Still Waiting

(Should I warn you first that this is a very long post since I haven't posted since Monday?;)

Nothing much happened with the passport all week since the last post on Monday. Our facilitator was told yesterday, Friday, that he will be able to pick up the passport on Tuesday. It needs one more stamp so that K can go abroad permanently. Of course, Monday is a holiday (again) so we have to wait until Tuesday. In America, a passport is a passport is a passport. An adult passport is good for ten years. I'm not sure about a child's passport, but both are good for visiting anywhere in the world. There are no different levels of passports. Here in Ukraine, from what I think I understand, there are temporary and permanent passports and maybe many more levels.
Anyway, we are supposed to be able to pick up the passport on Tuesday. We've waited so long now, I'll only relax when it's in our possession.

We have had a full week otherwise. We have some friends that arrived here on Wednesday that were at the same place in their adoption as we were when we arrived. They have completed their two children's passport applications (a brother and sister). They are staying with us in the apartment. This apartment is larger than most we've seen here. It has two very large rooms, one small room and a tiny kitchen with only a hot pot. They were told the local hotel, the nice one anyway, is full, so we were more than happy to have them stay with us. It sure helps the time to pass much more quickly to be able to have someone to converse with (in English:) and share similar experiences. The mom of this family and I talk frequently by email, but both dads have never really gotten to know each other, so I think this is really good for both of them. Plus, us moms, had already decided to keep in touch because the children are from the same orphanage. We are all taking the train to Kiev on Tuesday evening. That will be an experience for both of us. The train to (and from) Kiev is very popular here. We could only get tickets from Lugansk, which will end up okay since we have to go there anyway to pick up the passport. There are too many of us to ride in one cab, though. But, we do have tickets in cabins right next to each other. I was looking at our eight tickets, because we wanted to buy the whole cabin, and noticed that we only had three of one cabin and one seat number was way off in the first cabin. I think, I may be wrong here, but it is my supposition that people buy bottom bunks in first class and someone bought the first bottom bunk in our cabin, so we have one bottom and two uppers. We are hoping (and praying) that the one person in our cabin with that other bunk will want to exchange tickets. The only problem is that it is and upper bunk and that's why we were able to buy it. I can't remember if I wrote about this already but on the way here, my husband and I shared a cabin with two men. We really had the two upper bunks. One of the men was already in the cabin when we arrived. We sat on one of the bottom bunks and when the other man arrived, he saw me and didn't really say anything and took the top bunk. We were very blessed that they were so nice. I've heard many other stories about train experiences. I couldn't sleep, though. It was so very hot. So, I was determined that we would buy our tickets soon enough to have a whole cabin to ourselves. We are praying that this other person won't want to ride with children and be willing to switch tickets with us.

Karina is very excited that she will get to spend some time with our friends and their children. She visited with them at the orphanage while they were here for the first part of their adoption. She has calmed down quite a bit. I think she is finally understanding that Mama and Papa want to give her things, but not because she gets mad at us for not doing it or any of the other bad behaviors she has demonstrated. All of our disagreements have stemmed from her being mad because she didn't get her way. From what I've observed, the other children at the orphanage seemed to want to appease her if she was mad at them, so she tried transferring that behavior to us. She learned pretty quickly that we didn't respond favorably to that type of behavior. We went all day yesterday without one mad spell! There is light at the end of the tunnel!! Maybe we are getting the message across. We did end up at the orphanage for a little while yesterday to meet up with our friends to walk to the orphanage director's house for dinner. She lives right across the street from the orphanage in a house. She and her husband have been slowly remodeling it for about ten years. I've heard that's the ultimate dream here to have your own house to fix up. Anyway, Karina was different during this orphanage visit. I could see her time with us has changed her. She and her dad had bought some candy to take and of course she wanted to give every bit of it away to the first children she saw. Dad convinced her to wait just a little. She even ended up giving away the bag she brought the candy in, which I had bought for her. I can understand better now. She probably sees how much more she has and will have than her friends.

We got a lot of great Pictures of her friends for keepsakes for her. We will probably send some to them as well. They just love seeing their pictures in the digital camera. I think digital cameras are the best invention ever!! You can take as many photos as you want, save them all, then only develop the ones you want.

We also met an Italian couple that is here adopting an adorable seven year old boy. He is so happy. He smiles all the time. He doesn't look seven though. He is so small. The husband could speak a good amount of English, he said he didn't know much, but he knew enough to converse with us and understand everything we said. They told us that another Italian couple was also here adopting. I am very glad to see the children from this orphanage being referred for adoption. We were told that until this year, there were only a handful of adoptions from this orphanage. If I told you the town name, I'm pretty sure that not very many people would know it. One disadvantage many of the children in this orphanage have toward being adopted is that the majority have many siblings. One little girl is one of six or seven children living at the orphanage. That is a very sad thing to me that whole families are not together.

Our dad was very sad yesterday because of our host child. She always comes up to us when we're there. She hugs us and calls us Mama and Papa. That was very hard for me to take since she told us no. It was very confusing to me. Then I realized, that even though her aunt visits her occasionally, at least we gave her something. We showed her what a family could be like and we gave her love. We will still keep in touch with her and probably the other children we have met there. This has truly been a life changing experience for us. There are so many children here who need families.

We promised Karina and our host child that we would visit one last time on Monday. Karina saw that her dad was upset. She can't stand to see us cry, even when it is happy tears. She told her dad not to cry today. He can cry on Monday and she will too.