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June 3, 2005.  3:25 p.m.  Detroit Metro Airport

When I got home from school, Melva, my mother-in-law, was waiting to drive us to the airport.  Loaded up the car and drove in.  Aran kept asking, “Are we in Ukraine?”  It was very cute.  I didn’t like leaving him, to tell the truth.  I hope he doesn’t get too upset once it sinks in that Mama and Daddy aren’t coming back for a long time.  Many hugs good-bye.  Melva took a lot of pictures.  We set off to the airport, feeling like we were setting off on an adventure.

I should have known better.  I subscribe to the idea that an adventure is someone else having a perfectly horrible time while you’re sitting at home in a comfy chair.  Is your chair comfy?  Then keep reading.

At checkin, the clerk gave us heart attacks.  She looked at our Ukraine visas and said, “Your visas have expired.”

Not a good thing to hear.  Kala said that was impossible--they were good for six months and we’d gotten them back in February.

“Well,” the clerk said, “it says here ‘Valid until 01-08-5.  It expired in January.”

I looked at it and blinked.  “N-o-o-o,” I said slowly.  “It’s European dating.  They expire in August.”  Dummy, I added mentally.  You’d think a  clerk working the international terminal would know better.

Made our way through the security check without incident or extra searching, then headed for the Fountain.  The Fountain is the centerpiece of the MacNamara terminal.  Streams of water arc from the rim of a black marble base to the center.  The arcs sometimes spurt and leap in patterns or at random.  They look a bit like leaping dolphins in an Esther Whatsername water musical.  There we met Sarah, who was flying out to England half an hour before our plane was leaving for Amsterdam.  We had supper at a suprisingly reasonable Coney Island, “dropped” Sarah off at her terminal, proceeded to our own gate and killed time by browsing in the shops.

Eventually we boarded our flight--and got pretty ticked off.  Stupid ticket agent had separated Kala and me.  I spent much time standing in the aisle, hoping for a vacant seat that would allow us to switch things around.  By sheer luck, there was one vacant seat on the entire flight that allowed Kala’s seatmate to switch into it and let me sit with her.

Okay, good.  Ready to go.

And then the delays began.  The captain announced a de-icer part had to be replaced.  We’d be delayed about half an hour.  Then something else needed doing; I don’t remember what.  This delayed us so much that the flight route had to be reworked.  It was lengthened, which meant we had to add more fuel, causing yet another delay.  We sat on the plane for two and a half hours and were going to miss our connection in Amsterdam.  We’d left our cell phones at home and had no way to contact our agency so they could contact the people who were going to meet us at the airport in Kyiv.  Had a bad moment when we thought we didn’t have emergency contact information for the adoption agency, but it turned up.

Before we go any further, let me pause here to say how much I loathe, despise, and revile Northwest Air.  I’ve never in my life had a flight with them that wasn’t delayed, canceled, or otherwise screwed up.

We’re still waiting for takeoff.

 

June 5, 2005, 9:15 a.m., Kyiv

The adventure continued.

We finally took off.  The flight itself, while long, went uneventfully.  We were told via loudspeaker to find a transfer desk and the clerks would reroute those of us who’d missed our connecting flights.

When we landed and deplaned, luggage in hand, a representative of KLM (Northwest’s European counterpart) dressed in a powder-blue uniform stood at the gate calling out, “If you are going to Budapest . . . ” and she continued naming several other destinations, “ . . . then come with me.  I have your boarding passes for your next flight.”

She didn’t mention Kyiv, so we continued on our way.  I was tired and cranky, of course--it’s hard to get good sleep in a tiny airplane seat--and I badly wanted to brush my teeth.  But we had to deal with transferring our flight.

The transfer desk was mobbed.  They had six clerks there to serve something like two hundred people.  There was no queue maze so the next person in line got a clerk--it was just crowd up there and elbow your way forward.  Since Kala and I had gotten off the plane fairly late, the crowd was already huge.  And the clerks were fucking slow.  We timed it.  Most of the people took twenty minutes or more to reroute themselves.  Some people took forty-five minutes or more, and if you were behind such a person, you were just screwed.  I left Kala guarding our place in line and explored the airport, looking to see if any other transfer desks were less busy.  They weren’t.

The airport in Amsterdam is, from an American perspective, a bit strange.  The first thing I noticed when we de-planed was the smell of cigarette smoke.  A casino made up the centerpiece of the terminal we were in.  Languages swirled around, mingling and meshing.  I can follow a bit of Dutch, but I don’t speak it at all, and I couldn’t understand clerks when they talked among themselves.  Fortunately, they all spoke English.  (I didn’t ask if they spoke German; as far as I know, German still isn’t a popular language in Holland.)

We stood in line and stood and stood and stood.  A couple from India was just ahead of us, trying to get to Bombay.  A bunch of other Indians were behind us, and we assumed they were trying to get to the same place.  When the first couple got to a clerk, they called all the other people from India up to the counter as well.  We didn’t say anything because we figured that they were all going to the same place and it would be easy enough to reroute them all at once.

We discovered twenty minutes later that no, only a few of them were going to India.  The rest were going to various other parts of the globe.  We were furious.

While we were waiting, growing more tired and more hungry and more unhappy, Kala spotted Mark and Wendy in the crowd ahead of us one line over.  Mark and Wendy are the other couple adopting in Ukraine through Family Resource Center.  They had originally boarded in New York and were supposed to be on the same final leg of the trip from Amsterdam to Kyiv as we were.  We had intended to hook up at the Amsterdam airport.  Kala and I had already figured we’d missed them, but there they were.

It turns out their experience with Northwest Air mirrored our own.  They’d boarded their plane in New York--and it had been smacked by another plane.  The resulting repair work had delayed them for an hour and a half, during which there was no power on the plane and the passengers had slowly roasted.  The airplane staff finally relented and opened the airplane doors to let fresh air inside after over an hour of stuffy, humid air.  Mark and Wendy had missed the connecting flight as well, and the people from their flight were adding to the congestion at the transfer desks.

Mark and Wendy got through the line a bit before we did and told us there were no more connecting flights from Amsterdam to Kyiv that day, but we could fly to Frankfurt, change planes again, and get to Kyiv by 11:30 local time.  It was either that or spend the night in Amsterdam and head for Kyiv the next afternoon.

We decided to head for Kyiv that day with Mark and Wendy.  There were still a handful of people in front of us, however, and the flight to Frankfurt left at four o’clock--an hour and a half from then.

We finally got to a clerk at three o’clock after spending almost three hours in line.  Since we knew what we wanted to do already, it only took the clerk a few minutes to reroute us.  He filled out a slip of paper by hand, gave it to us, and told us we could get our boarding passes from Lufthansa at our new flight’s gate.  Our luggage, we were assured, would follow us.

Suuuuure it would.

By now it was 3:15, and the Lufthansa terminal was some distance away.  We dashed through the airport as best we could, laden down with various pieces of luggage, and arrived at Lufthansa, sweaty and panting, at 3:25.  The ticket clerk looked at our paperwork and asked us where the second form was.

Oh no.

“He only gave us one,” I said.  “Just one.  That was it.”

This set off a flurry of phone calls by two different clerks.  The clerk back at KLM had screwed up and not given us everything we needed.  We were ready to scream.  But the powder-blue clerks straightened it out in the end.

At about this time, we learned that the woman who had been standing at the gate saying, “If you’re going to any of the following cities . . . come with me” had made a major mistake.  It turns out all the people she’d been calling to WERE BEING ROUTED THROUGH Kyiv.  All the people who were going to Kyiv were suppoed to go with her, but SHE DIDN’T MENTION Kyiv.  We would have been in Kyiv only a couple hours delayed if she had just said “Kyiv,” but for some reason she didn’t.  The fact that her little slip had cost Northwest/KLM many thousands of dollars didn’t make me feel any better.

So.  We had our new route.  We would fly to Frankfurt via Lufthansa, then fly to Kyiv via Ukraine Air.  By now we were starving, as in “my hands are shaking from low blood sugar” starving.  We grabbed some sandwiches from a kiosk, wolfed them down, and boarded our Lufthansa flight.

