No rain but 3-5 inches of snow coming

OK-We`re back for round 3. We were in Kyiv for our second week and are waiting for notification as to when our second appointment will be. We decided to take advantage of this time to sightsee and check out the city. As we had said in earlier posts, the architecture here is unreal. Alot of the buildings and cathedrals date back a thousand years. We visited quite a few different cathedrals when we were there and they were all pretty cool. We also met up this week with John and Charlene from Kentucky. This was the couple who were there a week earlier than us and had kept in touch with us to eventually meet up with. At this point I believe they had struck out on their first appointment and were also waiting on their second try. As a foursome we ventured to alot of different places and had a good time. The highlights of this week were my adventures with the police, the sightseeing, the subway, and being able to converse in English with John and Charlene.

On Wed. we received word that our next appointment would be the next day. Thursday came and we met Luba for the appointment. When they brought out the files they were all pretty much the same kids we had seen before. All but one new file of two little girls but according to the charts they both had some issues. The 4 yr old Angelina supposedly had epilepsy and the older ( 6yr old)1/2 sister Victoria was fully mentally retarded. The gal helping us with charts was not very helpful and Gail felt that she was not being very sincere. When Gail asked more questions about the girls charts she was given short snappy answers. One that sticks out in our mind is when Gail asked how many seizures the youngest girl has had and we were told several a day without no hesitation. At this point we new she was just pulling answers out of her head or should I say ......! Gail kept looking at the pictures and said that in her mind there was no way that these girls had issues so severe. Needless to say the gal was not very happy with us because she felt we were not listening to her. We weren`t too concerned about the epilepsy so you already know what we decided-- yup, off to Kramatorsk we went!! :-)

Same old routine- get paperwork on Friday, meet Dr. Yuri, get on train travel overnight to Donetsk, travel by car to orphanage. This is the point where it got interesting. We met up with the inspector of the area orphanages to do the necessary paperwork and we were off to the orphanage. We were greeted by a very nice director who was to show us Angelina as Victoria was at yet another orphanage in a different town down the road. A nurse brought this little girl in to meet us. She was a cute little girl but there was some issues that Dr Yuri wasn`t real comfortable with. After the exam we thanked the director and told Luba that we may as well sign off now as there was no use to go see the other little girl as we were told that they would not split up sisters. Luba told us that we had to go see the other girl as it was part of the conditions of taking this referral.

This time we took off in a different direction about 20 miles to a town called Stravansk. On this road trip we actually finally saw a grain elevator, which was strange because even though this was a very good farming area we had yet to see any bins or elevators. We arrived at our next stop and there we were escorted to a playroom type area as the caregivers went to get this little girl. We were expecting to see a little girl with issues and we would be on our way. Well, we were wrong!! This little dark haired, dark skinned girl with pigtails comes out , sits down and starts talking with the Dr.. He ran her through all the tests and she did really well except for one test where she stumbled a little bit. I wasn`t too concerned as I was doing the test right along with her and I messed it up too. After she did the tests she took our photo album we had along and rattled off the things in all the pictures. At this point Gail gave me the "look" and we thought this little girl could be the one if we could work it out. As we left, Luba stated that there probably wasn`t any way that we could split up these two half sisters. Just to defend ourselves a bit here- these little girls had, we believe never seen each other and probably never would be together because they were far enough apart in ages that they would always be in different orphanages. But anyways, we went back to the orphanage in Kramatorsk to visit with the director. We told him what we had found but wasn`t optimistic. We thanked him for his time and then we left for Donetsk. As we were on the road back, Gail and I were a little steamed as it seemed that we had hit a dead-end. All the while Luba was talking with the driver off and on again and on the cell phone. After awhile she turned back to us and said " it is possible if you want to fight, the orphanage directors want to find this little girl a home, but the regional inspector has to OK it." We told her to go for it. Being this was Saturday we had to grab a room at the Liverpool Hotel in Donetsk til Monday. Luba hadn`t planned on staying very long and only had a handbag of stuff but she was a trooper. The hotel was quite new and had a very nice cafeteria on the bottom floor so we were set. When we arrived at the hotel we had asked Luba if this was a safe area and she said " Yes, veddy safe", I asked her what about the chalk outline of a body on the sidewalk out front? Well uh, must be someones joke! I wasn`t so sure it was a joke as it looked pretty real looking to me.

