the driver would drop off Matt and Nadiya at the edge of the city to meet Nadiya's friend who lives in Donetsk, and because he knows the area better he would drive them to get the passport. Anya and I would go with the original driver to the train station and wait again. Not sure how it was done exactly or why it took so long, but thanks be to God we got the passport and made our train to Kiev. The train ride was very nice again, and we are thankful for that. We ordered dinner on the train and it was expensive but very good. Anya and Nadiya shared a compartment and Matt and I had the one next to them. I was very happy to see Anya had put on her little "traveling suit" I bought for her. I wanted her to have something comfortable to wear, and she was not thrilled about it when I gave it to her a few weeks back, but she wore it and it fit and this for some strange reason made me very happy. She behaved fairly well on the train too, we were worried because her moods had been so up and down the last few days, but she seemed happy. She was a little hyper and loud but happy. I felt a little worried for Nadiya having to bunk with her all night, and assured her she could send Anya over if she was too obnoxious, I felt a little guilty too like she was taking care of our kid for us and we should have her with us. Anya would come into our compartment from time to time to "check in", then go back to hers. Nadiya reported later that is was fun like being a teenager again having a slumber party. She also thought this was good for Anya to have this time with her. she said Anya and her talked a lot about what to expect the next few days and some of her fears about coming to America, and many of her emotions about leaving Mariupol. This was helpful for me and took the guilt I was feeling away. We were met at the train station on Wednesday morning by Sergei our driver. We would go directly to the medical center to get Anya's exam done for the visa. This too was a long time sitting and waiting we arrived at 7:40 and were not finished until about 10:30. The only thing that bothered me about this appointment was that we were given no choice about getting Anya's vaccinations. Apparently she was missing two of them, and if the child is over 10 years of age they will not allow you to wait until they are in US to get the shots required. I was nervous about quality of Ukraine's vaccines, but we were told if we refused her Visa would not be granted, so we signed and Anya got the shots. We would then go to the Embassy to get visa application forms and schedule our appointment for Thursday. We had no issues at the Embassy it went fairly smoothly. It took a little longer than some families just because of Anya's age and this requiring fingerprints and background check for her. But we had a nice lady who helped us out by doing Anya's fingerprints at the same time when we picked up forms which she did not "have"to do until the next day, and she also did all of he data entry when she was supposed to be on her break for lunch already, and this assured us that Anya's background check would be back the next day and we could finish up the process by 2PM on Thursday. It is so nice when you get a helpful person on the other end of things, it can make all the difference. We had a little time before we had to go back at 3:00 and pick up our medical results for the Embassy so we would try to go to work on getting our plane tickets home. (We had been told by Valentin to wait and not purchase our tickets until we were sure about time frame from Embassy on Anya's visa because sometimes with older children these background checks can take a few extra days)Matt wrote about this some already so I won't go into detail, but it was not working well at this point and we were not going home any time soon and we were going pay a lot more than we wanted to. So we decided we would hold off and try contacting Orbits or United directly from the apartment later on when we had access to the Internet. So all of us are starving by this time and we decide to go to McDonald's. Mariupol does not have McDonald's and we have been looking forward to it for several days now. We ate our food and it was really good, then I made a very embarrassing mistake this day when I decided I needed to use the bathroom( which I now will not do in public places until we are out of Ukraine) I went into the restroom and a lady in there said something to me in Ukrainian, and motioned towards the one toilet stall, of course I did not understand her and assumed she was telling me the toilet was open. So I went in locked the door and did my thing them tried to unlock and open the door, and it is stuck! I try turning this thing every way, pushing, pulling, pressing up, down, nothing works it just keeps clicking. ( I think now that the lady was telling me it was broken, not to use the lock, you would think they would post a sign or something warning people, not that this would help as I could not read it either but still! ) So I get out my phone and call Nadiya, no answer goes straight to her machine, either her phone is dead or she is on it. I try the lock some more, no luck. By this time there are many angry people in knocking and yelling at me in Ukrainian again, because I have been in here a really long time and there is a long line waiting. I begin knocking on the door and yelling back in