This plane was efficiently staffed, not at all crowded, and quite comfortable.  Here I discovered an unexpected bonus--the flight attendants were all German.  Communication barriers fell.  I was able to negotiate better seats and get clear information very easily.  A small bright spot there.

The plane arrived in Frankfurt right on schedule.  That was when we realized that we had accidentally left all the DVDs on the plane in Amsterdam.  Several dozen DVDs--movies, TV shows--gone.  This was also upsetting; we’d been counting on them and the portable DVD player to be a major source of entertainment if we got stuck someplace.  Not to mention the cost of replacing them.  If we go back to America through Amsterdam (which seems likely), we’ll hit Northwest/KLM’s lost and found to see if they’re there.

In Frankfurt, the four us (me, Kala, Mark, and Wendy) had a couple hours’ layover.  We also had to actually track down the Ukrainian airline and get our boarding passes.  I took point here and got us through this fairly quickly.  My German expedited this quite a lot, and it was nice to be in a situation where I felt I had some control, some ability to make things better.

While we were standing around waiting for a security line to open, a security clerk asked me if I spoke Russian.

“Nur Englisch und Deutsch,” I said.  Only English and German.

Apparently my German has somehow picked up a Russian accent; she thought I was Russian.  Interesting.

Us four Americans spent the layover in a café/bar.  It was nice to have another couple there.  Not only we were able to talk, we were able to hand off various responsibilities.  Person A can run over and ask about this while B runs somewhere else to ask about something else while Person C ducks into the restroom and Person D guards the luggage.

We boarded our plane to Kyiv.  It was a two-and-half-hour flight.  I spent it in a half-stupor.  By the time we landed, we’d been traveling for 22 hours.  It was 11:30 locally, though I couldn’t figure out what time my body thought it was.  I was tired and sweaty and I didn’t want to haul my luggage around anymore.

We deplaned onto tarmack in Kyiv and a lizard bus waited to bring us to the terminal.  The air was cool and fresh and it smelled different than a Michigan summer--a bit like hay, but with a dryer, sweeter smell.  It was decidedly foreign, but oh, it was nice to be OUTSIDE, however briefly.

When I tried to board the bus, a blocky, gray-haired guy who looked like his name =had= to be Boris stood blocking the aisle on the bus, which was crowded.  Behind him was plenty of space, but he was standing stubbornly near the door, blocking access.  I asked him to step aside in German and in English, but he didn’t move.  I was growing used to everything being a challenge by now, so I tiredly shoved my way past him, clearing the way for Kala, Wendy, and Mark to get access to the space.  Boris grudgingly gave way, I think only because I had about four inches on him.  He looked seriously pissed off, but I didn’t care by then.  If I were writing it up as a novel, Boris would have come back to haunt us later, but I’m not and he didn’t.

We trudged off the bus and into the airport, which was done all in blue and was very sparse and spare.  At last, the luggage converyor belt started up.  Oh my yes, you guessed it--our luggage wasn’t there.  This precipitated another hour and a half of waiting in a small blue office, filling out forms and tracking down our missing stuff.  It was still in Amsterdam.  The very nice lost and found luggage lady told us it would come in on the next flight from Holland the next afternoon.  We could pick it up after three o’clock or wait for it to be delivered that evening.  Part of this process involved getting hold of Sergei, a Rights Protection Fund person who was supposed to meet us at the airport, on the phone.  He gave them an address for the luggage’s delivery, since we didn’t know one.

Fortunately in all this, Kala and I had packed a couple of changes of clothes in our carryons and had all our toiletries.  Mark and Wendy had nothing but a single toothbrush between them.   We were none of us happy.

At one point when I was looking for a customs form I could read (most were in Russian, but there were rumors of a set in English somewhere), a tall, gray-haired man approached me and said helpfully, “Is everything all right, my friend?”  Didn’t take a whole lot of brain cells to see the words “con artist” stamped on his forehead.  I had no idea what he wanted or what game he was playing, and I had no urge to find out.

“Everything’s fine,” I said firmly.  “Thank you.”

By now it was one in the morning, local time, six in the evening back in Michigan.  Twenty-three hours traveling.

Customs turned out to be unexpectedly easy.  We put our stuff through yet another x-ray machine, filled out a form, and we were done.  The lost and found baggage lady had made off with my forms to expedite our baggage recovery, though, and I didn’t have them to show to the sturdy-looking customs lady.  I sighed--another challenge--and asked if I should fill out another one.  The lady waved me on, so I left.  If you want to breeze through Ukrainian customs, hit them up after midnight, apparently.

I’m not sure what to call the guy who picked us up.  Our coordinator?  Driver?  Expediter?  Expediter, then.  Two expediters met us after customs--one for Kala and me, and one for Mark and Wendy.  They were holding signs with our names on them.  Yuri looked to be in his late forties, with a silvering goatee.  Anatoly looked a little younger, with a square face and hands.  No sign of Sergei, but I guess he wasn’t supposed to be there yet.  Anatoly led us out to a car, loaded our luggage, and drove off with us in the back seat.  He didn’t speak much, and I got the distinct impression he wasn’t comfortable with English.

The drive out of the Kyiv airport was eerie.  It was dark out, and we were the only car on an eight-lane highway.  Thick forest lined the road, and I couldn’t read any of the signs, not even a word here and there.  Anatoly didn’t speak, and I realized I had no way of knowing where we were going or what was going to happen next.  I didn’t know if we were staying at a flat or a hotel, where it was, how much it would cost, nothing.  Various stories about kidnappings wandered through my head, and my frazzled mind started building scenarios.  The highway would get smaller and then turn into a dirt road.  We would be hauled out of the car by men shouting at us in a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian.  Boris, the stubborn guy from the bus, would arrive and order us into an abandoned farmhouse.  Our money and passports would be stripped from us, and . . .

Can’t shut off a writer’s brain, can you?

The highway did get smaller, but Anatoly turned into an apartment complex, parked, and got us and our luggage out of the car.  He led us into one of the tall buildings, all shaped like square Cs around concrete parking lots.  The interior was . . . nasty.  The floor was cracked, gritty brown tile that hadn’t been mopped--or even swept--in a long, long time.  The elevator was a seriously scary thing, long and narrow, the size of two phone booths (though, I had to admit, it was better than a stairway).  Anatoly punched the fifteenth floor button--it looked a little like a circuit-breaker--and the elevator shuddered upward.  There was no floor indicator or window that might give you a hint of how far you had gone, and I heard the rattling of . . . chains?

We arrived on the fifteenth floor, and the button popped out with a loud clack that made me jump.  I thought something had gone wrong, but the elevator opened just fine.

Anatoly wordlessly led us down a dimly-lit corridor of the same dirty tile.  A barred gate blocked off the end of the hall.  Anatoly reached through the bars and pressed a doorbell.  After a while, rustling noises came from one of two doors beyond the gate.  A door opened, and out popped a round woman in a red shirt, blue shorts, and sandals.  She had short dark hair and rather reminded me of Ara from my Silent Empire books.  Anatoly spoke at length with her in Ukrainian and she responded.  I think he was explaining why we were so late.  She led us inside the flat.  Anatoly deposited our luggage in the bedroom, bid us good-bye, and fled.

The woman switched to accented but perfectly-understandable English.  Her name was Irine (“ee-REE-nah”) and she’d been dozing on the couch, waiting for us.  She showed us around the flat.

I’d heard that many apartments in Ukraine are much nicer on the inside than out, and that was clearly the case here.  The floors of the main rooms were hardwood parquet set in a zig-zag pattern.  A short entryway/hallway held a telephone bench and set of coathooks.  Irine admonished us to remove our shoes, which we did.  Another hallway branched off the entry to the left.  A bathroom and separate water closet were on the left side of this little hallway, which ended in a small kitchen.  All the appliances were small, by American standards.  At first I thought we had a dishwasher--a surprise--but it turned out to be a front-loading washing machine, which would be much more useful.

