The weekend

We had a great weekend with Raisa. On Saturday we went to the "Privoz" market for a little retail therapy :) Privoz used to be a food only market, but now it's a huge complex with lots of stores and individual sellers where one can buy everything: you name it, they've got it. When I visited Privoz in December, I totally forgot about pick-pocketers and lost some small amount of grivna from my pockets :) This time I was very vigilant and made sure all my grivna stays where it belongs :) In addition to the clothes sellers we visited the meat, cheese, fish markets, etc. The food sellers always let you try everything they sell. When I was growing up, we would try everything - delicious cheese, smoked meat, farmers cheese, etc. We didn't need lunch afterwards :) Though this time I thought I'd better pass on trying unknown food!

After dinner I called my friend Tami, and we went to see the downtown area at night. It's absolutely beautiful! The New Year's and Christmas lights are still on, and there are lots of people on the streets enjoying the sights. Though I have to say that the alleys in the courtyard of Tami's apartment are absolutely dark and scary, but we were brave enough to go through both alleys with no problems :)

Today we went to the Opera Theater! One of my friends got us a couple of tickets for the children's musical "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". It was a great performance, and both Raya and I enjoyed it. It was obviously geared towards children, and the actors tried to make it as interactive as possible. Every time they asked the audience a question, Raisa along with other kids would enthusiastically yell "Da" or "Net". It was very cute. The theater was closed for several years for reconstruction, and just reopened last summer. It was gorgeous, when I visited it many years ago, but now it's breathtaking.

After performance we went out to dinner with my classmates. It was a ladies only night, and we enjoyed our evening at one of the restaurants in the "Afina" mall in downtown. Of course, Raisa was the center of attention, and she loved every minute of it!

I was able to borrow a USB cable at one of the photo stores (at no charge!), so I finally uploaded some pictures. This album doesn't have the latest pictures of the Opera Theater, but tomorrow after chasing the paperwork I'll try to borrow the cable again and upload the latest pictures.

Vacation Day

After two 10-hour grueling days I decided to relax today. I played a tourist for a little bit, went to some places I didn't have a chance to visit last time, did some shopping, etc. And I walked in my flat warm ugly comfortable boots :) I couldn't wear my favorite 3-inch sensible heel boots after yesterday's blisters! Though I walked in them for 3 weeks last time and didn't have any problems, so I'm not sure what's different now :) And this time I left my 5-inch stiletto heel boots home :)

I made a lot of pictures today, but I can't post them because I forgot my USB cable at home! I'm going to stop at one of the photo stores tomorrow and see if they let me borrow a cable for a reasonable price.

Then it was a lunch time. Do you know who I had lunch with? I had lunch with my blogging friend Tami!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you believe that? We "met" online several months ago at approximately the same stage of the process. We waited together for our dossier to be submitted. Then we waited for the SDA appointment date. Then we waited for the actual appointment. Then both of us ended up going for 2 trips. And finally we've met!!! It was so good to be able to finally connect in person half way around the world! Hopefully we'll be able to meet again before Raisa and I leave for Kiev.

On Monday we'll be calling the Passport Office to find out when to expect the passport to be ready. We also have one more issue to take care of before we can leave Odessa, but I hope it will be resolved soon.

In the meantime Raya and I are concentrating on spending time together, having fun and learning English! She's eager to learn, and she's making a good progress! She'll be speaking English in no time!

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 :)

Back in Odessa

My flight to JFK was short and sweet. The plane was very tiny: it only had a single row of seats on the left side and a double row on the right side. It didn’t even have enough room for carry-on in the overhead bins! Oh well, who cares about one hour flight, right? I’ve got my luggage in literally 5 minutes, took AirTran to the terminal 1, found Austrian Airlines counter, checked in and then enjoyed my Starbucks coffee while surfing the Internet. Most of the other patrons at Starbucks were speaking Russian :) How cool is that?

