The Next Hurdle

Tuesday afternoon Victor and I arrived at the orphanage at 3:00. Kai was waiting for us at the door. We went into his classroom and the kids made tea for everybody. Victor was off chasing papers so I pulled out a deck of cards and began to shuffle. Kai is very impressed at my shuffling skill and the others appeared to be as well. Something inspired me to begin a game of “War” with Kai. He won all my cards in a matter of a very few minutes. We played again and I won. The “rubber match” was never completed due to some distraction and we restarted the game with 2 other boys joining us.

Eventually Victor returned and he wanted to play spades. Sasha joined us and Victor and I began teaching the boys to play. After a while, Vitaly wanted to play so Victor gave him his hand. He picked up the game quickly. After a few hands, Kai’s teacher Nonna wanted in so Sasha gave up his seat. Victor took off again and said that he would have a cab waiting for me outside the gate at 6:00. We played until 5:00 when we got kicked out of the room because it was used to do homework in from 5:00 to 6:00. Kai and I went upstairs to the couch area but all the other kids had to stay. I was told that Kai doesn’t have to go to study hall because he is leaving and I am here.

We sat together and snuggled for a bit until Jessica joined us, having just finished helping a boy write a thank you letter to a family in America who sent him a box at Christmas. We were given permission to use a small teacher’s lounge and we started playing the card game again. I filled Jessica in on what has been happening and before I knew it, it was time for me to leave. Kai walked me to the gate and after much hugs and kisses, I left in the taxi.

On the way, we picked Victor up from where ever he was and we went to Coffee Life where Kevin was trying to do work on their Wi-Fi. He was still having trouble because his work uses VPN and I think the regular connection is too slow or something. We were all hungry so we walked over to Nay Bay and had food. We all had Ukrainian meat soup and a very large supreme pizza. I told the guys all about what an awesome day I’d had and how happy I was. We bundled up and walked home in the cold night air.

Wednesday was St. Patrick’s Day but you’d never know it here except the workers at Coffee Life (Coffee As Lifestyle) were made to wear fuzzy green caps. I’m sure they didn’t get it but it appeared that the makers of Jameson’s Irish whiskey wanted them to be wearin’ the green. We discovered that our pirated internet connection in the apartment was no longer unsecured. Apparently somebody was on to us. Luckily for Kevin, Victor paid the $50 outstanding bill on his insertable modem and let him use it. He was able now to log on at work and get on the VPN. However, I was out of luck.

We were told that we had an appointment to go to at 11:00 so our morning was leisurely. Then Victor told us that we didn’t have an appointment today, so it got even more leisurely. Nonetheless, my shower was cold again this morning. I should have waited longer! I threw in a load of laundry and Kevin and I decided to walk to the Comfy store (the big one like Wal-Mart) and get more food and stuff. Victor piped in and asked if we could wait for him and go in the opposite direction to find a copy store for him to make copies of our petitions for us to sign. No problem. We walked about ¾ of a mile there and signed 5 copies of a document in Russian. Who knows what we were signing. Then Victor was off to the court to talk to the lawyers about our court date and stuff. We were on our own.

Kevin and I headed back past our apartment building and along the river toward the Comfy. There were a number of shops right on the road across from the apartment so we went over to window shop. We discovered that there was an entire outdoor mall there with shop after shop, all open-air. I was in the market for a sweater or sweat shirt so we looked around for a while. We eventually found a booth selling pretty sweaters. The shop lady began chatting to me in Russian and I gave my standard Russian phrase “I don’t understand Russian”. This threw her for a bit but when I seemed willing to work with her, she started pulling sweaters down and I stripped down to my tee-shirt and started trying them on. It had snowed the night before, and although it was sunny, it was still pretty darn cold. After trying on nearly a dozen sweaters, we settled on a pretty gray cashmere cardigan for 220 grivnas, about $27.