The entryway ended with opposing doors that led into a living room (left) and bedroom (right).  The living room was done up very nicely, with matching brown furniture and dark wood bookshelves and cabinets on one wall.  A set of doors opened onto a narrow balcony that ran the length of the apartment.  (The kitchen windows also opened onto the balcony.)

The bedroom was large and airy, with a queen size bed (!) and a crib in the corner next a wardrobe.  There were no screens on the windows, so you could lean out and look straight down fifteen floors to the parking lot below.  Yikes!

Irine showed us around.  If we wanted to shower, she said, hot water might be iffy.  On the fifteenth floor, water pressure was often low at night.  She assured us that the tap water was safe to drink, though I haven’t dared it yet.  The kitchen was stocked with juice and bottled water, and we drank both gratefully.  Only later did I think of Jeffry’s warning that plain bottled water (as opposed to fizzy water) was sometimes just tap water.  Oh well--too late.  (I suffered no problems, however.)

Irine left.  We washed up a little and fell into bed.  I slept fitfully.  I was both over-tired and wound up.  I finally dropped off at, I’m guessing, around three in the morning.

 

5:30 pm.

We got up at eight--Irine had said she’d come by around nine and we wanted to be up and showered before she arrived.  The bathroom was a bit of a trick.  The showerhead was mounted on a steel hose, not on the wall, and I think you’re meant to use it sitting down.  It felt wonderful to be clean, though.  The towel rack was actually the hot water pipe bent around in a backwards C shape.  This was on purpose, you see--you had heated towels when you finished bathing.  Neat!

We also discovered what a magnificient view we have of Kyiv from up there.  At night there ain’t much going, but during the day we could see the green hills of Kyiv broken up by scattered chunks of city.  A colossus-sized statue of a woman holding up a sword and a shield was just visible around the corner of our building.  Irine told us later that she’s the symbol of Kyiv and she’s supposed to protect the city from harm.

Irine didn’t actually arrive until after ten.  She had overslept.  Heh.  She made us breakfast of oatmeal, tea, yoghurt, and cheese.  The oatmeal was much heavier than the wimpy American version--whole-grain with a nutty taste to it.  The yoghurt came in plastic containers just like in America, but it tasted different.  The cheese, Irine said, was cheddar, but the Ukrainian version of cheddar is the color of Swiss and tastes more like a mild goat cheese.  It was really good on toast.  Our first Ukrainian meal!

After that, we did a bad, bad thing.  Irine actually took us out of the apartment and around town.  Gasp!  Yes, it’s true.  Apparently the Rights Protection Fund (a group that facilitates foreign adoptions and which works with the Family Resource Center) gets nervous when Americans leave their rented flats without official reasons.  Screw that!  I’m not going to stay in Kyiv and hide in a bedroom all day long.  I can do that at home.  And Irine offered, though she admonished us not to blab this to the other people at RPF.

“Just tell them I took you out to buy phone cards, use the Internet, and change money,” she said.

Irine calls herself a grandmother, but she looks barely old enough to qualify for the position.  She’s quite friendly and loves to chat.  We learned quite a bit about Ukrainian history and politics from her over breakfast.

Anyway, she took us up the street to what in America would be a bodega.  It was either a large convenience store or a small grocery store, depending on your point of view.  It sold various groceries, lunchmeats, deli salads, whole smoked fish, cheeses, hot foods (pizza baguettes and such), soda, and more.  A separate room in the back offered cakes, chocolates, and other sweets.  It also had a little booth at the front of the store where you could change money.  We changed $400 and also paid Irine.  For $80 per day, we get the use of the flat, Irine’s cooking and cleaning services, and Irine herself as a native guide.  Very nice rate, that.

After the store, Irine took us on a little tour of Kyiv.  Irine has lived in the city all her life and knows quite a lot about the place.  First a short bus ride took us down to the botannical gardens, which was really more like a large park.  Whenever I’m visiting a new place, my usual tendency is to try and hide the fact that I’m a tourist.  I rarely take pictures or ask tourist-type questions.  Not sure why this is, but I do.  This time, though, I didn’t want to miss anything--I’d need to be able to explain various Ukrainian things to my new children one day, for one thing.  So I took a lot of pictures and didn’t hesitate to ask Irine questions in English.

The gardens were very nice, with lots of winding paths and fountains, though many of the latter weren’t operating.  The place smelled of jasmine.  Irine often played there as a child and she pointed out many spots of interest.  A fair number of people were out enjoying the sunshine, though Irine said the crowd was light because many Kyiv natives spent summer weekends in dachas elsewhere.  A military brass band was playing in a square, so we listened to that for a while.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous--low seventies with a light breeze, a few fluffy clouds in a blue sky.

One section of the park was given over to a whole lot of tents in a sort-of campground that had been set off from the rest of the gardens by blue police tape.  Irine told us these people were all Yanakovich supporters who hadn’t given up hope that he’d take back the presidency from Yushenko.  She said in a slightly scornful voice that they hold meetings and occasional small rallies.

“This is one thing I don’t like about democracy,” she said.  “People like this are allowed.”

Irine is a firm supporter of democracy in Ukraine and of dumping the old Communist method of thinking.  One thing the new president has done is wipe out (or try to wipe out) the old system of government bribery.  Irine used to own a small clothing store, and she said whenever she went abroad on a buying trip, the customs inspector expected a bribe.  If you paid it, he would declare your imported goods very cheap, not worthy of much tax--or even of examination.  If you didn’t pay, your goods were thoroughly searched and the tax was set very high.

“The old way was faster,” Irine said, “but the tax money wasn’t going to the government, the programs that needed it.  Now you don’t pay a bribe, but the inspections are much slower because the inspectors have to actually inspect your goods.  Many people are upset by this, but it is all just a new way of thinking, and we have to learn how to think again in a new way.”

A hand-lettered sign out front of the camping area said “Grand Hotel Yanakovich,” which I thought was hilarious and I took a picture.  There was also an outdoor shrine (I’m assuming Orthodox Christian), but an old woman was kneeling at it, and I didn’t feel it would be polite to take a photograph.  Another woman was sweeping up trash with a home-made straw broom.  We saw several examples of these brooms throughout the day, and they seem to be popular for keeping your doorstep clean.

A few craftspeople were selling wares on park benches.  One woman had made landscapes and still life displays out of dried herbs and flowers.  We bought two of those--one as a gift and one to keep.

Irine also showed us around the government sector, which includes lots and lots of old and interesting buildings.  We saw the Ukraine counterparts of the White House, the Supreme Court building, and other such sights.  The architecture was very interesting and fun to look at.  One place was built by an architect as his home, and the top was lined with all sorts of fantastic creatures and horrifying monsters carved in stone.  Its local nickname is the Chimera House.  It’s not a home anymore, but I forget what Irine said it’s now used for.

We next hit the shopping district.  I browsed a men’s store and came across a windbreaker I really liked.  It was only 200G ($40), so I bought it.  I have more jackets than Imelda Markos has shoes, but I liked it very much anyway.  A street vendor had various household objects made of scented wood, and Kala bought a cedar comb from her.  Kala browsed a shoe store, but didn’t buy anything.  I saw a stand of umbrellas and picked out a black and white one--rain was in the forecast--but Irine stepped in.

“This is a woman’s umbrella,” she said.

I blinked at her and looked at the umbrella again.  It was white with a scalloping of black around the rim.  Looked gender-neutral to me.  Irine noticed my surprise.

“You can buy it if you like, of course,” she said.  “It’s your choosing.  But it’s a woman’s umbrella.”

I decided to put it back.  Back home, I wouldn’t care what other people think, but in Ukraine, where I’m adopting children, I needed to be more careful of other people’s opinions.  I learned later that Irine thought I was angry with her for telling me about the umbrella and short-circuiting my purchase, but Kala explained to her that I wasn’t at all upset and that I was actually glad to have been informed.