Both my Austrian Airlines flights from JFK to Vienna and from Vienna to Odessa were on time, my luggage made it intact, so overall my 22-hour journey (including flight from Rochester to JFK) was great. I really enjoyed flying Austrian Airlines – much better than Aerosvit :) The Vienna airport is very small and very easy to navigate - it took me about 5 minutes to go through security and find my gate! The only inconvenience was the time – my plane arrived at 2:00 a.m. EST (8:00 a.m. Vienna time), and my internal clock was still programmed for night, so I was literally falling asleep while trying to stay awake for 3 hours and not to miss my plane to Odessa :)

Passport control in Odessa was a piece of cake – I was done in 15 minutes (including customs), picked up my suitcase and was immediately taken to the Birth Certificates office. I was pretty sure we won’t have any problems getting the Birth Certificate, but boy was I wrong! The lady-bureaucrat in charge read the court decree for a long time. She really tried to find something amiss, and she succeeded! There are several parts in the court decree – one section explains all details of the case, the other allows us to be Raisa’s parents, and the final section instructs the Birth Certificate office to issue a new Birth Certificate and list us as the new parents. Here is the catch. Both first and second parts list our names, DOB, and citizenship. But the third one only lists our names. It doesn’t list our DOB and citizenship! So she can’t issue us a new birth certificate! We politely suggested to look at the other 2 parts of the court decree, or at the translation of our passports that I was required to supply. Or I could simply tell her that we are the citizens of United States (in case she didn’t know), and when we were born. But she was adamant – go and change the court decree so that it lists our DOB and citizenship in the third part! Just to make the record straight, we supplied all necessary paperwork, including something extra (you know what I mean). But apparently it was not enough! So we called the lawyer, who helped us to schedule a court date, asked her to help, and finally went to Raisa’s school to pick her up. She didn’t know I’m coming, so she was VERY happy to see me! I think the whole school heard her yell “MAMA!!!” It was great!

This morning we’ve got a call from the lawyer. Apparently she went to the boss of that lady-bureaucrat from the Birth Certificate office and said: if we don’t get the Birth Certificate today, we go to Kiev to the Ministry and file a complaint! Guess what? It worked! We have a Birth Certificate!!!!!!! Tomorrow we plan to legalize it, receive a new Tax Code, go to a Notary office (I brace myself…), get another paper, and then (knock on wood) apply for the passport!!! Please keep Raisa and I in your thoughts and prayers – we really need to apply for the passport tomorrow: Raisa wants to go home!

Leaving in 10 hours

I was so looking forward to flying JetBlue to JFK: comfy leather seats, individual TV channels and extra legroom. It wasn’t meant to be! About an hour ago, just before I wanted to check the status of my flights, the phone rang! It was an automated message by JetBlue airline calling to inform me that my flight to New York is cancelled and I can get a full refund. Let me tell you: it’s not the first time one of my flights is cancelled when I’m about to fly abroad :) It happened to me last year when I went to France on business trip, and I was freaked out then – how I’m supposed to make my connection if my flight is cancelled? Now I took the news in stride and started calling JetBlue. It was not easy, as many other customers did the same thing, so the time on hold was very long. To make the long story short, I received a refund from JetBlue and booked a Delta flight at exactly the same time as my JetBlue flight was – 11:40 am. Though this flight is twice more expensive because I bought it in less than 24 hours before departure :(

Anyway, my 5:45 p.m. flight to Vienna by Austrian Airlines is still in the “scheduled” status, so I hope it will stay the same :) This flight arrives to Vienna at 8:40 in the morning, and my next flight to Odessa departs at 11 a.m., so I have about 2.5 hours between the flights. Since Vienna’s airport is relatively small, I hope I’ll be able to make my connection on time. My final flight arrives to Odessa at 2pm Ukrainian time on Tuesday.

This time I’m taking only one suitcase (with empty duffel bag inside for Raisa’s clothes), and not even a carry-on, except for a laptop bag and my purse. Raisa doesn’t have much, so the duffel bag should have enough room for her possessions. I was shopping like crazy these weeks, buying all kinds of clothes, though I’m afraid everything will be too big for her. She’s 10 years old, but very tiny, so she can still fit size 8. I was buying size 10-12, but if that’s too big, I guess it won’t be long before she can wear it.

It was a very busy week for us with my preparations for the trip, and numerous activities with Victoria. We registered her for kindergarten, attended 2 birthday parties for her friends and watched her music class production of “3 Piggy Opera”. I’ll miss the parent-teacher conference at her preschool, but luckily Oleg stays home this time, so he’ll hold the fort for both of us in my absence.

Cell phones in Ukraine

I’m leaving in 7 days, but this time I’m not stressed at all! I know what to expect, I know what to pack, and, most importantly, there is an end in sight. My packing list is very short – just bare necessities to get me through these couple of weeks in Ukraine.

