Let's Do the Time Warp Again!

Hello! It's about 10:30 AM on Wednesday morning, and we've discovered the Internet place. I don't know how long we'll be able to stay in here, so we'll see how fast I can type until we're told to go by Viktor.

We arrived here In Kotovsk around 7:30 AM yesterday morning. The ride was uneventful (I slept for about 3 hours of it) except for the extremely bumpy roads. It gives a whole new meaning to potholes that we've experienced in the U.S. You could lose your car (or least a few tires!) in these. Our driver was constantly swerving or slowing down to navigate the holes. The highway was a 4-lane one until we turned off for Kotovsk. Then it became a 2-lane highway, and I felt a little anxious when we'd swerve to the left to avoid a pothole and then swerve back quickly to avoid an oncoming car!

I will try to write more later about the town, but just imagine a time machine that took you back about 50 years or more ago. It's a very old, run-down place. It doesn't help that they are emerging from winter, just like back home, so things are muddy. It's also been very rainy here, so there is some flooding.

We picked up a random female stranger to drive with us to where we were meeting Viktor. That is something that rarely happens back at home! She got a free ride to where she needed to go, and we arrived to find Viktor in the right place. We paid the driver and grabbed our luggage. He took us up 2 circular-type staircases (with very shallow stairs) to a room. It was a place over a cafe, and I assumed it was our apartment. We were a little surprised to see how clean, new, and modern it looked when we were told that it would be an old Soviet apartment. Turns out the apartment wasn't ready so we were to stay here that night. The room is very small, but like I said, very clean and new, so we were ok with that. The bathroom had the toilet, sink, and standup shower all in the same room-- hooray! (though there's something to be said to having the toilet in another room sometimes!!!!!) In the main room, there is the bed, an entertainment type shelf, TV, two chairs and a small dining table.

Time spent here was about 20 minutes, long enough to put in my contacts and brush my teeth. We hit the ground running after that and didn't stop for quite a while yesterday. First off we went to Vanya's school. We saw him right away-- he happened to be in a hallway, in a line, with some other children. He had the biggest grin on his face! We smiled and waved to him because we didn't want to get him in trouble. We followed Viktor to a small conference room where lots of people came in and out, filling out various forms. Everyone talked around us in Ukrainian. Viktor wasn't explaining much. It was a little frustrating, but we just sat and smiled and waited. However, after about 15 minutes, in walked Vanya!!! Ta-Da!!!! He came over and hugged us, and then we didn't let him out of our sight for quite awhile. First he sat on my lap, and I showed him the pictures I had with him. He has a great memory: he remembered almost everyone from our families, without prompting! How smart is that???

Viktor came over then, and he told Vanya in Ukrainian that he had to write a letter stating he wanted to be adopted by us. He willingly did what was asked, which provided us with much relief. This was a very important step because he had the choice to say no! He handwrote the letter and has great handwriting (although I couldn't read any of it!) Viktor left us for awhile to make some copies, so I pulled out a game my sister gave me. It doesn't involve reading, and he quickly caught on to the rules. Papa beat us both games to our chagrin. I grabbed a piece of paper nearby and wrote the alphabet for Vanya. Either he remembered what I taught him last summer, or he's been practicing at school; he could say over half of the letters, and could count aloud to 12 when I pointed to the numbers. Then I wrote his new name for him-- Evan Thomas Decker on the paper and told him how to say it. I pointed to him when I said it, and Tatiana came over and explained it would be his new name. He seems to like it quite a bit.

We took Vanya with us to go see Nikolai, the orphanage director. He was happy to see us and even inquired about who was looking after our house and dog while we are here. If you remember, he's been to our house. He told us Vanya had been anxiously awaiting our arrival. We didn't talk long with him, so next we were off to get some papers notarized. We had to leave Vanya, but Viktor explained to him we'd be back the next day.

Getting the papers notarized took a little bit of time. We had to travel to Balta, a slightly bigger city about 18 miles away. Again so much fun to travel on these roads. This process took about 2 hours total. Lots of things were happening so much faster than we were anticipating, which is a good thing. Back we traveled to Kotovsk, and back to our hotel. We rested for a bit, and then went down to the cafe for lunch. Finally, we had our first Ukrainian meal. Viktor arranged for us to have bortsch soup, pork and potatoes, and crepes for dessert. Let's just say it was interesting! The bortsch had a tomato broth and contained bits of cabbage, potato, mushrooms and some kind of questionable meat. It was edible, but maybe not my favorite thing. The pork and potatoes reminded me of a boiled dinner we had when I was growing up. Again, not my favorite, but it was ok. We were too full for the crepes, so we motioned to the waitress that we were too full. Again back to our room. Viktor met us there later and told us he had some paperwork to do on our behalf and that he'd be back in about an hour. He encouraged us to take a nap.

We slept for about 2-3 hours and ate a light snack in our room for dinner about 7:00 since we hadn't heard from Viktor. He came by about 8:00 and told us it had been a tiring, but successful day. He was hoping to file our petition with the court tomorrow and hopefully get a court date very soon. We are praying for early next week. Once the court date is over, we are free to come home. It is quite possible we may be home earlier than we thought!

Right now I am typing this with a little boy in my lap. He's been coloring and now is helping me press the save button as I type this. He seems quite content to watch me type! Since we are so close to the cafe (not really a cafe-- I don't see food!), I am hoping we can come back later tonight. Viktor petitoned Nikolai so that we can have Vanya with us every day from 10:00 to 5:00. We'll see if he will allow that since the children are on their version of spring break, this week and next.