“He wouldn’t want to show up at the appointment tomorrow with a woman’s umbrella over his shoulder,” she told Irine.  “It might raise a few eyebrows, and we don’t want that.”

There’s a fair amount of graffiti on city walls about Yushenko.  The most common is a stenciled portrait of the man with the caption “Dak!” which is Ukrainian for “Yes!”

We ate lunch at Irine’s favorite restaurant.  It’s a buffet sort of place, but it’s set up more like an open-air market (though the open-air part isn’t, unless you count the skylight that lets in sunshine).  You didn’t serve yourself at this buffet, though--servers behind the counter gave you your food and sold it by weight.

I had a salad made of what I think was eggplant.  It was purple, anyway.  It was spicy, vinagary, and delicious.  I picked up a piragi stuffed with cinnamony apples instead of meat, and decided I’d have to try to replicate it at home.  I chose a main dish of a thin-sliced pork cutlet with some sort of pancake on top of it with a side of buttery garlic potatoes.  Dessert was a scoop each of blueberry and cherry ice cream made by the restaurant.  You ate it with a teeny-tiny spoon.  Oh, was it good!

The restaurant itself was divided by theme.  You could sit in an Indian section, a Chinese section, a Ukrainian section, a Greek, Egyptian, or Roman section.  Each one was decorated accordingly.  Kinda neat.

Sufficiently stuffed, the three of us rolled out of there and to a department store.  It was five floors of shopping.  The foyer opened onto an enormous display of crystal chandaliers that managed to look breathtakingly glittery instead of overdone and tacky.  Kala wanted to look for a dress or two.  I browsed in various other departments.  The place was what department stores should be--lots of glass display cases, odd sections jumbled up next to each other, and lots of unobtrusive sales staff.  Unfortunately, Kala felt abruptly tired and really wanted to start heading for home before much shopping was accomplished, so we left.

On the way back, I spotted a street vendor who sold nesting dolls.  I said we had to buy a set because if you try to re-enter the United States from Ukraine or Russia without nesting dolls, the customs officials will stop you.  “Where are your nesting dolls?  We know you bought some.  Everyone buys them.  So where are you hiding them?  Cough ’em up!”  But Kala didn’t want to stop, and Irine said there was a special store just for nesting dolls we could visit later.

We also stopped at a post office with Internet access around the corner from the flat.  Kala managed to access her e-mail, but Comcast tried to implant a cookie that the computer refused to accept and I couldn’t get into mine.  Irine said we could try another place later.

And then back to the flat.  Irine asked if we can handle supper on our own and we assured her we were quite capable of making sandwiches on our own.  We sorted through our purchases and I got on the laptop to update this journal.

Today was a very fine day and it almost makes up for yesterday.  Now all we need is for our luggage to be delivered and we’ll be all set for our appointment tomorrow!

 

June 6, 2005, 7:30

Our luggage turned up last night, though we don’t have it yet.  A woman named Kate (pronounced “katya”) is a translator and, I think, general errand-runner for RPF.  She told us on the phone that Mark and Wendy had called the airport about their luggage and had been told it had been delivered to the Rights Protection Fund address.  However, the RPF office was now closed.  After some confusion and more phone-calling (I was imagining our luggage being left on the RPF doorstep for anyone to stroll away with), we learned that it was locked in the RPF office.  A bit later, Kate called to say it was in her possession.  She could bring it by that night or in the morning when she picked us up for our appointment.  Since it was getting late, we said we could wait, especially since Mark and Wendy needed their luggage right away and Kate would have to drive over to their flat immediately.

I also made an unsuccessful foray into using the international telephone system.  We’d bought a phone calling card from the post office yesterday with Irine, and I wanted to call home.  However, the instructions on the back of the card (written in Russian and in English) said to use a phone that supported touch-tone dialing.  The phone in the flat has buttons but uses pulse dialing to call out.  Irine wasn’t around at the time, so I decided to head down to a phone booth and see if I could get it to work.

Outside it was cloudy, very windy, and a little cool.  The flat Irine rents out is in a complex of apartment buildings with odd driveways and sidewalks going in various unexpected directions.  I couldn’t remember which direction we had taken when we walked out that morning with Irine, so I sighted on a main street and made for it.  Once I got out there, I realized I had probably taken the long way around, but that was okay--I’d just keep the apartment building on my right on the way to the shopping area and keep it on the left on my way back.  The people on the street didn’t give me a second glance.

I walked down to the little store we’d stopped in earlier.  A couple public phones, the kind with a little half-shelter around the upper half, sat outside.  Ukrainian public phones are square blue things with metal buttons and a small readout screen.  I got out my phone card and my instructions for calling America and tried to call the number on the card.  (You have to call the number on the calling card, then dial the card’s code, then dial the number you want to reach.)

I couldn’t get past one digit.  I would dial a single digit and then a message would come up on the litttle screen.  I couldn’t read it, of course, so I didn’t know what I was doing wrong.  I tried various things and nothing worked.  Okay, Ukraine phone company 1, Steven 0.

I continued onward.  A little ways up the street was the little post office with phone and Internet.  Inside, a bank of phone booths lined one wall.  Each one had a phone on a shelf in it.  I tried one.  No dial tone.  I punched some random numbers and got nothing.  I wondered if the phone had to be turned on at the desk like the computers did.  So I went to the clerk, a blond, stern-looking woman who’d been there that morning and who struck me as none too friendly.  I’ve heard that many Ukrainians strike Americans as unfriendly when actually they’re just being normal and business-like.  But many of the clerks we’d met elsewhere were quite friendly by American standards.  This woman had a tendency to snap.  I didn’t think she spoke English, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try to communicate with her.

I got her attention (this was actually difficult--she was absorbed in the contents of a loose-leaf notebook and seemed disinclined to look up from them) and pointed to the booths.  I said “telephone” in Ukrainian and held up my phone card with a questioning look on my face.

She spoke in rapid Ukrainian and pointed at the door.  There were public phone booths outside, and I gathered that my card would work on the blue phones out there but not in the booths in here.  Not helpful, since I couldn’t figure out the phones out there.  I held up my card and pointed outside with another questioning look on my face.  She said something else but didn’t nod or shake her head.  I pointed at the indoor phones and shrugged.  She reached into a drawer and held up another series of phone cards, different from mine.  I gathered I needed one of those to use the post office phones.  Except I didn’t have any money with me and I wasn’t inclined to buy another phone card in any case when I had what was supposed to be a perfectly good one.  So I shook my head, thanked her, and left.

Time to go home.  Irine was going to come by later, so I guessed I’d have to ask her about the phones then.

I walked back, crossed a little street toward the apartment complex, and had a moment of doubt.  Had I come this way or that way?  Uh oh.  I kept on walking.  See, I’d forgotten that landmarks look different when you come at them from another direction, and all the apartment buildings in this area looked the same.

The street is a divided six-lane affair and very busy.  I was sure I hadn’t crossed it, but things looked wrong.  I kept walking, despite a growing sense of unease.  If I got lost out here, I’d be in deep trouble.  I didn’t know the address of the flat, I didn’t know the flat’s telephone number (even if I could work out how to use a phone), and I didn’t speak the language well enough to ask for directions.  If I couldn’t find the place on my own, my only recourse would be to go back to the corner store and wait there.  Eventually, Kala would get worried, track down Irine, and come looking for me.  But that might take an hour or more.

Then I saw a sign I remembered and felt better.  I came across a concrete pathway that ran between the buildings and saw a pile of sandbags lying nearby.  I’d passed them on the way out.  Good.  And there was the dumpster that homeless guy had been digging through on my way out, and there was the same homeless guy digging through a different dumpster.  There was the stray cat that always hung around the same apartment entrance.  Good, good, good.  In the end, I found the right building, but there were three doors, all of which looked alike.  Door number one led into an unfamiliar lobby.  Door number two, ditto.  Door number three--ah ha!