Saturday night we all went to the cafeteria and had a nice supper and it was here that we finally found the ketchup that we were craving, only problem was that it was used as pizza sauce. Other than that the food was good and we called it a night.On Sunday we went to breakfast and there were the display case full of picture perfect sunny side up eggs, glasses of milk etc. We took what we wanted and found out that everything was served cold- yuck. Luba had a glass of milk that looked sorta " Thick" and we asked her what it was. " Curdled milk,you not like,you not try?" I said yup, I`ve had it before but only when the good milk accidentally got bad.

Sunday afternoon we were getting a little bored and went for a walk around the neighborhood and checked out quite a few little shops. When we got back was when I mentioned to Gail that I wish there was a way to see how many people were looking at our blog. After some tweeking on the computer I installed a counter and didn`t think anything of it. Like I had said way back when in our posting, Gail thought maybe 30 people a day and I thought a few more like 40-50 might be watching. When I checked back a few hours later the darn thing was already up to a couple hundred. This was very humbling to say the least. Sorta made us feel that we weren`t doing this all by ourselves. The highest count on any day that we saw was a little over 500 hits!!! Pretty cool.

That night Gail and I went back to the cafeteria to grab supper . Luba didn't join us cuz she spent the day in bed. Luba's curdled milk and raw cold sunnyside up eggs were not as fresh as she thought. When we entered the cafeteria we were greeted by hundreds of drunk teenagers . We were astounded , Luba told us that there is a teen night twice a year and we were lucky enough to be there for one of them. We just ate very quickly and got the heck out of there. Kinda made us uncomfortable in that situation.

Monday morning came and we met up with Luba in the lobby and she didn`t look good and said she didn`t sleep well as she had a stomach ache last night. Gail told her she should probably lay off the curdled milk :-). We went back to Kramatorsk and met with the regional inspector to plead our case. We went around and around but she thought that maybe someday the girls would be together and while we admire her intentions we can`t help but think that somehow it wasn`t the right thing to do.

After it was obvious we had struck out we went back to thank the orphanage director for trying. Gail asked at that point why was Angelina`s file so wrong. We were told that they had no money to update the files and the government didn`t do it often enough. We asked what kind of tests were needed to make the file more accurate and were told that the tests were very,very expensive. We asked how much was very expensive and were told that the cat scan was I believe $90.00. Gail at that point looked at the director and told him to get it done! He was a little taken aback and asked why would we do this? Gail told him that if we don`t her file will never be accurate and it might help her find a home or at least make sure she isn`t kicked out at age 16. He then called the clinic ( socialized medicine) and we couldn`t get in for 6-8 weeks. We told him to call a private clinic and he said that was more expensive but Gail held to her guns and said to do it! He called and an appointment was set for the next day.

After another stay at the Liverpool we were off to the orphange again. They were ready for us and had a nurse to travel with us to the clinic. The clinic itself was quite dingy from the outside and had dogs and cats running all over outside but seemed to have the necessary equipment inside. Gail went with the nurse as I had the driver take me to a supermarket to get a huge bag of candy for all the kids at the orphanage as we planned on leaving that day to go back to Kyiv. After about an hour they all came out and we headed back to the orphanage to say our goodbyes. We gave the director the candy and he gave Angelina a couple pieces and we went over the exam results. In short, the scan did show the brain issues and helped update her file so it worked out pretty well. Oh yeah- the total cost of the cat scan and the doctors briefing ----------- A little over forty dollars!!! Money well spent!!

Side note- when we picked Angelina up for her cat scan Gail gave her a little doll we had brought along and she latched right unto it! Also she had said something to the nurse and Gail asked Luba what she had said. Luba said " she told the nurse that my momma and poppa have finally come to get me". Gail knew better than to tell me that at the time. She didn`t tell me that until after we had left.

So, we were saying our goodbyes and jokingly asked the director if he had any more children coming available. He looked at his book and said yes he would have twin girls available in the near future but it was a ways down the road. Long story short- we accidentally "met" a little girl that had a lazy eye, thin hair, shy,pale etc. Catching on yet?...

On the way back that night we asked Luba how might we be able to have a shot at this little girl that we "thought" might be available. ;-) She said that she was quite sure that something would work out for us at our next appointment.


Stay tuned for the next appointment!!!