Getting used to the routine

The culture shock of last week is gone, and we are slowly adjusting to our life in Odessa. Most of the time we remember to say “izvinite” instead of “excuse me”, or not to say “okay” after each sentence. Though it still feels unreal being back in Odessa. Just this morning we were walking the City Garden (Gorsad) and the young couple was walking toward us speaking Russian. We looked at each other and said almost simultaneously: “Did you hear, they are speaking Russian!” And then it downed on us: of course they are speaking Russian, it’s the language spoken in Odessa :)

We have a bit of a good news: our paperwork was accepted at SDA. However, they won’t issue an approval letter until Friday, so we can’t have a court date until next week. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers – we are really hoping for the court session on Monday or Tuesday. We miss our kids terribly and can’t wait to go home.

Though the bureaucracy is taking its toll on us, we are having so much fun seeing old friends. Many of you know that Oleg and I met in the first grade classroom and were classmates for 10 years. And yesterday we saw our 2 classmates who also were in the same class! We are hoping to see more classmates later this week – it will be our version of High School reunion.

We also had a chance to see several sights - our favorite beach "Dolphin" on the Black Sea, and the famous market "Privoz". I'm embarrased to say that I totally forgot about the pick pocketers on Privoz. Though I had most of the money in the inside pocket, I put 8 grivna in the outside pocket, just to make it easier to get it later when paying for the bus. I was very naive :) My 8 grivna were gone immediately!

We don’t really have time to watch TV, but recently we were pleasantly surprised to see “Dancing with the stars” Ukrainian style. The show format and even the music is the same as our American version, I guess they have to follow BBC format. But there are several differences. There are 4 international judges – from Netherlands, Italy, Russia and Ukraine, whose comments are translated live by several interpreters. It’s so cool! I also like the fact that the male host speaks Ukrainian, and female host speaks Russian, it allows people who speak both languages to enjoy the show.

Here are some more pictures from the last couple of days:

Finally - some pictures

Our apartment has a dial-up connection, so I couldn’t upload the pictures before. But yesterday was the first day when we had some time, so we found a restaurant with free wireless connection and finally uploaded the pictures.

It was a great weekend – we were able to relax for the first time since we flew to Kiev last Sunday. We started Saturday morning by taking Raisa to the dance class. It was an eye-opening experience :) I thought I remember the difference between the teaching styles in former Soviet Union and America, but I did not :) When we came to the States, I was surprised how the dance and gymnastics teachers always say “good job” to the kids even in the cases when they don’t do such a good job. It is different in Ukraine – the praise has to be earned. Well, the dance class started, and the teacher started yelling! I’m not kidding! She yelled for an hour and a half! “You should be ashamed of yourself!”, “Go home if you can’t work hard!”, etc. She looked like a Nazi! I hope this woman is an exception because I have a very warm memories about my own dance teacher and Alex’s dance teacher, and I know that majority of dance teachers in Ukraine are ultimate professionals. Anyway, we told Raya, that her dance teacher in America will be very kind to her :)

After the dance class we went to see the sights. Downtown Odessa looks totally different now – it’s very beautiful and charming, and looks very European. Last year I was on business trip in Toulouse, France, and I think that Odessa is even more beautiful in my biased opinion :)

We saw lots of wedding parties next to the Opera House. I remember seeing pictures of Odessa weddings on Leslie’s blog, and I thought it would be cool to take some more pictures. I already told you that women in Ukraine love boots, but I didn’t know they love them that much to wear with the wedding dress :) Check out the pictures with the bride in blue boots!

Today we finally went down the memory lane – we went to Odessa University first, to the building of “Computer Science – Math” college (mehmat) I graduated from many years ago. Then we took “marshrutka” bus 133 to “Cheremushki” – the region where we grew up. This region didn’t change at all, it just looked different to us – the soviet style 5-stories apartment buildings looked very big when we grew up, but now they looked very small! We went to see our school #51, it was closed on Sunday, but we made some pictures. We also saw some old friends, so overall it was a perfect weekend.