Many people asked me about the cell phones use in Ukraine, and I’ll be happy to share my observations. People use their cell phones everywhere! Which is not a big deal, right? Everybody in America is doing the same thing, but not quite the same. For example, if my cell phone rings in a middle of the dinner with several people, I would either not take the call, or excuse myself to go outside to talk. Not in Ukraine! People would just answer the phone and start a conversation, oblivious of the other people at the table! Same thing in public transportation – I heard too many loud private conversations in marshrutka bus that I really didn’t care to hear :) Even in official places people don’t stop talking on the phones! Once Oleg and I were in the regional inspector’s office along with several other people. One woman had a phone call – she accepted it and started talking right there! I was mortified! Oleg and I couldn’t understand it – why is it so hard to call back later? But then we finally got it: all incoming calls in Ukraine are free, so if somebody calls you, it’s a free call, and you better take it. Otherwise you’ll have to pay to call back!

There are phone plans, but in most cases people just buy minutes as needed. They are readily available everywhere at the stores, markets, on the street corners from vendors, etc. You can buy phone cards for any amount, I think you can start as low as 15 grivnas or buy as much as 200-300. It’s very easy to check the amount of grivna available: Dial *101# then press the “call" button and wait a few seconds. The amount of grivna will be displayed.

I tried to find out how much is one minute by checking the amount of grivna before and after the call, and then dividing it by an approximate number of minutes I talked, but I still didn’t figure it out :) Here are some observations for those of you ready to go:

- It’s much cheaper to call from one cell phone to another. I would say it’s approximately 0.2 – 0.4 grivna a minute, depends on the provider. Sometimes it’s even cheaper to call if both phones are from the same provider

- It’s more expensive to call from the cell phone to the landline phone – about 0.7 – 1 grivna a minute. But if you still need to call, make sure to dial an area code. For example, if the landline phone in Kiev is 555-5555, then to call from the cell phone, you should dial 8-044-555-5555 (where 044 is Kiev’s area code) Same rules apply when calling from one cell phone to another – you need to dial 8, then area code, then a phone number. The only case when you don’t need to dial the area code is when you call from one landline to another in the same city.

- Calls to USA are about 2 grivna a minute (maybe more).

- As I said before, all incoming calls are free, so it makes sense to give your phone number to friends and family in the States and have them call you.

- You can transfer grivna from one cell phone to another. Dial *150*number*amount of grivna# and press the “send" button. You’ll see the confirmation number on the display. For example, if you’d like to transfer 20 grivnas to the phone number 8-099-555-5555, you should dial the following:

*150*8-099-555-5555*20#

Then to confirm your transaction, dial *150*confirmation number

Cool websites

Here are a couple of cool sites (not adoption-related):

1. www.odnoklassniki.ru. “Odnoklassniki” means classmates in Russian. This website is kind of equivalent of Facebook.com for Russian-speaking users. It was created a year ago, and by now there are more then 7 million users! I found so many classmates whom I haven’t seen in 20 – 30 years – from elementary school to college! It’s way cool! Though I already read an article about it where the author implies that this site is watched by FSB (former KGB :)

2. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com For those of you with kids in college – this is a very cool website where students rate their professors! Good to know whose class not to take :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Happy New Year my dear friends! New Year’s is the main holiday in our family (we still keep Ukrainian tradition), and we celebrated it in style! We said “Good Bye” to the old year, and gave thanks to all the good things that happened this year. We “met” the New Year (this is a direct translation from Russian) at midnight and danced all night long. We made a wish at exactly 12:00, and it should come true this year! Grandfather Frost came for a visit and left small, but very nice presents for the kids under New Year’s tree. We had a good time celebrating New Year’s, and according to the Russian/Ukrainian superstitions, it means the New Year 2008 – the year of the Golden Mice - will be very good for us!


We also celebrated Victoria’s birthday. I specifically booked her birthday party almost 2 weeks after her actual birthday since we weren’t sure when we are coming home from Ukraine. Even though we came back earlier than expected, I decided not to reschedule and keep the date we had it booked. She had a blast with her friends at the Little Gym:

They jumped up and down:


Played the games:



Had a birthday cake:


and just had a good time:


And finally we asked our friends to take the last picture of us as the family of 4. Very soon we should be able to take a new family picture as a family of 5!