With a profound sense of relief, I punched the elevator call button, rode the weird, clanky thing up to the fifteenth floor, and once again jumped when the button clacked on arrival.  Used Irine’s keys to open the gate, relock the gate, open the apartment door, and relock the apartment door.  Whew!  I’d made it!  No phone call to America, but I hadn’t gotten completely lost, either.

I told Kala about my lack of success and she wondered if the apartment phone would somehow work anyway.  It had a setting for tone and for pulse, but although the tone setting made tone sounds, it didn’t actually dial.  It occurred to me, however, that the phone card number was answered by a computer, and the computer would “listen” for the tones once it was connected.  I set the phone to pulse and dialed the number.  When the recorded voice answered, I switched the phone to tone dialing and pressed *2 for English instructions.  The voice switched to English.  It worked!  Wish I would have figured this out a couple miles of walking ago.

We talked to my mother-in-law and to Aran, who was having a fun time with Granny.  I also called my mother to update her.  It wasn’t all that expensive, either.  A 100G ($20) phone card got us 45 minutes of overseas calling.

Irine, meanwhile, showed up again and ran our clothes through the washing machine.  We would have been happy to do it ourselves, but Irine didn’t want us running the machine, so we shrugged and let her do it.  She then hung the clothes outside on the balcony, which had a clothesline, and told us she’d come by at eight or so to make breakfast.

“Do you want oatmeal again,” she asked, “or maybe eggs?”

“Eggs would be great,” I said.

“And how do you two feel about fresh vegetable salad?”

“We like them.”

“Then for lunch tomorrow I will make you fresh cabbage and cucumber salad and chicken for lunch.”

Kinda weird having someone ask what you want them to make you for a meal when you’re not at a restaurant, but hey--we were paying for a housekeeper, so that’s what we got.

I spent the evening reading and writing in my journal.  Kala, who hadn’t brought any books because she’d been planning to watch the DVDs we’d brought and lost, discovered that Irine had a few books left behind by other adopting parents and was thumbing through P.J. O’Rourke.  Eventually we went to bed.

I slept pretty good, considering that today’s a major day.  Last night on the phone, Kate said that the last set of parents she’d accompanied to the National Adoption Center had been shown dossiers on several sets of sibling pairs within our age group, so it seemed quite possible there would be some available.  Nothing’s garanteed, of course, but it was nice to hear that the possibility is there.

Early this morning it started to rain.  I heard it beating against the windows, so I got up, pulled the clothes down off the line, and went back to bed.  Rose again at seven, did a sit-down shower (this feels terribly awkward and I still have no idea how it’s really supposed to work) and got out this journal.  Irine just showed up to make breakfast (“How many eggs for you?”) and is now bustling about the little kitchen.  Kate’s supposed to show up at 9:30 to pick us up for our 10:30 appointment.  Sergei will meet us at the NAC.  Apparently he’s quite the alpha male when it comes to international adoption and he knows how to bully, bribe, threaten, wheedle, and push his way through the tangle of Ukrainian bureaucracy.  We’ll just sit back and take our cues from him.

Waiting now.

 

1:40 p.m.

Okay.  Back from our appointment now.  And yes, I’m going to keep you in suspense about what happened.

Irine is a great housekeeper.  She ironed a razor-sharp crease into my seriously wrinkled kakhis while we were eating breakfast, which consisted of scrambled eggs (Ukrainian style, meaning they were more like omelettes), toast, yoghurt, and tea.

Kate picked us up at 9:30.  I ran our missing luggage upstairs--clack, jump, sigh--and zipped back down to Kate’s car.  Kate is Sergei’s niece, looks to be in her mid- to late twenties, and is quite beautiful--wide brown eyes, sharp features, lots of long, curly brown hair.  She reminded me of the actress who plays opposite Gary Sinise in CSI: New York.  She speaks excellent English.

We drove through town and I took pictures along the way: “This is what we saw on the way to our appointment to learn about you, kids.”  At last we arrived at the National Adoption Center.

It was raining hard by now, and I was glad to have the new windbreaker.  Kate parallel parked on the street (a busy one), and Sergei came up to the car.  Good looks apparently run in the family.  Sergei has straight black hair, gray eyes, and a square, handsome face.  He looks like the stereotype of the Handsome, Brooding European Man With Cigarette.  We greeted him and followed him up the sidewalk past a bar and an iron gate to an arched opening.  An uneven cement courtyard lay on the other side.  Sergei took us to a big wooden door and we went in.

From the other descriptions I’d gotten, I had been expecting a grim, dingy interior, but it didn’t look like that at all.  We went up a large stone staircase that wound around the inside of the building.  The walls started off a textured gray but shifted into yellow on the third floor.  The fourth floor was our destination.  We went down a corridor faced with several doors that led into various offices.  Pictures of children were scattered up and down the hallway.

Sergei took our letter of confirmation, the one with the appointment in it, and went into one of the offices.  Interestingly, the confirmation letter was not on the list of necessary documents the agency gave us, but I figured it would be best of have it and took it along.  This turned out to be a good decision, since the letter is necessary to prove that you, and not someone with a smiliar name, have the appointment.

We expected to wait for quite a while, since we were forty minutes early for our appointment, but Sergei gestured us into the office.

The office was bright and comfortably furnished, with two desks separated by a mesh barrier wound with silk ivy and flowers.  Another couple was sitting at the desk furthest from the door, talking with a woman seated there.  Sergei had us sit down across from the near desk, and a dark-haired, slender  woman dressed in a black blouse and a red jacket came in to sit down.  He introduced her as a psychologist who worked with adoptive parents.  Through Sergei, we told her that we were looking for a sibling pair between three and six years old, though we were open to adopting a single child.  This step struck me as odd--we had to send Ukraine a whole bunch of information (notarized and apostilled) about what sort of child we wanted to adopt, and no one here seemed to have read it.

From a cabinet the psychologist took several enormous red binders, all crammed with pages encased in plastic.  Most of the pages had color or black-and-white photos attached to them.  She pulled out a handful of sheets and passed them to Sergei, who went over them with us.

One was a young child with cerebral palsy.  We had to say no.  Sergei said small children often outgrow the problem and this one’s symptoms were mild.  Again we said no.  Another was a girl, almost eight years old, with a round face and dark hair and eyes.  We set her aside as a possibility.  Another pair of pages showed a girl and a boy, nine years old, twins.  But Kala murmured to me that the girl’s features showed fetal alcohol syndrome, so we said no, but on the basis that we didn’t want two children who were both older than Aran.

Sergei showed us the pages for two boys, brothers.  One was three, the other was twelve.  Yikes.  Twelve?  Sergei pointed out that both boys were healthy (the three-year-old showed delayed development, but that’s usual in orphanage children) and that they’d come to the orphanage in April, 2004--just a year ago.  They hadn’t received any referrals yet.  We set them aside as a small possibility and looked at more pages from more big red binders.

No other sibling pairs were available within the age range we were looking for.  Several were much older.  We saw several sets of three, four, five, and even six siblings.  I was not going to look into breaking anyone up, thank you.

In the end, we drifted back to the two boys.  The older one’s name was Aleksandr, the young one’s name was Maksim.  There was a very small picture of Aleksandr, taken when he was about ten.  All I could really see was that he has dark blond hair.  We learned a little more about their background in disjointed bits and pieces.  I’m straightening it out here.

Aleksandr and Maksim are actually half-brothers.  Aleksandr has two full sisters, both around twenty.  Their mother was born in 1964.  The page didn’t say what happened to Aleksandr’s father, nor did it say if he was married to Aleksandr’s mother, though the father is out of the picture.  Maksim’s father, who came along later, was apparently supporting the family at the time Maksim was born.  When he died, it left the mother with no means of support.  Because the mother couldn’t care for them, a social worker placed both boys in the orphanage system a year and a half ago.  Maksim is in a children’s home and Aleksandr is in an Internat, or boarding school for orphans.  The boys have only recently become available for adoption, and no prospective parents have asked to visit them yet.  They’re housed in Zhytomyr, a city about 150 kilometers west of Kyiv.  And that’s all we know for now.