Just some observations for those of you ready to go:

- Dress in layers. Most of the time it was very warm in all these places where we had to wait for the paperwork to be done, so it was very convenient to take off some layers.
- Make sure you wear very comfortable shoes, you’ll be walking a lot! I think we walked more this week than in the last 11 years :) Our leg muscles are screaming!


Here are some pictures from Kiev:


And from our first days in Odessa:


If you’d like to see bigger pictures, double-click the slide-show, and you’ll be able to see the pictures in a different, bigger window.

Fighting with the red tape

Today we continued to fight with the red tape. SDA received our paperwork this morning, but they didn’t accept it! Two documents out of 12 had incorrect wording. One of the documents states that we had a contact with Raisa. Apparently, this document was supposed to say that we met Raisa, and then had a contact. Tell me, how can you have a contact without meeting someone? The other document listed our social worker’s name, but didn’t have her address! So we had to go back to the inspector’s office, wait for the updated documents, then wait for the head of the region to sign them, etc. The updated paperwork is on its way to Kiev, we are really hoping it will be accepted on Monday so that we can have the approval paper from SDA by Wednesday.

The weather in Odessa is not bad – it’s about 50 degrees. People are dressed up all the time, I kind of forgot about it. The ladies’ uniform is a short skirt and high boots with stiletto heels. For example, our region inspector was wearing a see-through shirt, a very short skirt and white boots with several fur pieces on them

Traffic in Odessa is very bad, though it’s better than in Kiev. We are taking “marshrutka” bus everywhere, it’s 1.25 grivna (25 cents) average. We took taxis a couple of times, but it takes the same amount of time as a bus, so it doesn’t make sense to spend more money (better save it for the envelopes :)

The prices are ridiculous! I don’t know how people with the average salary of $250 a month can live with these prices. We went to the supermarket, and were shocked to see that the grocery prices are almost the same as back home. The clothes boutiques are empty most of the time – I guess majority of people can’t afford them. We saw $300 boots, $250 jacket, $120 purse, etc. So we are planning to go to a famous “7^th km market” to do some shopping soon, we were told the prices are much better there.

Tonight we ordered a take-out “large” pizza, but when it was ready, it was the size of a small single pizza we buy at Wegmans. We noticed the same when ordering coffee. When you order a coffee, ask for “Americana” coffee: it will be less than small size at home. Otherwise they serve coffee expresso style – a very-very-very small cup.

Tomorrow is our day off, and we are finally planning to see our friends. I can’t wait to introduce Raya to them. We got her a digital camera, and she’s constantly taking pictures. She’s such a doll!

Notaries in Ukraine

I knew that notaries in Ukraine are more like lawyers, but I didn’t realize they behave like royalty. Yesterday we needed to notarize our signatures on 2 letters: one for the inspector, the other for SDA. One would think – what’s the big deal to notarize 2 signatures, right? Wrong! There are 2 types of notaries – private and public. Private ones charge more money, but there are less people waiting in line. We went to the private one first. When she heard that our documents are adoption related, she said she’s not allowed to notarize any adoption documents. According to the law, private notaries can’t notarize adoption documents that go abroad. But in this case they were staying in Ukraine! Didn’t matter – she didn’t want to do it. Then we went to the public notary. It was a stern looking soviet style woman. She looked at our American passports and demanded a translation. Luckily we had an apostilled translation, which was also notarized by a Ukrainian notary in Kiev. She looked at it, looked back at us and started yelling: “What is that? Are you idiots? Why did you put apostilles on the passport copy? Go to a translation agency and bring me a real translation!” We were speechless for a second, and then she dropped another bomb on us. She said that as foreigners we are required to get special ID codes, and without these special codes she’s not allowed notarize anything! Our facilitator immediately looked up the notary law, and found a part where it explains that indeed foreigners are needed these ID codes, but only in cases when they are involved in commercial deals. So, as you can see, this woman was not only rude, but also she had no clue about the law. We moved on. We found another private notary. There were no people waiting in line! It gave us a hope – maybe he’ll want some business? We were in luck. He didn’t demand a passport translation, he didn’t say anything about not being able to notarize adoption documents, and he didn’t even ask about ID codes! Just an hour later we got our letters! It took that long for one of his secretaries to type the letters (the notaries never sign the letters typed by somebody else – they need to approve the wording), for other secretary to write something in a special book, and for us to actually sign it. When we signed in English, the way we usually sign everything – first and last name - they were very surprised because in Ukraine people sign with some kind of abbreviation, just a couple of letters. Then they also asked us to write our last name in Russian! Obviously we could do it, but what if we couldn’t? Anyway, we paid 260 grivna ($52) for the services and left with our 2 treasures. The usual price for the public notary is 3 grivna per document, and for the public is 15 grivna ($3) per document, but of course we didn’t argue and happily paid :)

