Saturday Morning in Odessa

We have had some interesting events unfold the last couple of days. We took the overnight train from Kiev to Odessa. Sleeping came after taking prescription drugs! I felt like a cow in a stock truck! Eeeek! But, we did get some rest. When we got on the train, it was very hot, so we were worried that we were going to cook in that little car. We shared it with an unknown teenage girl and our translator. As we started moving along, our translator asked an attendant about air, and she said that they did have it, yippppeeeee! It made much more comfortable! Kyle and I didn’t drink anything after dinner because we didn’t want to have to go to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night. But, that didn’t work, so I woke Kyle up at 3 a.m. to go with me because I was too scared to go by myself. The toilet was a scary place and you really had to hold on for dear life to avoid being thrown against the wall. Let’s just say that the outhouses in Yellowstone are stinkier, but they don’t move, ha ha.

We arrived in Odessa at 7 a.m. and drug ourselves and our luggage out onto the walkway to the station. We met our driver there, a stocky guy that looks like many of the other Ukrainian guys his age. Our team hires drivers in each region, people they can trust to keep the luggage and hang out for us all day while we do whatever we have to do. It is very handy and we felt very safe. We then drove to McDonald’s. We didn’t go through the “McDrive”, but went inside to have a bit of breakfast. We ordered four blueberry muffins, two large o.j.’s and a forest berry pie, yummy! Our translator ordered coffee and fries. McDonalds was the only place open for breakfast because Ukrainians usually eat breakfast at home.

After breakfast, we drove to the Registration Office and waited til they opened at 9 a.m. to go in to meet with the lady over adoptions in the region. She asked us a few questions about ourselves and family, then told our trans. That she would have to find the paperwork and might get it signed that day, or Monday. In Odessa, we have to meet with the child you want to adopt for 5 days before they will give us approval to adopt her. We were hoping to have our paper signed Friday because they said they would count the weekend as part of the 5 days, but now we will have to start on Monday, or whenever they sign the paperwork.

We then headed over to the Internat/Boarding School to talk to the director. The building and grounds are very run down and dilapidated. It was quite the dreary place to be and I’m glad that my kids don’t have to live/go to school there. The inside was just as dilapidated, but we noticed they are replacing some of the windows at the front of the building, so at least they are making some improvements, probably through donations of kind hearted and generous people. We found out that she was on vacation and that all of the children were at summer camp a few minutes away. We found this out from a substitute for the director, who had the lowest, gruffest voice I have ever heard. I guess our trans. made some calls because she said that the lawyer and director were going to come in to talk to us. They arrived a few minutes before 10 a.m. We met with the lawyer first. She was very friendly and asked us to sit down. She found the paperwork for V. and her brother and said that her brother was no longer at the school. He had run away and had been brought back by the police only to run away again. She said, “.He is basically a bad boy with a bad face”. Kyle and I looked at each other with relief that he was not at the school, but then wondered what the next step was. She said that he would not be suitable for adoption, but that we needed to find him to have him sign a paper stating that he did not want to be adopted. So, then the director came in (I noticed she drove up in a Mercedes, hmmmmmm. . ..), and they discussed the situation. She was actually very nice also and she thought that the best course of action was to find this boy and get his signature so that we could submit it to the courts.