Kala and I talked about it and told Sergei we’d pay the boys a visit.  He and the psychologist started the paperwork, and it’ll be ready by tomorrow evening.

Oookay.  Little nervous here.  Aleksandr is much older than the oldest possible age I’d envisioned, which was nine or ten.  His family life sounds like it was full of upheaval.  And there’s so much we don’t know yet.  Why is Aleksandr’s father out of the picture?  Death?  Jail?  Divorce?  He just picked up and left?  Was the mother married to Maksim’s father or were they just living together?  How did Maksim’s father die?  What was the home life like?  Poor-but-happy?  Lots of fights?  Drinking?  Hard work?  Loving parents and step-parents?  Maksim would have been eighteen months old when his mother was forced to give him up, and he wouldn’t remember his parents, but Aleksandr would remember his mother and his step-father.  He may or may not remember his birth father.  How does he feel about his step-father’s death and being removed from his mother’s home?  Did he feel close to his baby half-brother?  Sergei said that the Internat and the children’s home are several kilometers apart, so it’s doubtful they’ve been able to visit each other.  How does Aleksandr feel about that?

The answer to all these questions, of course, depends on what Aleksandr and Maksim’s home life was like.  If the parents were abusive, Aleksandr might have been glad to get out.  If they were loving, he might have been upset.  The fact that the mother is still alive and that the boys have two older sisters makes things complicated.  Mom can’t step back into the picture, since she has permanently lost custody, but Aleskandr surely knows she’s still around somewhere, along with his sisters.

So we’ll visit and learn more.

After we left the NAC, Sergei took us down to the bar we’d passed earlier, where it turned out Kate and another guy wedidn’t know were waiting.  They sat at one table, smoking and drinking coffee while Kala and I sat at another table with a pot of tea talking about the boys.  When we were all done, Kate bundled us into her car and drove us back to the flat.  About halfway there, she got a frantic call on her cell from another adoptive parent who had apparently lost his wallet and passport.  Ee-yikes!  Kate told him to contact the U.S. embassy right away, as well as his credit card bank.  While she was talking to him, we arrived at the flat.  In an aside, Kate said she’d call us later about arrangements.

At the moment we don’t know when we’ll be leaving for Zhytomyr.  The papers won’t be ready until tomorrow evening, but that doesn’t mean we can’t travel there earlier to wait for them.  We’ll call Kate later to ask if she doesn’t call us.

Meanwhile, Irine made us lunch.  It consisted of a sort of fried meatloaf made of pork, a little bit of chicken, and milk-strained bread.  The mixture is molded into oblong cakes the size of half a palm and fried in sunflower oil.  It was very good, and horrifyingly fattening.

Despite the heavy diet here, I’ve noticed a definite difference between Ukrainian and American body types.  The people over here are largely well-toned and well-proportioned.

And now we’re waiting to hear from Kate.

Mea nwhile, on a whim, I checked the portable DVD player.  There was a single Simpsons DVD in it.  I told Kala I had a small surprise for her, and she was very, very happy.  Hey, there are six episodes on the DVD, each with commentary.  That’s five hours of television.  Ha!

 

4:50 p.m.

Kala talked to Kate.  One of us needs to go down to the NAC to pick up the paperwork tomorrow afternoon after two o’clock.  The day after that--Wednesday--we’ll travel to Zhytomyr to see the boys.  Kate said most people who adopt from Zhytomyr stay in Kyiv because Zhytomyr is a small town with nothing to do in it.  The drive is about an hour and a half.

Kate also offered to move us to a flat closer to downtown.  We politely declined--the flat we have is very nice, and a downtown flat would be more expensive.

There’s a lot of politicking that goes on among the Rights Protection Fund people.  Sergei, we learned from Irine, has two flats downtown and he often puts people up in them.  He charges $120 a day.  Irine charges us $80 a day.  We pay her in American cash, and I suspect there’s a whole lot of under-the-tableness going on with taxes and such.  Irine has asked us to keep to ourselves while we’re here because “I don’t like to advertise my Americans,” she says.  I think this is her main source of income, and she has to be careful about it.  Sergei’s flats were in use over the weekend, Irine said, but now they’re going to be empty, which was probably why Kate, Sergei’s niece, offered to move us.  I think there’s a whole lot of maneuvering that we just don’t see.

 

5:30 p.m.

Kala and I decided to brave the perils of language and go to the store.  Our international calling card has very little time left on it, so it needed to be replaced, and Kala was out of soda.  Irine wasn’t here, but we figured we could handle buying a couple things.  We puzzled out how to say “I want” from a Ukrainian phrase book.  Armed with that and the words for “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me,” we figured we could probably deal with basic shopping.

We headed downstairs and strolled to the post office/Internet place.  A different clerk was working at the counter.  I held up the dying phone card and said, “I want?” in my no-doubt heavily accented Ukrainian.  The clerk dug through various drawers, riffled through several envelopes, and came up empty-handed.  She said something in Ukraine, probably “We have none.”  I thanked her and we left.  Strikeout!  Though the transaction itself went fine.

Next we stopped at the little grocery store.  It was quite busy with, I assume, people getting off work.  We got a bunch of soda from the cooler and stood in line to pay for it.  The cash registers here are apparently not required to be placed so the customer can see the total.  The clerk told us the total, but I don’t know Ukrainian numbers.  I had a mental total, though, and realized I didn’t have enough small bills to pay for it.  In Ukraine, you don’t hand money to a cashier but instead set it in a little dish near the register.  I placed a 100G note in the dish and hoped there wouldn’t be a problem.  The clerk took it without blinking and made change.  Whew!

We got back to the flat with our booty without further incident.  Go us!

 

June 7, 2005

Today the weather wandered from gentle, misty rain to insistent, steady rain.  Irina made us oatmeal for breakfast again, then drew us a map of the surrounding area so we could find better Internet access than the place just up the block.  Kala had bought an umbrella, but I still didn’t have one, so I was stuck with just the hood on my jacket and a baseball cap.

We headed down the main street, a six-lane, noisy affair.  We passed lots of different stores, most fairly upscale.  One store had a huge display of toilets in the window--not something you’d see in America!  We walked and walked, stopping now and then at likely stores to see if they had umbrellas.  This was accomplished by snagging a sales clerk and pointing at Kala’s umbrella with a questioning look.  The clerks understood, but always shook their heads.  No umbrellas.

Eventually we found the corner where the Internet café was supposed to be (the corner right after--oh lord--McDonald’s), but we didn’t see it.  A building on the corner was under construction.  Maybe the place had been there but was now being torn out?  We kept going, hoping to find another place.  When you walk around Kyiv, it seems like you see “Internet” signs in Cyrillic all over the place.  We’d have to find one eventually.

We walked what felt like ten miles and still saw not a one.  We finally reached the end of our patience and decided to turn back.  Then I saw across the street was a department store.  They might have umbrellas!  We crossed the street (carefully) and went in.

It was another huge place, a bit like a mall, really, though the stores were much smaller.  The first floor was, I think, one big store with many departments.  Above on a narrow balcony was a set of smaller independent stores.  We wandered through, looking at various displays.  In one store, we found various Kyiv stuff.  We bought a traditional white shirt embroidered with red designs for Aran and a wooden scepter/mace for ourselves.

Other areas in the store sold china (ready to be packed in wooden crates for shipping), icons, toiletries, toys, and clothing.  Kala tried on a couple of dresses, but both were two expensive, so we put them back.  She still needs a dress for court.

We found umbrellas, but they were too expensive--200G or so.  Sigh.  We also found a booth at the back of the store that changed money, so we did that before heading back to the flat.

On the way, I noticed another store that sold umbrellas.  I was soaked by now and went in to check.  Also expensive--180G.  I paid it anyway.  I was tired of being wet, and it was “only” about $40.  It’s a really good umbrella, though!  I’m taking it home.