We were also going to the inspector’s office back and forth several times yesterday and today. Let me tell you: for us speaking Russian is a definite disadvantage. I would rather not understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Of course I knew about the envelopes going back and forth, we were prepared for that. But I was not prepared for all this bureaucracy. I thought our being from Odessa will help us, but it doesn’t help us in any way. The region Raisa is located now (she’s staying with her guardian) doesn’t have any orphanages, so they’ve never had an adoption case involving Americans. And you know the perception about all rich Americans. Especially if our dossier lists our 5-digit income. It doesn’t help that in Russian they use dots and commas in a different way. For example, 10.5 is written 10,5 and there are other differences. The inspector read our income not in thousands, but in millions. She asked – so you have “such and such” millions? We had to explain, that we wish we had so many millions, but no, it’s just thousands. If I could tell you everything, you wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, we have our paperwork for SDA, and we just sent it by train this evening, so the first step is done. As soon as we have SDA permission, we can schedule a court date. I don’t know when it’s going to be, hopefully soon.

But despite the difficulties with the paperwork, we are very happy to be able to spend a lot of time bonding with Raya. She goes to school in the mornings, but in the afternoons we are running around together. She’s such a sweet and good girl, we are very fortunate to have her!

We were really looking forward going to back to Odessa, but with all this paperwork chase going on, we don’t even have time to call our friends! Hopefully after the court we’ll be able to relax and enjoy our time here. But so far it’s no vacation at all. Odessa is beautiful in downtown, but what we really want to see is our old apartment buildings where Oleg and I grew up, the school where we were classmates for 10 years, were both our mothers worked, and where I worked as a math teacher after graduating from university. I think we’ll definitely take a day off from doing paperwork this weekend and take a trip down the memory lane.

I have to confess: I didn’t wear my high-heeled stiletto boots yet. In Kiev all the sidewalks were icy, and I decided I don’t have enough experience to wear the high heels on ice. Here in Odessa we are running around all day long, and it’s not very convenient to do wearing stiletto heels. Though all ladies in Odessa are such a pros walking all day long in them.

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!!! We have a lot to be thankful for this year, so we’ll definitely have a belated turkey dinner later this year! Our wonderful friends Lena and Kostya made us a whole chicken, and we celebrated Thanksgiving “chicken” style together.

First day in Odessa

We are in Odessa! I finally got the Internet access, so it will be a long entry, please bear with me!

Our flight to Kiev was, um, interesting. After spending 10 hours at JFK, we finally boarded the plane, found our seats and tried to get comfortable for the long flight. It was not an easy task since my seat wouldn't recline all the way down, and Oleg's seat wouldn’t recline at all! There were no other available seats, so we had to stick with ours. As soon as our plane started taxiing towards the runway, I felt something strange… I looked up and saw that the water was trickling down from the overhead bin to my seat! We called the flight attendant again telling her that the roof is leaking :) She looked like we need to have our heads examined! After examining my seat and verifying that the water is indeed leaking from somewhere, she called in a consult. Another flight attendant came in, and all of a sudden the leaking magically stopped. Well, it was raining in New York, so I guess the rain has stopped :) After that our flight was fairly uneventful.

