My journaling time has been a little limited in the last few days so I’ll just include some of the highlights.
Friday was a whirlwind of paper work and rushing to each office to get signatures and forms. Ira our translator did a great job and we were ready to get on the train by 10:10pm when it left. We even had time to stop at McDonalds and eat dinner. Any other restaurant would have taken too long.
We then stopped at the apartment and paid our landlord which was the father of the family who lived there when they weren’t renting it out. He decided we need to pay for 9 nights instead of the 8 nights we actually stayed there. He was not very honest. The whole apartment thing was very interesting and a story that should probably be told offline. So if anyone is interested please email me.
Valdimir our driver took us to the train station and helped us get our luggage on the train. Then we stay outside the train car until it was time to go. We decided to upgrade to a luxury class car because all of the other ones were full. They are a little nicer but not a lot nicer. The bathrooms are just as bad on the luxury car as on the private cars. Jaynie and Vica stayed together and Ira and her daughter stay together. I was stuck with a stranger in my car. He didn’t make a lot of noise though so that was ok.
Once we got to Kiev Saturday morning Alex met us at the train station and took us to buy some souvenirs. Our apartment wasn’t going to be ready until noon. While shopping for souvenirs we ran into a family from Nephi Utah who offered to send their son to pick us up and help us get to the international branch of our church here in Kiev. We took her up on the offer because we have no idea how to get anywhere here except back to our apartment. This family is here with the American Bar Association. They bring United States judges over and they work with Ukrainian Judges to help fight some of the corruption that exists here.
After souvenir buying we headed to the apartment which wasn’t ready. Alex found us a great apartment over looking Independence square. It has two bedrooms and is only $60 per night. We could have found a cheaper apartment either by ourselves or through Alex but we liked this one a lot and $60 isn’t that bad.
When we got the apartment it wasn’t ready yet so we went to a travel agency to book our flights home. We flew Aerosvit here but they told us we couldn’t make a reservation for a child when we didn’t have her complete name. Since we didn’t know what the name would be and they wouldn’t hold a reservation we had to rely on getting a ticket after we got here. We found out later we could have bought the tickets in our name and then transferred them to our child. But they didn’t mention that.
Anyway… all of the flights out were booked. So we transferred my ticket to Vica. Then I’m going to fly to New York on Wednesday, stay over night, meet Jaynie and Vica in New York on Thursday and then we are going to fly home together Thursday night. Even with the extra ticket I had to buy on Wednesday it’s was still cheaper than flying KLM/northwest with their adoption fare. Alex was great at helping us get a flight out. He helped us find a business class flight from Kiev to New York that was pretty cheap.
On the way back from the travel agency Alex told us he had spent a lot of money getting us into Kiev and usually when he does that he covers 50% and we cover 50% of the extra costs. Hummmmm… not good. We signed up with Alex because we were told this was an all inclusive deal and that we would not have to worry about any unexpected surprises financially. This is not appropriate for him to be hitting us up for more money than we agreed to. For those who have yet to go Alex told us all regions are now considered hard and he is charging everyone the extra $1000.00 that he has listed only for hard regions. Since we are already paying the ‘hard’ price it only makes it that much more inappropriate for him to be asking us for more money. While we appreciate everything he has done (his team is awesome!) he is more than twice as expensive as other facilitators and we feel we have paid the piper so to speak. We also specificly asked if there would be anything extra we would be required to pay beyond his fees and we were told no. Alex said he would leave the decision on whether or not to pay extra up to us. So we will see what happens.
We tried out our ATM card on Friday in Odessa. It didn’t work. So I called our bank Saturday and asked them why. They said they had problems with fraud and ATM’s in Ukraine so they disconnected their system from Ukrainian. Oh well, so much for that idea. We are pretty much out of cash until Alex gives us back some of the money we gave him for two kids. Since we ended up with only one child we should have enough to get home without the ATM card.
After church on Sunday the Leavitts invited us to their home for dinner. We met a 4th district Court (I think) Judge from DC that just flew in and another Judge from Saint George that was also at their house for dinner. These people have great stories and it was fascinating to listen to them. After dinner Dave Leavitt and the two judges left for a region in the south somewhere and we visited with Chelom Leavitt (I hope I’m spelling that right). The Leavitts have a great family and it was very nice to talk to people from Utah and who are LDS. I think we may have overstayed a little bit but it was hard to leave such a great home. Their son Adam offered to give us a tour of the WWII museum here in Kiev. We are going to try and take him up on that offer Tuesday if we have time.
Tomorrow are trying to go for our medical appointment. We are also going to try and get through to the Embassy and setup our Embassy appointment.
That’s all for now. Thanks again for all the prayers and messages of support.
