Ukraine Journey

All is going well today.  It is so nice to be back home.  Ella and Erica are doing great together.  Erica really loves her new sister!  Ella seems to love all types of food especially pizza!  For some reason she doesn’t like tuna?  Jill is taking time off to be with the girls this summer.  We will be getting Ella into a English class next week, so she has a little English under her belt before she starts 2nd grade.  I really think she will catch on quickly.  Below is a picture of Erica and Ella’s new pajamas.

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Erica, Ella and Elizabeth (cousin)

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After being in Ukraine for 27 days, we left Kyiv Sunday morning July 8th, 2007 at 11:50am and arrived home at 11:30pm Sunday night.  I made it to bed around 1:00am and got up for work at 6:00am.  What a fun thing to do after being up more then 24 hours.  Jet lag could be taking affect.  Erica and Ella are really getting along great and love to play together.  It’s like Ella’s been in our family for every!

Our two Ukrainian girls - Erica (age 12) and Ella (age 8).

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A lot has happened this week.  All good…..we have every thing completed and are scheduled for a 11:50am flight out of Kyiv on Sunday the 8th.  Please be warned that you must acquire a Maroon (red) Ukraine passport for your children.  The US Embassy will no longer accept the light blue passports.   Since we have a cable modem in our Kyiv apartment,  I thought I would recap the past few days with a few pictures.

7-3-2007 (Tuesday)

Our van driver was waiting for us at 5:00am this morning.  We had an early morning start because we needed to drive about 3 1/2 hours to Dzhankoy (Crimera Region) to Ella’s birth village to have her birth certificate changed.   We had to wait a couple hours to completed this work.  The administrative building was quite old.  The only thing in this village is the nice train station.   People here do not have a lot of money so there are not many shops and things to do there.   We had a hot cup of coffee in a plastic cup and I’m surprised the coffee didn’t drop out the bottom of the cup.  We also had a nice pastry.  Here is the Jankoi Village main web page in English.

Dzhankoy Train Station (Tuesday Morning the 3rd) 

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Dzhankoy Coffee Shop (Tuesday Morning the 3rd)……………………………………………………………………………………………

Dzhankoy Administrative Building Gate, Soviet Era (Tuesday Morning the 3rd)

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Heading back to Kherson from Simferopol, Crimea

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Stopping for Fresh Dried Fish and Melons

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7-4-2007 (Wednesday)

Today we left the house around 8:00am to the notary and get Ella’s passport.  Took longer then we expected but made it to orphanage around 2:00pm.  We met a couple that adopted from Kherson that we found out their daughter was best friends in the same group.  We had a nice time talking to them and exchanged contact info.  It was very sad to say good bye to everyone.  We left the orphanage around 4:00pm and started to head out of town the facilitator left something at the house so we needed to return to the house.   We got back on the road around 5:00pm heading out of Kherson for Kyiv.  We drove none stop and arrived into Kyiv around 12:30am Thursday morning.  We were all so tired and I had to keep our driver up.  I said, “coffee?” and he said, “coffee, coffee!” but  kept on driving.  We made is safely back to Kyiv and stopped at the 24 hour market and checked into our nice apt. 

Robb, Jill and Ella last day at Kherson Orphage.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Mig Jet at City Limits - Leaving Kherson

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7-6-2007 (Friday)

Ella with her new US Digital VISA and Ukraine Passport Ukraine Passsport

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Cover 

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Kyiv Apartment -Ella enjoying a nice hot bath before bedtime

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Kyiv Apartment - Ella getting ready for bed

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7-5-2007 (Saturday)

Today Ella and I got up and walked about 4 miles around our neighborhood.  One thing I can tell you is that it is very easy to get lost.  On the way back to the apartment Ella and I stopped at a small coffee shop.  Ella had green tea and I had a latte.  Later we joined Jill shopping down by the SDA.  I ran into Paul and Mellisa and wished them a safe return home.  Later we caught up with Norm and Angela and had a nice diner at a Ukrainain restaurant.  We made it back to our apartment to prepare packing for our trip home.  Ukraine is a fun place to visit but we are so happy to head back home! 