Going through the passport control and customs was very straightforward. For those of you about to travel, I don’t think you really need the VIP service, even if you don’t speak Russian. First, you go through the passport control. Make sure to fill out the form you are given on the plane on both sides. I didn’t realize we need to fill out both “Arrival” and “Departure forms. Have your facilitator’s address written down somewhere, so you can specify this address on the immigration form (or even the SDA address – they didn’t care as long as you put any address there). Then go straight ahead to get the luggage. Even if you bypassed the passport line with the VIP service, you’ll still need to wait for the luggage. After that you have a choice to go through the Green corridor (if you don’t have anything to declare, i.e. you have less than $3000 per person), or through the Red corridor where you have to fill out a declaration form. The forms are available next to the luggage carousel in English.

Yesterday was a big day – our SDA appointment. Even though we knew they shouldn’t deny us to adopt Raya, we still felt nervous. But everything worked great! We were greeted by a very nice woman who introduced herself as Zarina. She showed us Raisa’s file, talked to us for a couple of minutes, and that was it! We asked whether it’s possible to come back for the paperwork that same day because we planned to leave for Odessa in the evening, and she agreed! After we were done at SDA, our great facilitator Sergey spent the day taking care of us - sightseeing, shopping, he even took us out to dinner, and then to the train station.

The train was not bad at all! Well, we had an experience riding the trains in Ukraine many years before, but let me tell you: our train was much better than we expected. We bought all 4 bunks in the cabin, so we were very comfortable. Not only we had our privacy, but also we had enough room to put our luggage in! There is very little room for luggage in the cabin, so we used our extra bunks for our bags. We were also told that we need to show our passports to the attendant, but she didn’t ask. The bathrooms were more or less clean, and get this: there was even a toilet paper! Though it took a great skill to actually use the bathroom because the train was swaying all the time. So overall the train experience was okay, even though I wouldn’t call it my favorite way of travel :)

And finally this morning we arrived to Odessa train station at 6:00. Our friends Lena and Kostya were waiting for us – it was so cool to finally see them after 11 years! After a short drive to their apartment, the moment we were waiting for such a long time finally arrived – Raisa was waiting for us! Here is her first picture with us this morning: isn't she precious?


Now it's time to go to the Regional Inspector's office to prepare a lot of paperwork that we have to send back to SDA. More later!

Hello from JFK

Hi everyone, we are at JFK waiting for our flight to Kiev. While Oleg is checking out all the numerous duty free shops here, I've decided to update the blog. We flew to JFK by JetBlue, and the flight was fabulous – plenty of legroom, individual TVs with dozens of channels, we were very happy customers. We’ve never used JetBlue before, but we’ll definitely fly them again.

After collecting our luggage, we took a cart to put it on, and let me tell you, it was the best $3 we've ever spent :) We took a train to a terminal #4 where Aerosvit is located and found out that our flight is delayed for 4 hours. This is very normal for me :) Every time I fly, at least one of the flights needs to be cancelled or delayed, so I wasn’t even surprised. Then we started looking for the Aerosvit check-in counter, and it was very easy to find: most of the people in line spoke Russian! It was so cool! But the coolest thing was that we've got the meal vouchers from Aerosvit! It's the first time in my experience when the airline gave out the vouchers because of the delay! So now we are about to spend them :) With the delay we are expected to arrive to Kiev at about 4pm their time on Monday. It still gives us enough time to rest before our appointment on Tuesday.

We were very surprised to find out that free Internet connection is not available at JFK. At least we couldn't find it. The only wireless network we could connect to, required a payment, and of course we paid because I'm addicted to the Internet :)

Thank you so much to all of you for the words of support and best wishes! It means a lot to us!

Leaving on Sunday...

The day has come: we are leaving tomorrow! Suitcases are packed, major items on the "to-do" list are checked off, detailed instructions for Alex, Victoria and my Mom are written down, and I'm ready to wear my high-heeled boots - it will be interesting to see whether I can still blend in... This is it!

Yesterday was a very special last day at work for both Oleg and myself. We received so many good wishes and kind words of support and encouragement that we feel much better knowing how many people keep us in their thoughts and prayers. Of course, Oleg thinks his co-workers are the best. But I’ll tell you a little secret – my co-workers take the first place :) We love you, guys!

