SDA appointment

Since Alex was making Allie write down what she did today, I thought it only fair that Alex have to write down what happened in his day. So, here it is!

Today we started the day at 5am after we realized that was all we may be able to sleep that night. Allie and I hung out in the living room playing video games and reading. Surprisingly, Ann was able to go back to sleep with Tony - even though Tony had slept all night and had not waken up with the rest of us. Around 10 am, I started to feel “cabin fever” and wanted to go on a walk with Allie but couldn’t because we would be picked up at 11 am for our SDA appointment. Finally, Allie and I were going to at least go stand out in front of the building but as we stepped out the door, the elevator came up with Elena. We are still in awe of how she likes to ride that thing. I rode in it once yesterday and will not do that again – plus, our apartment is only one floor up! Ann’s comment: The elevator is really only big enough for three people and it is rickety and noisy and looks like it could break down at any moment and - no doubt - it would be while we were on it. By the time you wait for it to get there, you could have just walked down the stairs!

So we were off to the SDA appointment. We saw some beautiful buildings on the way. My favorite was the cobblestone road in front of the SDA building. I always see roads like this in movies and TV but never in person. Ann didn’t share the love of this road because she was wearing heals. We took our “required” side SDA door picture and then took a walk because we had to wait a little while for our appointment. We walked up the long stairs to the church next to the SDA buildings and we made the mistake of questioning Elena’s name. She spelled it Elena when she wrote it down for us (on a paper that Alex subsequently lost!) but introduced herself as Helen. We thought Elena sounded better and accidentally told her Helen seemed more like an older lady’s name. She must not have liked this because I guess she said I could call her Barrack Obama if I preferred. Ann’s comment: I am absolving myself of any involvement with the name comment – that was all Alex! He told her that her name was associated with grandmothers in the United States. I don’t thing she was really insulted too much, though, since she jokingly said that we could call her whatever we wanted – even Barrack Obama! We decided that we will call her Elena, only here it is pronounced “Yalena” with the “ya” sound being very short. Then we crossed the cobblestone road and walked by some venders. I noticed a nesting doll of Kobe Bryant and this reminded me to ask Elena if she could find out how the Lakers are doing in the finals. She tried to call someone to ask and it sounded like she was trying to have that person look it up but the person was unable too. Oh well – I’m sure I’ll be able to get it by the time I post this because at least at that point I’ll have internet and can find out myself. At the end of the vendors, we walked into an open courtyard. Elena then got a little serious and started asking us about why we wanted to adopt. I am not sure if these were prep questions but she started making me feel nervous. Also, a few steps earlier it had come up how young we look and she mentioned we were the youngest she had helped - which didn’t help the nerves either. Finally, we went back to the building and sat in a small waiting area. We went upstairs and sat with a woman and answered a few questions. We were told to come back between 5 and 6 the next day to get our paperwork to go see Katya. Ann’s comment: The whole experience was very strange. We literally had to use the side door to the building and when we walked up the stairs – me in my clunky noisy heels – Elena followed behind us but Irina waited at the bottom – out of sight. I apparently walked farther up the stairs than I was supposed to because Elena quickly motioned for me to come back down the stairs a bit – as if she was afraid we would upset the SDA monster – which made the whole experience even more nerve-racking. The woman we met with introduced herself as “Anna” (I think) and said she was very happy to meet us. However, she didn’t smile and she didn’t make any eye contact. Then, she showed us a picture of Katya (which was taken about four years ago – so she looked a little bit different!) and Katya’s brother, Andrew. The way that the conversation was translated sounded like she really just said that Katya has a brother and asked if we would be willing to consider adopting him, too, but not that we had to. The woman spoke in a whisper and at one point Elena had to lean in and say “Shto?” (what?) to get her to repeat herself. She did not ask us any questions about why we wanted to adopt and the whole appointment only lasted five minutes. So, it was “much ado about nothing”.

