Making progress!

When Oleg and I came to Odessa almost 2 months ago, it took us a while to get used to the fact that we are indeed in our hometown. After spending more than half of our married life (11 years out of 20) in the States, and totally assimilating in our new country, it was really hard to believe that we are back in the city where we grew up. Every day we would walk the beautiful downtown streets and shake our heads in disbelief – is that really happening? Are we really back?

This time it’s totally different for me. It feels like I’ve never left! Everything looks familiar, I know where to go, I know how to behave, and I even speak on my cell phone while riding the bus, though not as loud as the other fellow riders :) But yesterday I really remembered my childhood. There was no water in our apartment! When we were growing up, the water was turned off from midnight to 6:00 a.m. every single day. Odessa never had enough water, and it was a measure taken to conserve it. In addition to that, we almost never had hot water during summer time, and there were sporadic cold water outages at any time. But it was OK! The key was to have enough water saved for emergencies. I think I only recently stopped reminding myself to take the shower before midnight while the water is on :)

Well, enough reminiscing! Let me tell you about an important stuff! We started the day at 8:00 by taking Raya to school. The next stop was at the bank to pay the official passport dues. We couldn’t pay them at any bank. We were only supposed to pay them at a specific branch in a specific place. Oh well – we waited in line and received the coveted proof of our payment. Then we went to legalize the birth certificate. There was no line (surprise!), our paperwork was accepted (can you believe that?), and we were told to pay the official dues at a specific bank branch (of course! ) and come back later. Well, this branch didn’t accept payments on Thursdays (how weird is that?), but somehow we were able to persuade the teller to accept our payment. While we were waiting for our legalized birth certificate, we went to the notary office to fill out a passport application. Guess what? Of course, the first notary didn’t like the power of attorney Oleg wrote for me. No problem. We went to another one. Same result. The third one. Nope. Finally we went to the passport office and asked if they can accept Oleg’s power of attorney. They agreed! So I went to the fourth notary office and filled out an application, which only listed Raisa’s mother, i.e. myself :) Then back to get a legalized birth certificate, then to the Tax IDs office, where we received Raisa’s Tax ID, back to school to pick her up, and finally by 5:15 we were back at the Passport office ready to apply for the passport! The office was open until 6:00 p.m., and there was still a huge line of people waiting. But it was a lucky day for us. WE APPLIED FOR THE PASSPORT! They accepted all our paperwork, took Raya’s picture and told us to call back on Monday!

We finished the day at the great restaurant in the City Garden (Gorsad), where I had the most delicious ribs in my life :) The only drawback of this great day was that my poor feet ended up with blisters from walking too much :) Tomorrow I’m planning to take a vacation day :)