Each morning while in Kremenchuk, and the every wonderful Hotel Kremin, we started off our day with a shower and occasionally washing our clothes in the sink! We'd set them out to dry on whatever free chair back, hanger, knob or otherwise that would hold the item! Svetlana would usually meet us at 9am in front of the hotel. We would end up walking for about 30 minutes through town, and then she would get us a cab to the orphanage. We did LOTS of walking each day! We would stop on the way to the orphanage and get a snack or small toy for the boys. Some days we stopped at different parks while Svetlana would give us a brief broken English version of history of the town! After our morning visits with the boys, we would get a cab from the orphanage, that would usually drop us off somewhere in town - usually a mile or two from our hotel... Svetlana LOVED walking! We enjoyed taking Svetlana to lunch - and treating her! She always put up an argument - but ended up caving each time... for us, it was no big deal to pay $15 for a really nice lunch for 3 people! We usually ate borscht and an awesome cucumber and tomatoe salad.. super yummy! Some days, we tried different things that Svetlana suggested.. some good - some not so good! Every couple of days, Svetlana would take us to the postoffice.. it was an odd building that had about 15 phone booths inside, as well as two computers with internet access. We would spend about $5, which would get us about 2-3 minutes to try and call home with a very brief update. We would usually try to send an email at the cost of about .20 for 10 minutes. We also would go and get our pictures developed and look for kids clothes. Each afternoon, we usually bought a big jug of water to put in our small fridge in the hotel.
For the next week, we saw the boys in the mornings, and occasionally in the afternoon. For some reason, Svetlana had to get the boys for us each time. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the Director was not happy with us. After about 3 visits, we paid to have a Western trained doctor come and look at the boys. Her name was Dr. Anna Groban. She worked at the American Medical Center in Kiev. She was a godsend! She spoke British English fluently! She checked out the boys head to toe, tested development and helped answer a ton of questions! It was funny when we look back, as she said that Alex was the very healthy one, and Jason was the one with the "Olympic Front (forehead) that he was going to be the one to keep an eye on! She said that she would do the boys exit medical exam for their Visas when we got back to Kiev. That was nice!
We really enjoyed spending time with the boys and getting to know them! They started to understand English pretty quick. Svetlana (a teacher by training) did an amazing job trying to teach them words in English as well as teaching us words in Ukrainian to help. We would take snacks each day for them. Those boys LOVED bananas! Little Dima could eat one faster than you could get it unpeeled. We were told that both boys were not really good eaters... after seeing some of the stuff they had to eat - who could blame them! Little Dima was left to feed himself at meal time... he had little coordination... it was no wonder that he was soo tiny! Vitaliy had lots of energy and loved to play with the toys we brought each day.. he loved to put them all in his mouth!
We spent time playing with them in the music room, as well as mainly outside on the playgrounds. We brought them bananas, juice and crackers each day.
Vitaliy and his Papa... in the groupa room that he lived in
Mama and Dmitriy in his groupa room in front of his locker - #1
Dima and Vitaliy playing in the outdoor playpen
While we enjoyed visiting with the boys and getting to know them better - we were also very anxious to get home! We had brought clothes that would fit Vitaliy, but we had nothing small enough for little Dima, who was wearing 6-9 month clothes! So, each day, we would look at different stores.
Ukrainian Independence Day!
We were invited to Svetlana and her husband, Vitaliys house to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Ukraines independence from Russia.
Court and stuff
We had our court date on August 25th. Svetlana and her husband dropped us off outside the courthouse -and said their goodbyes... which was a little weird after spending alot of time with them that most likely we would never see them again. Svetlana cried - and almost had me in tears as well.
Court went pretty fast... we were declared the parents and quickly whisked off to a building that had maybe 2 lights in it to obtain birth certificates. After a few hours, we went to lunch, then back to the orphanage to spring the boys out... but not until we had some last "paper" from the capital city of the region....
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