Saturday, July 10

It’s 9pm on Saturday as I am lying in our apartment writing this. Another day in Kyiv, another day closer to seeing Kole. We woke up late again this morning; Drew got up around 10am and I got up about 11am. Drew was sitting at the kitchen table journaling when I woke up; I had no idea how late it was because my body was screaming, “I need more sleep!” We got ready, packed the backpack for the day and headed out. As we walked into the hallway of our fifth floor apartment I took one look at the elevator and decided to take the stairs, possibly a worse decision because they are falling apart and they seem to be nothing more than concrete suspended in air with nothing supporting them. I’m pretty certain this entire building was here when Stalin invaded. As I am walking down the stairs I am literally praying “Dear God please do not tell me brought us this far, only so we could fall 5 stories into a concrete grave. “ At about the 3rd floor Drew presses the elevator button and I watch through the cage-like metal as the elevator comes up. It is seemingly raised and lowered by an ancient pulley and weight system. I notice that the elevator has four ropes tied to the top of it and they are what is holding the elevator in air. All I can say is that I hope who ever tied those knots was an eagle scout. I took my chances with the stairs again.

As we venture out onto the street we immediately see a bride in white and her groom in a shiny brown suit, standing in front of a Hummer stretch limo. They are so happy. A babushka walks by and says something in Russian, which I assumed was a word of congratulations because the young couple smiled and said thank you. Just a little further down the street in front of the Golden Gate there is another bride and groom getting their picture taken. My mind wanders back to Drew and my wedding day, less than six years ago. We never would have imagined that this is where God would bring us, Kyiv, Ukraine adopting our third son. Crazy! It’s just crazy.

We make our way past the Opera House, which is huge and beautiful, like nothing in America. I notice though that across the street is a 20+ story, rundown, Soviet style apartment building. What a contradiction. We turn the corner and make our way to McDonald’s. Uggh. We don’t really ever eat McDonalds back home, but it’s the one place here where we know what we are eating, and they have free Wifi. When we walk into McDonald’s we overhear a man talking pretty loudly in English; I just can’t help but eaves-drop. He looks like a Bob Jones professor and all I hear is him saying “I don’t really care for contemporary music in church anyway.” The Ukrainian couple he is talking to kind of roll their eyes and laugh. I am thinking, seriously? I am half way around the world and I am hearing that? I really wanted to tell the guy to shut his pie-hole and stop making American Christians look like the morons we are. After a filling yet disgusting lunch, we decide to walk down to the main street, which we call “K street” because it’s a really long Russian name we can’t pronounce. We go into a five-story mall which is apparently famous. I’m not super impressed and the prices are outrageous. We leave. So glad we walked down this enormous hill to check out this famous mall, now we have to walk back up the huge hill and it is the hottest day yet since we got here.

We walk back to McDonald’s, grab a coffee and sit down. At least now it is late enough in America that we can call our boys. We video skyped with Hudson and it was so good to see his face. He was talking and smiling. We blew him kisses into the web cam (I am well aware of how strange we must have looked to the other people in McDonalds). Hudson reached out to the computer screen and said “Mama, mama.” Seeing him and hearing him made my day so much better. Lane was on his way back from the beach with Grandma so we didn’t get to talk with him then. While we were in McDonalds, it starting raining and thundering and the wind really picked up. After a while it looked like it had let up a bit, so we decided to go back to our apartment and then come back to McD’s at dinner time when we could hopefully skype with Lane too.

Well…as we were walking back it starting raining and the wind starting blowing. I thought my contacts were going to blow right off my eyeballs. We were slightly lost and getting soaked. We ran up the street laughing and trying not to slip and fall. Across the street pieces of tile and concrete were blown off the building and came crashing down to the ground below. Glad we weren’t on that side of the street. We finally see the fancy American hotel to which our apartment is adjacent, but we are on the wrong side. We decide to cut through the Hotel in hopes of staying a little bit dryer. Everyone in the lobby and the restaurant just stares at us as we walk through, soaking wet and probably a little stinky. Because, I forgot to mention that when it rains here it would appear that some of the sewers flood and therefore the puddles of water are not just water. I discovered this the hard way when on our second day here I walked through several puddles wearing my chaco flipflops. Later that day and the next day I kept smelling something awful. I finally figured out it was me. I now have poopy-pee chacos. Awesome.

We made it back to our apartment, finally. We were soaked from head to toe, but it was kind of fun too. After a couple of hours of reading we ventured back out to McDonalds hoping we could video skype with Lane. We talked with Lane for a good 30 minutes; this was the first time we have video skyped with him since we left, and seeing him made me miss him even more. He asked us where Kole was and he was a little disappointed that Kole wasn’t with us. We’re disappointed too. Kyiv is a great city, but I just have no desire to do anymore sight-seeing. I just want to be with Kole and then go home.

Note: After I finished typing that last night, Drew and I were watching a little Sports Night when the power in our apartment went out. It was pitch black outside, but when I looked out the window I noticed there were lights on in the other apartments. Drew found his headlamp and turned in on (I gave him a really hard time about buying that thing, but I was glad now he did). We walk over to our fuse box and Drew fiddles with the fuses a little hoping not to get electricuted; there is a weird burning smell coming from the box. Super! We are going to burn to death in this fifth floor apartment. Drew takes the fuse out then puts it back in and the power comes back on! But...only for a minute, then it's out again. We can't get the power back on and there are no extra fuses to be found. So we decide to go search all the hallways of the apartment building looking for fuse boxes that just might have extra fuses in them. Thankfully noone came out of their apartments and saw the two weird looking American's, in their Pj's, one with a headlamp strapped to his head like he's about to go explore some caves. We never did find any more fuses. So we went to bed. We still have no power today (Sunday), but we are leaving in a couple of hours to drive to Kole's city!