We got back to our apartment and had planned to all walk to Independence Square but Annie wasn’t feeling good so she and Tony stayed behind for a nap. Ann’s comment: I had really not slept at all the night before, except for the one hour nap that I had taken with Tony earlier. My stomach was still feeling queasy from the Airplane and it really was about 10 pm at home – which is about our bedtime! Allie, Joann, and I walked to Independence Square. Allie liked seeing all the different high heels women wear here. She also felt walking under the road to cross the street was an experience and was additionally surprised when she found small shops down there. We finally got to independence square and headed to McDonalds. I really wanted to try some Ukrainian food but after trying to order the evening before, I decided I would stick to what I know when we don’t have help with us. The young man that took my order was the most helpful stranger I’ve met. He really helped make me feel comfortable ordering by myself and taught me how to order water. If you say “vada no gas” you will actually end up with non-carbonated bottled water. We tried this later at another store and it worked great. The McDonalds was fairly small and very crowded but we luckily found a few seats. When it was time to go, I had to get Ann some food. I made sure to go to the same person and once again he was great and very patient and helpful. Allie also wanted a vanilla cone but the only picture of a cone they had was a Kiwi cone. I decided not to order it because on the walk over I had seen a shop with ice cream cones and figured it would be easier there because I could point to the flavor I wanted. We stopped at that ice cream shop on the way back and the lady was a little rude but finally got me the flavor I had pointed at. It wasn’t hard since they had three pictures: a brown chocolate one, a vanilla one, and a swirl one. When Allie tasted it, she found out it was not vanilla and actually lemon flavored. Despite not liking it, she ate about half before giving up. I wondered how awful the swirled chocolate and lemon flavored one would taste!

After that we walked back to the apartment with out further incident. Allie was excited to find some coins on the ground coming out of the underground crosswalk. When we got back, Ann was still sleeping with Tony. I decided to take a nap and fell asleep for only an hour but it felt like 8 hours. When I woke up, Ann was heating up her McDonald’s food. Since I was re-energized and when I mentioned I had seen several people using computers inside the McDonalds, we decided to walk down there to try to get online. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the door had “WiFi” on it, we had no luck with the internet at McDonalds. There must be a secret to getting the internet – like we have to buy a card or something - and since Elena put her number in the cell phone that has a bad battery that we couldn’t get it to turn back on, we can’t call her to ask what we need to do. Since we struck out with the internet, I mustered up the courage to try to order a vanilla cone from the same boy I had ordered from earlier. I was able to do this with success and I’m glad I did because it tasted really, really good! I felt pretty guilty that I hadn’t gotten Allie one here earlier but since she didn’t want to come with us this time, she missed out!

People here park their cars on the sidewalk. When we first drove into Kiev, Allie noticed this and asked Irena why. Irena answered her, matter-of-factly, by saying, “Because there is no where else to park”. I really don’t mind that they park cars on the sidewalk here but that it’s annoying that we are on a sidewalk - supposedly safe from traffic - but we are not safe and are constantly having to be aware of vehicle sharing the sidewalk with you. The sidewalks we have seen are fairly large and easily accommodate the pedestrians and the parked cars. The problem is that the cars need to drive down the pedestrian path to get to the parking spaces. They say they park here because they don’t have enough space in the city. But if they built the sidewalks large enough to accommodate parking couldn’t they just have built that part of the sidewalk as road side parking spaces to be accessed from the road and there wouldn’t be cars driving down the sidewalk? Ann and I laughed a lot when we watched a large SUV that was trying to park on the sidewalk back into and knock down a parked scooter. It was so funny because he just quickly drove away without any concern for what he had done!

For dinner, we decided to try the pizza place downstairs. Annie had searched for available WiFi in our apartment and found that their connection required a password. We thought that if we could get the password, we could then access it from our apartment. But all the tables were full so we went to the sandwich shop next door. The name of the sandwich shop was “Mister Check”, which Ann thought was some kind of a payday loan place. I thought that was hilarious because as poor as this country is it, it would be fun to see a business give out unsecured loans and try to get paid back. I know back at home people default on these all the time but I imagine here the default rate would be much higher. The shop had some sandwiches already made and so we thought the ordering would be easy and when the boy behind the counter realized the language barrier, he made it even easier by pointing out the English menu with numbered items and full ingredients list. The only other obstacle was ordering the water but that was made easy too when we said “no gas”. We enjoyed the sandwiches then walked home and that concluded our day. Tomorrow we are going to see the church with the dead monks. I really don’t want to go spend the money to see this but I did bring my daughter and mother in law and I’m sure they wouldn’t be content just sitting around the apartment all day waiting for the paperwork. So I guess we will go. On a sub note: the bottled water doesn’t taste that good. I think the tap water back home tastes better than the bottled water here.