Hello from Ukraine!

Friday, September 5, 2008

After a trip that seemed like an oxymoron, we finally arrived in Kiev about 9:30 Friday morning. How can a WHIRLWIND trip take FOREVER?? After having my contacts in for 30 hours straight, I felt like someone had rubbed Vaseline on my lenses, and I could barely see anything. But after leaving the airport, one of the first large office buildings we saw was an office for the Avon company, and had two huge, building-sized photos of Reese Witherspoon, who is their international spokesperson. A bit of an odd welcome to Ukraine.

After a few strange connections – neither our coordinator or translator could meet us, so they sent a very nice young man named Sasha who doesn’t speak much English – we found ourselves in an apartment ready to crash for awhile.

Today (Friday) we covered most of the basics. We exchanged some money (dollars into hrivynas), bought a few groceries for the next couple of days, and found access to high-speed internet (not in our building, unfortunately, but not too far away). Tomorrow on Saturday we’ll try to hook up with some American friends that live here in Kiev if we can, and maybe venture out to eat. John’s disappointed that there’s no McDonald’s near where we are (so no gravy?), but there is a TGI Friday’s so he’s happy about that.

Observations about Ukraine so far:
- Just when I started to feeling out of place wearing an orange t-shirt, several people walked by wearing even brighter colors. Lots of people walking, LOTS of high heels.
- Our building has an office that makes arrangements for marriage. Matchmaker, anyone? We’ll try to post a photo.
- By U.S. standards, our apartment is basic, but nice. It may well be a luxury apartment here. We have one bedroom, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. It works just fine. The only problem is that it’s on the 5th floor – with no elevator. We’ll probably get more exercise in the next few days than we have in the last few weeks.

We do have a cell phone here, but unfortunately it ran out of minutes and we’re waiting for our coordinator to bring us a new card with minutes on it. We’ll post the number when calls can be made to it.

We know we have lots of friends and family who are praying for us through this whole process, and I can’t tell you how much that means to us. Please continue to pray that the kids that are perfect for our family will be available for us to choose at our appointment Monday around 11:00 am, that we’ll just know which ones. I have never been so certain that God is in control and I am not!

More later –

JoEllen