Still no Passport

We haven't heard anything today about the passport. Each day we are getting closer to receiving it, so tomorrow looks hopeful. It would be nice to be on the train to Kiev on Wednesday night. Then we would have Thursday and Friday to do the medical and go to the Embassy. Then we're out of here!

Karina is really very good considering we took her out of the only home she's known for the past four years. She has been surrounded by only children with no one on one adult supervision. She's done what it take to survive in that environment. All children test their parents. It's just easier to handle one bad behavior at a time and not allow bad habits to form. She needs to know what our expectations are and we need to know the most effective way to deal with her. I just feel like we have the disadvantage right now, since when we get out of the apartment and are around Russian speakers, she doesn't 'understand' us like when it's just us in the apartment. She has also 'threatened' to go back to the Internat when she doesn't get her way or we don't buy her what she wants. It'll pass.

Today, when we went to the supermarket, she chose a birthday card for each of her brothers. They won't necessarily care about how 'pretty' the cards are, but they'll know she was thinking of them.

I forgot to mention some of our other food experiences we've had. One day, we went to the outside open market to buy some salami or kielbasa as they call it. We chose a package that was totally sealed up, so you couldn't see what was inside. When we got home, we had a nice size chub of smoked cream cheese! I didn't know there was such a thing. When I looked closely at the package, under the price written in black marker was the word for cheese.

We've also tried a couple of the food stands. There is one chain in Kiev which sells rectangular individual pizza bread for 6 greevna, which is about $1.20 USD. (it's called Fonetti's and the stands are orange and blue) The pizza breads are very good, especially if you catch them when they are hot. We kept seeing people buy some type of kolache style buns, but bigger at our little open market. One morning we bought K one. They cooked it right when it was ordered. It ended up being pretty big. About 3 times the size of a honey bun with some type of ground meat inside. K really liked it. It was pretty good. I guess she's our very willing guinea pig to try some of these things. She knows how to order. We tried something similar today. K ended up with something like the huge whatever it was the other day and we had a similar bun with a sausage type pattie inside. It was good too. We have been very blessed that we haven't gotten sick from anything we've eaten. We just go to the local supermarket and buy cooked skewered chicken, salami, ham, yogurt, juice, butter, etc. We've found some inexpensive soda type drinks we like. At the open market we buy Ramen noodle soup and instant potatoes. The only cooking type of appliance we have in our apartment kitchen is a hot pot. I found a large package of Ramen noodles and then we went to the supermarket and bought some Italian type sauce to make spaghetti. We are going to use some of the chicken skewer chunks for our meat. We tried some cooked hamburger-looking patties from the supermarket once, but they weren't anything like hamburger. There is another blog where they posted about oatmeal and tuna. We found some tuna. It wasn't quite as chunky as we're used to and it was more expensive, but it was tuna. I also bought some oatmeal and made it for breakfast. It was very good and super easy to fix. I just put the amount of oatmeal I wanted in a bowl, poured just enough hot water to cover, covered the bowl with a plate and waited a few minutes. I then added butter and some sugar. (I really like brown sugar, but the store didn't have any) It was really good and cheap! K said she didn't like it. Then I told her to just taste a little of mine. Well, that changed her mind. I think she'll be eating some tomorrow morning;)