Our next post will be from Kiev!

A Mommy Bear (3 days to go)

I've got this great idea about a Mommy Bear from Shelley, another fellow adoptive parent. Victoria and I went to the Build-a-Bear store and created a Mommy Bear for her to hold on to while I'm in Ukraine! This Mommy Bear can even speak with Mommy's pre-recorded voice :) It was a big hit, so I hope it will make it easier for Victoria to be without me.

Luckily our son doesn't need a Mommy Bear anymore :) Though Oleg and I managed to spend some quality time with him this week, which is not an easy task - he's either at school or at work, or out :)

We are more or less ready to go, just 3 more days... It's a very emotional time for us. Not only we are about to become Raisa's parents, but also we are going back to our homeland for the first time in 11 years. We left Odessa on the cold November day in 1996 with just the clothes on our backs and knowing how to say "Hi", Bye" and "How are you" in English. We found our American dream, and we'll do everything possible to help our new daughter to find hers.

Countdown - 10 days

10 days to go. Are we ready? Not really :) I sort of gave up on the lists - I won't be able to finish them all. Instead, I'm concentrating on spending time with Victoria and taking it one day at a time. This weekend we went to the mall, and had a little photosession:

I was also thinking about our process in Ukraine. Here it is in a nutshell:

On Sunday, November 18th, we fly to NY by JetBlue, and then to Kiev by Aerosvit (Ukrainian Airlines). We arrive to Kiev on Monday, November 19th and have our appointment at SDA (State Department of Adoption) on Tuesday, November 20th. Then we take a train to Odessa that same evening.

Once we get to Odessa, we meet with the inspector of the region (something like a town in the States), and write an application to adopt Raisa. If inspector is an agreement that we can proceed with adoption, he/she writes an opinion on whether the adoption meets the best interests of the child. This opinion letter along with many other documents is sent back to Kiev for SDA approval. SDA takes 5 business days to review these documents and then hopefully gives us the consent to adopt. The consent is sent back to Odessa and we can schedule a court date (hopefully within the next week or so).

If the court is successfull, we have to wait mandatory 10 calendar days (sometimes more if the 10th day falls on the weekend) to get the court decree. During these 10 days, anyone can appeal the court decision (hopefully not!)

Once we have a court decree, we can apply for a new birth certificate where we listed as the parents, and with the new birth certificate we can apply for the passport. Getting passport can take up to 10 days or more, but very often it takes 2-3 days, depending on the region and on the expediting fees.

With the passport in hand we go back to Kiev for the medical exam and to apply for a visa. This process takes about 3 business days, and after that we can go home! So it's hard to predict when we'll come home, but I really hope it will be before the holidays.

I also wanted to say a huge thank you to my friend and co-worker for your generous gift toward our adoption expenses - I don't have words to describe my appreciation for your kindness. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

16 days

I'm overwhelmed. Why the "to-do" lists are getting bigger and bigger despite the checking off items daily??? I'm so glad to be able to check with my online friends to make sure I haven't missed anything! Thank you, Tami, for reminding me about the snowplow service (actually you were talking about winterizing, and it triggered my snowplow item :)

So where am I with the lists?

- Call the bank to order the new money. Check.
- Call the credit card company to make sure the card will work in Ukraine. Check.
- Buy money belts and international adapters. Check.
- Sign the Power of Attorney document/Medial Release form. Check.
- Talk to the school district about Raisa's placement. Check.
- Buy furniture for Raisa's bedroom. Check.
- Let Victoria's teachers know we'll be out of country. Check.
- Print out the embassy forms and other paperwork to take with us. Check.
- Write a list of emergency phone numbers and all Victoria's activities for my Mom. Check.

What else is on the list? The big items still need to be checked off are:

- Order snowplowing service
- Schedule Internet Bill Payments until the end of December
- Choose and print out pictures for the photoalbum

Plus I have a thousand smaller items to check off :)

So as you can see, I'm stressed out. But I put off all lists to take Victoria trick-or-treating. I'm biased of course, but I think she was the most adorable ice princess ever :)