Leaving, on a jet plane. Don't know when we'll be back again. . .

We're here!!! It's 4:30 PM Ukrainian time (that's 9:30 AM in Fort Wayne time) on Sunday, and we found an Internet cafe that we can use until at least Tuesday morning. It cost a whole $1.50 for about an hour. Woo hoo!

We've had many adventures on our way here, but we're here now, so that's what counts. Our apartment is very nice. It has a large bedroom/living room, complete with satellite TV. Too bad the only English channel is MTV. I haven't watched MTV since probably high school, so that's fun. We WOULD watch movies on our portable DVD player we brought along, but the converter we bought won't get close enough to the plug. The plugs here are sunk in a round circle and our square adapter won't reach. We are going to ask if we can get an adapter for our adapter!

That posed a small problem with my blow dryer, but thankfully there was an Ukrainian blow dryer under the bathroom sink. Speaking of bathrooms, the toilet is in it's own little closet. Very odd that you have to use the toilet, and then go into a totally different room to wash your hands. That room has the sink and the tub. I almost need a step stool to get into the tub. You may be pleased to hear that we have had plenty of hot water so far, but the shower is an interesting challenge and the only thing to really set me over the edge so far! It does have great pressure, if you want an ice-cold shower. In order to get hot water, you use a different shower head that gets minimal pressure. So, it's really a hand-held shower! I was so worried about the possibility of running out of hot water that I didn't pay attention when I grabbed what I thought was my shampoo. It was really my shower gel, so then I had to rinse out the soap from my hair and start over. Luckily, there was still plenty of hot water for Tim when I was done.

Let's talk food. Tim thought it would be fun to have a traditional all-American meal before we left Fort Wayne, so we had McDonald's for lunch as we pulled out of town on Friday. Interesting, the first Ukrainian place we had a meal was the McDonald's right down the street from our apartment! We were able to order 2 Big Mac meals, complete with french fries and cokes because that was really the only picture we recognized! The girl did speak a little bit of English so she could ask us if it was "take away or here" and then she asked us if we wanted sauce. Doesn't a Big Mac come with "special sauce"???? We figured out she meant ketchup and we got charged for 2 ketchups (about 20 cents). The total was 68 Grevnas which translates to about $8.00, so not too bad! It all tasted just like McDonalds in America! For breakfast today we ate the granola bars and cereal bars we brought with us. I boiled water yesterday so that we could have good water to brush our teeth and take medicine.

We have a meeting today around 6:30 PM today with our facilitator, Tatiana. Her daughter, Jenya, is the one who picked us up at the airport and brought us to the apartment. She speaks great English, and we had met her briefly last summer in Indianapolis. Apparently her mother doesn't speak English much, so we will also have a translator for part of our journey. Tomorrow we go to the State Department of Adoption with Jenya and Tatiana, and then I believe on Tuesday we will leave for Kotovsk where we will finally see Vanya on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Only Tatiana will go with us to Kotovsk, but we will be joined by Viktor (who we haven't yet met) who will be our translator. Jenya said he has already helped at Vanya's school with another adoption, so he knows the ropes. Great!

I've already taken about 30 pictures, so we'll see about downloading some pictures tomorrow or maybe later today if we get really bored. We already checked, and we can get to both our work and personal email accounts, so if you don't want to leave a public message here, you can email us. We're off to see if we can find something to eat that's not McDonalds!

Check back soon!