We passed the corner where the Internet café was supposed to be, but this time we were on the other side of the street.  Then I saw, in small letters, the Cyrillic letters for Internet.  I stopped Kala to point them out.  Sighing, we crossed the street and went into the café.

The first floor, clearly a restaurant/bar, was full of smoke and people.  A sign pointed to the back: Internet.  We followed it, turned a corner, and another sign pointed us down a hallway.  Then another sign pointed us down some stairs.  Then another sign pointed us around a corner.  We were laughing by now.  Eventually we found a small basement room with about a dozen computers.  It was staffed by a young, dark-haired man who, it turned out, spoke a fair amount of English.  He assigned Kala and me a computer each (he seemed surprised that we wanted two of them) and we got caught up on e-mail.  I tried to upload my journal file for e-mailing, but the computer wouldn’t read my disk.  The clerk, however, was able to e-mail the file to me from ­his computer, so it worked out all right.

We arrived home by two o’clock as planned.  Sometime after two, you see, Kate was supposed to call and let us know when we needed to go back to the NAC to pick up the vistitation papers for Maksim and Aleksandr.

Then we got a call--from Mark and Wendy.  It was good to hear from them.  They were also in a flat with a housekeeper, though she spoke very poor English.  We weren’t able to figure out where they were, unfortunately.  It turns out that they weren’t on the appointment list at the NAC, though they had their letter.  Sergei took them over there at eight a.m. to see about shoe-horning them in, but he couldn’t pull it off.  He did get them an appointment for Wednesday, however.  They’re disappointed but still hopeful.  After all, one couple last year showed up for their appointment on a Monday and were told no children were available, come back a week from Thursday.

No call from Kate came.  We finally called her at four, and she said the papers weren’t ready yet, but she’d come by at five to pick one of us up to go get them, hoping they’d be finished while we were in transit.  I stayed home, Kala went with Kate.

I played games on my laptop and wrote.  Two hours passed and I was getting worried.  Irina made vegetable soup with sour cream and blintzes for supper--the blintzes were really good--and still no sign of Kala.  Finally Kate called and said the director of the NAC was still out, and she and Kala were still waiting.

Kala finally got home at eight o’clock smelling like cigarette smoke.  She said she’d spent most of the time talking with Kate and a friend of hers at the same bar where we’d drunk tea earlier.  She also said that the papers she’d signed said, in several languages, that the Ukrainian government doesn’t charge for adoption, that all the money we paid was going to the Rights Protection Fund.  I hadn’t realized this.  I had been hesitant to pester the RPF people for too much non-adoption-related help, but for the many thousands of dollars  we were paying for the adoption (which translates into enormous amounts of Ukrainian money), I’ll probably be rather more demanding.

We were supposed to get another call soon to let us know when we’d be picked up to drive to Zhytomyr tomorrow.  By ten, no one had called, so we called around.  Kate and Sergei didn’t answer their cell phones.  I called Chicago, and Richard said he’d try e-mail and phone as well.

There’s currently no hot water in the flat, hasn’t been since early yesterday.  Kala and I occupied ourselves with heating washwater.  We tried to use my clipper with the little electric adapter, but when I switched them on, they jumped in my hand and growled like an angry dog.  We shut them off.

At eleven, Kala and I had gone to bed and the phone finally rang.  Kate said a woman named Svetlana and our previous driver Anatoly would pick us up between 8:15 and 8:30 in the morning.

I had trouble falling asleep.  I keep wondering about adopting a twelve-year-old.  A three-year-old I’m not worried about, but a twelve-year-old has a long past, a history I know nothing about and will only know what he tells me.  I haven’t been part of his life.  Aleksandr was born when I was 26 and finishing up my English degree in Mt. Pleasant.  If we adopt Maksim and Aleksandr, all three of our children will be very far apart in age.

On the other hand, a twelve-year-old needs a family, too.

 

June 8, 2005, 8:40 a.m.

Sveta and Anatoly are late.  We’re not surprised, really.  We figured “8:15-8:30” would mean something like “8:45-9:00.”

Corn flakes and toast for breakfast.  I remembered to take my lactase pills only after I’d finished the bowl.  I hope I don’t have any problems today.  Ukrainian corn flakes are half-sized and pretty good.

Irina packed us enormous ham sandwiches for lunch, along with bottles of water.  I put in my caffeine supply as well--Coke!  I really miss diet cherry Coke, I tell you.  I want the caffeine, but not the sugar.  Diet Coke is widely available, but it’s disgusting in America, let alone in Ukraine.

Sveta and Anatoly are here.  Updates later.

 

10:20 p.m.

What a day!  It’s hard to keep from blurting everything onto the screen and keep things in chronological order . . .

Anatoly got our stuff into the car.  This included jackets, umbrellas, the camcorder, the groaning bag containing our lunch, Kala’s purse, and my big yellow backpack.  Sveta (short for “Svetlana”) rode up front with Anatoly.  She’s a thin-but-curvy redhead who speaks heavily-accented English and was dressed in a gray pinstriped jacket and slacks.  Are all the women who work for RPF so pretty?

The weather started off looking threatening and nasty, with lots of black, low-hanging clouds.  We didn’t get more than a spatter of rain, however, and within the hour, a light wind blew the clouds away and ushered in clear blue skies and balmy temperatures.  For this we were very grateful, though I pointed out to Kala that it must have happened because I’d just spent forty bucks on an umbrella.

It took quite a while to work our way out of Kyiv, since it was morning rush hour.  Once we cleared the city, however, things picked up.  The highway to Zhytomyr reminds of Highway 14 back home--some sections very nice, some a bit rough, some seriously scary.  We passed all kinds of landscapes--hills, valleys, flatlands, forest.  Lots and lots of birch trees, though they’re darker than the American variety.

One of the more interesting sights along the way were the roadside vendors.  You could buy all kinds of stuff from people who’d set up rough stands right by the highway.  Lots of them were small farmers who had a few baskets of produce or a dozen-odd jars of canned fruit.  Many had built racks by setting a forked branch upright in the dirt and setting another branch in the fork, leaving the other end to rest on the ground.  They hung the resulting slanted bar with various plants--I’m guessing stuff like lettuce and spinach.  Some other people had set up shelves open to the air and were selling brightly-colored stuffed animals the size of ten-year-olds.  These must be marketed primarily to tourists, since I can’t imagine the locals buying enough of them to support even a tiny business.

I snapped a lot of pictures with the digital camera and tried hard to catch one of the vendors, but it was impossible in a moving car.

At one point, Anatoly pulled over at a shed made of cinderblock.  It was marked WC (water closet), but it was a hole-in-the-floor toilet.  Yuck.  Anatoly sucked down a quick cigarette, climbed back in, and off we went.  I was glad he didn’t smoke in the car, and I suspect that he had been forbidden to do so, since RPF’s primary customer base is American, and we’re apparently notorious for our intolerance of cigarette smoke.

We finally arrived in Zhytomyr.  Kate had told us earlier that it was a small, nothing sort of town, but it looked pretty big to us--bigger than Ann Arbor, certainly.  I suppose if you’re used to Kyiv, everything looks small.  I took a lot of photos.  The city is an odd mix of upscale and down-at-heel.

The first thing we had to do was track down a certain Inspector who’s the head of orphanages in Zhytomyr.  This actually set off a long string of events that I didn’t entirely follow.  We had to talk to a total of three people: the Inspector, the Director of Maksim’s orphanage, and the Director of Aleksandr’s orphanage.  We found the Inspector after only a brief wait at a dimly-lit, scruffy office building.  Kala and I both used the bathroom, and it was great fun, let me tell you.  One stall had a toilet with no seat, the other was a toilet bowl set into the floor, also with no seat.  No toilet paper.  Fortunately, I had brought some in my capacious backpack.

Anyway, after getting permission from the Inspector to talk to the Directors, we headed off to find Director #1, who was in charge of Maksim’s orphanage.  We wanted to see Maksim first because we figured if we knew right away we didn’t want to adopt Maksim (who’s too young to understand what’s happening), Aleksandr wouldn’t even know we’d been looking and so wouldn’t be disappointed.