It was about 12:00 when we got to the Comfy. We wandered around shopping and I asked the sales girl if they had ping pong balls. I used my little bit of Russian and did quite well, thank you very much. I’m getting braver and it’s pretty fun. We bought a ton of stuff and lugged it all back home, arriving just before 2:00. After putting away the groceries I hung up the laundry I had left in the machine that morning. Then I ate and rested. I figured we had walked over 3 miles already. Victor arranged for the cab driver to be at the apartment at 3:00 to take me to the orphanage. Kevin stayed to work.

Kai was waiting for me at the door when I arrived. Victor herded us into the classroom after we found Nonna. Victor had given her his thumb drive so she could give me a bunch of pictures. I had brought my laptop for this purpose, so I set up on a desk near the only electrical outlet in the room and downloaded the pictures. The kids crowded around as we looked at pictures of them. Then I showed Kai all the pictures I had of him, the beach, Busch Gardens, Kelly, Robbie, my sister and the kids…everything. He seemed pretty interested. He was especially excited about the pictures of my sister’s family’s camping/kayaking trip last summer. I guess he really wants to go kayaking.

It was nearly 5:00 so we had a quick cup of tea and I distributed the St. Patrick’s Day green necklaces I had brought as well as the costume jewelry that I brought to give to the girls. The girls seemed pretty happy with the offering and used their best English to say thank you. I said “You’re welcome” in Russian which appeared to please Kai to no end. I think he really likes that I tried to learn some Russian. We headed upstairs and Kai asked me what I was going to do now. I said I was thinking I’d call Jessica. He asked if it was okay if he went back to study hall seeing as I was leaving before 5:30 anyway. I said that would be fine. He said his friends all really liked me (I think) and that he loves me very much. I had given him a can of salted peanuts which he planned to take up to his room tonight to have as a bed time snack. I hope that’s okay.

Jessica was on the campus and arrived soon after I called her. I filled her in as to what was going on, especially about the part where Victor was leaving for Kyiv that night. I hoped that we could hang out together with the kids for the next few days since her Russian was way better than mine. She said she’d rearrange some things so she could be available. What a doll! I started to leave to get my taxi and offered her a lift if it was in the same direction. She said sure, and we ran into Olga who was leaving as well. So we all piled into the cab for home.

The cab driver apparently already knew Jessica. How, I don’t know. But I think he liked her, too. I finally found out that his name is Vladimir. Victor didn’t say his name like that, so I couldn’t remember it before. But he said “Vladimir…like Putin”, and I’ll not forget now. The girls got out shortly and Vladimir tried to converse with me without the use of English. I think he pointed out the smoke from the factory and commented on the big industry, then something about the snow or lack thereof. I said I understood, which was not entirely a lie. I wanted to ask about his family so I pointed to my wedding rings and to his hand to ask if he was married. He also understood “family”. What I gathered is that he is of Italian heritage, he has at least one kid who is 16 years old, and perhaps that his wife, Natasha, has left him. It will be interesting to see how close I came to getting what he was trying to tell me. As we approached the apartment I wanted to explain that I knew the numbers 1 through 19 in Russian. He knew the word money so he could tell me how much I owe. We worked it out that it was roughly 30 grivna each way so I owed him 60 (less than $8) for the round trip. Kevin had given me 90 (about $11) so I was all set.

Victor buzzed me into the apartment and was all packed up to leave for Kyiv. The deal on the court date is this: The judge was willing to give us a court date earlier than 2 weeks, however we need to have the new Interpol clearance document in hand at court. Victor called his friend at the SDA who said that he’d just received a stack of Interpol documents and that ours was not among them. Victor needs this and at least one other referral for us to be ready for court. So, he left to get these documents and we were on our own. He said he’d be gone for at least a week unless we needed him to come back earlier. We said we’d be fine and off he went.

Please pray that these papers would be in hand quickly, okay? Kevin worked late into the night because of the time difference, which is only 6 hours until the end of March, when Ukraine will switch to daylight savings time, too. I puttered around the apartment and got the blog written. Then we watched another episode of Bones and went to bed.