 Kyiv sight seeing.

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Kyiv sight seeing.

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Kyiv Apartment - What I do best with HS Access.

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Kyiv -

 Ella and I relaxing at coffee shop while Jill shops.

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Kyiv - Wedding by SDA

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Greetings everyone.  Today is our final 10th day of wait in Kherson.  Jill and I would like to introduce you to our beautiful daughter Ella.  Ella is 8 years old and she is very excited to come home with us.  We are scheduled to fly out of Kyiv on July 8th.

June 14th, 2007 First Day Meeting Ella in Kherson Orphanage.

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Our Facilitator has really been busy this morning getting all the final paper work like the court decree, going to the inspectors office etc.  We are leaving this afternoon around 2:30pm for the orphanage to have a party for Ella’s group.  Jill has gifts for the Director and all of Ella’s caregivers.

 June 25th, 2007 Taking Ella to have Passport Pictures Taken.

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June 28th, 2007 Ella’s Visit to our House. 

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June 19th, 2007 Our Daughter Ella.

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Tuesday July 3 we drive to Crimea region to Ella’s birth town which is about an 1 hour from Simferopol to have Ella’s birth certificate changed and for new passport.  We will be very busy Tuesday so we will post new updates when we get to Kyiv.  Thanks for following our journey…

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Hi Everyone.  Friday Jill and I were able to pick up our girl at the orphanage and take her to the park for half the day.  When we arrived she was about ready to eat her lunch.  I decided to take a picture of her lunch because this was the first time I really saw what the kids eat.  I was pretty surprised to see she had a good portion and looked good. 

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We left for the park that was down by the river.  Kherson is a large shipping port here.  The first photo was take of our girl riding a horse around the park and the next going down a slide.  All the kids in her group had hats.  We will introduce you to our new daughter this coming Monday.   She had so much fun today and asked alot of questions to our driver and facilitator about all types of things.  These are some of the new cloths Jill picked out.  Soon as she goes back to the orphanage she changes back to her old cloths.  She knows the time is getting close and she is very excited about coming to America.  She is such a sweet little girl.

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The next couple pictures are of the Kherson Public Beach.  The city had put a large ship in the middle of the River and build a steel foot bridge across to the other side where there was another beach and a small zoo.  We saw monkeys, big bears, fox, peacocks and the local dog.

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Jill and I are doing great.  We have a nice little story to tell you.

Several days ago, I received a nice e-mail from a FRUA member that saw one of my post.  She mentioned they also had adopted a girl from the same orphanage as our girl the end of 2006.  We determined that their daughter was in the same groupa and actually were best friends.  We received several pictures by e-mail and sure enough there was our daughter and theirs.  Such a small world and we are so thankful to help give our girl a new home.  There are so many children here that need a home with parents to give them a second chance of life.  We really wished we could have brought a couple more children home.   They are all so sweet and we will all cherish our visits with them.

The second part of this story, we were talking about the place we were staying at.  It started with the driver and maroon Lada and then about a dog their sons adopted during their stay.   I really thought we were talking two different places and did not think twice about it.  I was sitting in the living room yesterday morning drinking my coffee and my wife Jill said…. Robb come here!  Jill had opened the bedroom window and guess what?  The dog was there glazing his eyes into our bedroom.  I starting to laugh at the what we were seeing in the window.  We are not sure of the dogs name yet and are checking to see if any of the puppy’s are around.  I have not seen them.  Last night we did stop at the local market and I got some doggy treats for the dog..  She is always near our window.  We have a new friend now!

btw: The screens were removed and they have added bars around all the windows.  This was for security and they now have two a/c units in the house.   I will post all the pictures when we return home for you to see.

Picture sent by Friends - (Taken in 2006)

Next two Pictures taken by Me - (June 2007)

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