Finding Director #1 proved to be difficult.  She wasn’t in her office that day, but was supposed to have been--two Americans traveling 4,000 miles to see her usually takes high priority.  We drove to two different orhpanages looking for her, to no avail, and each stop lasted half an hour or so.  Finally Sveta contacted someone on her cell.  The someone said she’d track down Director #1 and we needed to pick her up at a certain place.

Anatoly drove around town, through a roundabout, and stopped at a street corner in a rundown neighborhood.  After about ten minutes, a woman walked past the car.  She was carrrying flowers and a briefcase.  Sveta jumped out and greeted her.  Her name was Ilena, and she was the someone.  Introductions were made, and Ilena rode with us all around Zhytomyr.  She spent most of her time on her cell phone yelling at someone in Russian, apparantly on our behalf.  We went back to one of the orphanages we’d checked already.  Sveta explained that no one could find Director #1, but they were trying to track down someone who could grant us the visit anyway.

Sveta and Ilena vanished inside the orphanage.  It was an enormous, four-story building that looked like a stucco apartment building you might find in the American Southwest.  A trio of boys who looked to be about seven were walking up the driveway to the road.  Two white goats grazed in the ditch.  I told Kala that Thor must be visiting.

We waited for almost an hour.  I read a book.  Kala zoned and fumed.  I fumed.  We waited some more.  Finally the two women re-emerged.  They’d found a substitute for Director #1, but we had to go to her office, which was across town.  We dropped Ilena off at the street corner where we’d found her, then whipped over to another office building.  Sveta jumped out, and Anatoly drove away.  We were a bit confused at this point.  Anatoly brought us to the very first courthouse we’d visited and parked the car on the sidewalk.

This, incidentally, is a common practice over here.  People park wherever there’s a clear spot of concrete, even if it’s in a section of street with white lines painted across it to indicate you can’t park there.  Sidewalks are three times as wide as they are in America, so there’s room for parking, and people just muscle up over the curb.  It’s illegal, but no one cares, including the police.

Inside the building, we found Sveta waiting outside a dark office.  The substitute director would be back any minute now.  It was by now almost two o’clock.  Kala and I had eaten our sandwiches during one of the other waiting periods but we hadn’t seen Sveta or Anatoly eat anything.  There was a bakery next to the office building, and we all but dragged Anatoly over there.  He thought we were hungry.  We got some rolls filled with cheese and ham, but Anatoly refused to eat.  He mimed that eating would make him sleepy.  Sveta also refused food.  Must be how Ukrainians stay so thin.

At last the substitute for Director #1 arrived and signed the permission form for our visit to Maksim.  Sheesh!

Anatoly drove out to the orphanage, though he had to stop several times so Sveta could ask pedestrians for directions.  The orphanage was at the end of a long dirt road out in the country.  A horse was picketed in the long grass across from the entrance gate and her colt rolled on the ground near her.  A waist-high concrete wall painted powder blue surrounded the place.  We parked, walked through the gate, and down a winding concrete path toward the orphanage building.  We passed several little playgrounds, all of them brightly painted and looking pretty new.  At last we reached the orphanage itself.  It looked like a multi-story elementary school.  The Director of the orphanage met us at the doorway and led us inside.

It was dark inside, even after our eyes adjusted from the summer sun.  Wooden floors, newly-painted walls, pictures of a recent renovation on a bulletin board explaining all the new paint.  The place used to look pretty crappy, but now it looked quite nice.  The hallways sported murals of cheery animals.  We were escorted into a narrow room with various pieces of medical equipment lining one wall.  After a while, we heard voices and footsteps in an office down a little side corridor.  Sveta came back and took us in for our first look at Maksim.

He sat on a padded bench, a child with enormous hazel eyes, straight brown hair, and a bewildered expression.  He looked more like a two-year-old than a three-year-old, but that was to be expected.  He didn’t react much at all when we came in, and the Director explained that naptime was two to four every day, and we had arrived just after he’d fallen asleep.  He was very, very quiet, but readily made eye contact.  He liked the digital camera quite a lot, though.

We took him outside, feeling dreadful about keeping him awake when he clearly wanted nothing more than to fall asleep.  After a while, he did wake up, though he was very quiet.  He smiled for the camera--it was a very cute smile--and laughed quietly when I tossed him in the air.  He also loved it when I spun around with him in my arms.  He didn’t speak but nodded his head in answer to yes-no questions.  Maksim was very sweet the whole time.  He showed a great deal of interest in the cam-corder.  He also wouldn’t let Kala hold him for very long, but he reached happily for me and insisted I hold him most of the time we were outside.

Children always do this to me.  They know I don’t like children very much unless they’re a) mine, b) those of a good friend, or c) potentially mine.  This means that strange children run straight to me, and will pick me out of a crowded roomful of people as the person they instantly love best.  I must put out serious daddy pheromones or something.

We finally took him back to his dorm room for the rest of his nap and gave him to a little old lady who he clearly knew well.  Behind her I could see several rows of children sleeping in little beds in a room drenched in sunshine.  Maksim waved good-bye when we left.  It was meltingly adorable.

After this, we headed back to downtown Zhytomyr to get permission from Director #2 to visit Aleksandr.  This was actually accomplished quickly, and before long we were off to the Internat.

Older children are housed at boarding schools called Internats, even if it means separation from siblings.  This Internat looked like a medium-sized junior high school.  Four floors, brick buildings that surround a play area that included playground equipment and a small enclosed soccer field.  Children were everywhere, running, shouting, screaming, scrambling over the playground equipment, playing soccer.  A girl who looked to be thirteen or so with white-blond hair watched us unabashedly as we got out of the car and Sveta talked to various adult women.  They led us inside a building with hardwood floors and a dark interior.  During the day, government buildings seem to keep their lights off to save money.  The interior was clean but battered.  The stairs were concrete and worn in the middle.  I counted five coats of paint worn through.

We went into an office area that felt like a school office.  Just inside the door sat a couple of chairs, and beyony them a secretary’s desk.  Four or five women were in the office, along with a teenager.  Sitting in a chair just inside the door was a brown-haired boy with large hazel eyes.  He was short, maybe four and a half feet tall, and on the thin side.  He was trying not to fidget and he kept looking into the hallway expectantly, with hope riding his face.  This had to be Aleksandr.

I was a little startled--I had thought we’d talk to the Director for a while first, then Aleksandr would be brought down.  But he was already waiting for us.

Despite the fact that my writing job requires me to take risks, I’m very cautious when it comes to certain parts of my life.  I had wanted to talk to the Director first and see what she knew about Aleksandr, see if there were any health or emotional problems that would send us back to the NAC for another referral before Aleksandr even knew we had been asking about him.  No hopes would be raised and dashed for him if we elected to leave.  But here he was, in the office, knowing two prospective parents had come to meet him.

Sveta introduced us to him and we learned that Aleksandr goes by Sasha.  So he quickly became Sasha in our minds.  He shook hands, looking hopeful as a puppy.  Sveta told him to wait a little longer in the front office while Kala and I went into the Director’s office to confer with her.  The office was, like the rest of the school, clean but battered.  A red floor rug covered wooden floors and several elderly wooden cabinets held paper records.  I saw no computer.  The Director was a smiling woman with dark hair who wore a red and black suit.  Along with the Director was a lawyer whose name I didn’t catch.  She was dressed in jeans, a mutli-colored blouse, and big glasses.

The Director and the lawyer assured us that Sasha was a smart boy, very social with a lot of friends, no health problems at all (“very healthy” was repeated several times).  Through Sveta, we questioned them more about Sasha’s background.  They said his father had died, and we quickly asked if they meant his father or his step-father.  Blank looks.

“He had a step-father,” I said.  “Maksim’s father.  What happened to him?”

On this they had no records, since Maksim’s father wasn’t Sasha’s father and they had no records on anyone but Sasha.  I made a mental note to ask the Director at Maksim’s orphanage the same question.