Kyle
Friday was a whirlwind of paper work and rushing to each office to get signatures and forms. Ira our translator did a great job and we were ready to get on the train by 10:10pm when it left. We even had time to stop at McDonalds and eat dinner. Any other restaurant would have taken too long.
We then stopped at the apartment and paid our landlord which was the father of the family who lived there when they weren’t renting it out. He decided we need to pay for 9 nights instead of the 8 nights we actually stayed there. He was not very honest. The whole apartment thing was very interesting and a story that should probably be told offline. So if anyone is interested please email me.
Valdimir our driver took us to the train station and helped us get our luggage on the train. Then we stay outside the train car until it was time to go. We decided to upgrade to a luxury class car because all of the other ones were full. They are a little nicer but not a lot nicer. The bathrooms are just as bad on the luxury car as on the private cars. Jaynie and Vica stayed together and Ira and her daughter stay together. I was stuck with a stranger in my car. He didn’t make a lot of noise though so that was ok.
Once we got to Kiev Saturday morning Alex met us at the train station and took us to buy some souvenirs. Our apartment wasn’t going to be ready until noon. While shopping for souvenirs we ran into a family from Nephi Utah who offered to send their son to pick us up and help us get to the international branch of our church here in Kiev. We took her up on the offer because we have no idea how to get anywhere here except back to our apartment. This family is here with the American Bar Association. They bring United States judges over and they work with Ukrainian Judges to help fight some of the corruption that exists here.
After souvenir buying we headed to the apartment which wasn’t ready. Alex found us a great apartment over looking Independence square. It has two bedrooms and is only $60 per night. We could have found a cheaper apartment either by ourselves or through Alex but we liked this one a lot and $60 isn’t that bad.
When we got the apartment it wasn’t ready yet so we went to a travel agency to book our flights home. We flew Aerosvit here but they told us we couldn’t make a reservation for a child when we didn’t have her complete name. Since we didn’t know what the name would be and they wouldn’t hold a reservation we had to rely on getting a ticket after we got here. We found out later we could have bought the tickets in our name and then transferred them to our child. But they didn’t mention that.
Anyway… all of the flights out were booked. So we transferred my ticket to Vica. Then I’m going to fly to New York on Wednesday, stay over night, meet Jaynie and Vica in New York on Thursday and then we are going to fly home together Thursday night. Even with the extra ticket I had to buy on Wednesday it’s was still cheaper than flying KLM/northwest with their adoption fare. Alex was great at helping us get a flight out. He helped us find a business class flight from Kiev to New York that was pretty cheap.
On the way back from the travel agency Alex told us he had spent a lot of money getting us into Kiev and usually when he does that he covers 50% and we cover 50% of the extra costs. Hummmmm… not good. We signed up with Alex because we were told this was an all inclusive deal and that we would not have to worry about any unexpected surprises financially. This is not appropriate for him to be hitting us up for more money than we agreed to. For those who have yet to go Alex told us all regions are now considered hard and he is charging everyone the extra $1000.00 that he has listed only for hard regions. Since we are already paying the ‘hard’ price it only makes it that much more inappropriate for him to be asking us for more money. While we appreciate everything he has done (his team is awesome!) he is more than twice as expensive as other facilitators and we feel we have paid the piper so to speak. We also specificly asked if there would be anything extra we would be required to pay beyond his fees and we were told no. Alex said he would leave the decision on whether or not to pay extra up to us. So we will see what happens.
We tried out our ATM card on Friday in Odessa. It didn’t work. So I called our bank Saturday and asked them why. They said they had problems with fraud and ATM’s in Ukraine so they disconnected their system from Ukrainian. Oh well, so much for that idea. We are pretty much out of cash until Alex gives us back some of the money we gave him for two kids. Since we ended up with only one child we should have enough to get home without the ATM card.
After church on Sunday the Leavitts invited us to their home for dinner. We met a 4th district Court (I think) Judge from DC that just flew in and another Judge from Saint George that was also at their house for dinner. These people have great stories and it was fascinating to listen to them. After dinner Dave Leavitt and the two judges left for a region in the south somewhere and we visited with Chelom Leavitt (I hope I’m spelling that right). The Leavitts have a great family and it was very nice to talk to people from Utah and who are LDS. I think we may have overstayed a little bit but it was hard to leave such a great home. Their son Adam offered to give us a tour of the WWII museum here in Kiev. We are going to try and take him up on that offer Tuesday if we have time.
Tomorrow are trying to go for our medical appointment. We are also going to try and get through to the Embassy and setup our Embassy appointment.
That’s all for now. Thanks again for all the prayers and messages of support.
Kyle
posted by Kyle at 1:06 PM
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