English that I can not get out and I can not understand them, of course they can not understand me so this is not helping. I try Nadiya again, no luck. Now for those of you who are thinking why am I not crawling under the stall to get out, let me explain, this door is nothing like an American McDonald's restroom door. This thing is thick solid metal, from floor to ceiling with a tiny little window way at the top about 7 foot high, I can not even see out of it let alone crawl out of it. This is Ukraine, remember! So back to trying to call for help, I think about calling Sergei, as I now assume Nadiya's cell phone is dead, which it was) then I think I better not call him with his limited English, how will I explain this to him? So I decide the only thing left is to call Valentin. This is so embarrassing, Valentin is probably at home enjoying his time with his family and his stupid American has to call to get him to help her out of a bathroom! So I say to him Valentin this is Aimee, Please excuse me for bothering you and sorry this may be the strangest calls you ever receive, but I am in the McDonald's locked in the bathroom stall and Nadiya is not answering her phone and I can not get out. Can you call Sergei and ask him to go in and send Nadiya up to get me out? Valentin was very kind, he did not laugh, and you know he wanted to, he just said yes of course I will call him. By the time this call ended one of the angry Ukrainians who want to use the bathroom had apparently figured out I was stuck and notified the manager who showed up with key to unlock the door, Why is there a key lock on the outside of a toilet stall door? It is Ukraine, remember! Nadiya walked into the restroom just after the manager let me out, so now there is Nadiya, the manager and about 9 other customers standing here when I come out and I just wanted to die from embarrassment! After this we head back to the medical center and pick up Anya's paperwork then to wait to meet our apartment owner to get our keys. It is a nice place and we now have working Internet, I won't go into details about this because Matt already wrote about it. But I did post some pictures of it for you to see. We spend the rest of the evening working with the Internet guy trying to get the computer working to search for tickets and also on the phone with airlines and the Barrett's who are also helping to search from the US for us-Thanks again Twyla and John! Thursday at 1pm Sergei picks us up to go to our Embassy appointment. The appointment went well, took a little longer than we expected about an hour and a half, more waiting around. But it was uneventful for the most part. And she got her Visa! When we got back to the car Valentin had showed up and was waiting with Sergei. He was wearing a Denver Broncos T-shirt in our honor. He then took us to the Swiss Air office again to try to help us get better ticket prices and maybe one that gets us home sooner than Wednesday. Him and Matt went in, Anya and I waited in the car with Sergei. I am getting really good at sitting and waiting in cars. Anyway after about an hour and a half, they come back and Valentin was great, he was able to get us all three home for only about $1,400. This includes the charges for changing Matt's and I tickets and Anya's flights all the way to Denver. That is the good news. The bad news is still no way for us to leave any sooner than Tuesday the 28th. And also Anya will have to fly from Chicago to Denver on a separate flight that leaves about 90 minutes behind Matt and I. There was only 1 ticket left on the later flight. So Matt & I have to leave earlier. Anya will need at least 2 hour layover in Chicago to get thru immigration and get all her paperwork processed. So unless we get some miracle worker immigration agent that can do this very fast, then we will make arrangements to have Anya escorted to her flight from immigration and we will meet her in Denver. If they get her thru fast enough then we will attempt to put her on the same flight with us. Many prayers for this will be appreciated, I am pretty nervous about this plan, but I know it was the only option available to us, they tried everything else first. For those of you wanting to meet us at the airport here is all info: Matt & I arrive in Denver from Chicago on Wednesday 29th at 8:11pm on United flight 253. Anya arrives at 9:30pm on United flight 959. Matt and I will go and attempt to pick up our baggage, then go back to the gate to meet Anya's plane. We ended our evening Thursday by dropping Valentin at the subway, where he would travel home and then going with Sergei to a Ukrainian restaurant for dinner, it was a really neat place, great views and atmosphere, good food, (all four of us ate a ton)and good prices too. After dinner we stopped at a supermarket for a few essentials for the apartment, then home watch movies and sleep. Today we did not do much. Some laundry and emails this morning and went out for lunch and a little sight seeing. It was cold and I was emotionally worn out and not doing well. So we ended up back at the apartment sooner than later and watched Sleepless in Seattle and vegged out for a while. We are hoping to get up earlier tomorrow and get to go to more of the places we would like for Anya to see. The weather is not supposed to be very nice again rain and cold, but maybe it will turn out to be a better day.