with her at the camp, but it is in the middle of the woods, no where near a
town or city. The director said we could stay, but given that I need
internet to continue to do my job and get a paycheck...there really was no
choice. The camp was nice enough though - basically an orphanage in the
woods - much like the once Katya is in, except Katya's camp is in a small
town, not in the woods.
Marina was beginning to miss her friends anyways, and was looking forward to
going to camp before leaving for America so she could play with her friends
for a bit. Thankfully the camp is about 40 km from Kgrad so we can visit her
more easily than we can visit Katya as Katya's camp is over 2 hours away by
car - 4 by bus.
We got the call yesterday morning from Masha that our paperwork was
submitted to the SDa for the final approval for court. Technically they have
5 working days to review and approve the paperwork, but Anatoliy and Masha
are going to call and bother them ever day in hopes that they will process
it by the end of this week ie tomorrow. That would mean court on Monday,
with the 10 days starting on Tuesday.
Ukraine is starting to annoy us - its quaint and novel the first few weeks
you are here. Now we just want to get the girls and go home. One of the
daily annoyances is the total lack of cold drinks at any of the mini markets
or street shops. Cold beer, of course - cold soda, juice or water, nowhere.
It is hot here - not hotter than Atlanta or even Florida, but there is
almost no airconditioning anywhere. Its not so bad if you stay in the shade
- on the minibuses its the worst.
Other than that, we are eating lots of icecream, and getting into a routine.
Internet cafe at the city center, lunch, shopping for food for the hotel
room, visiting friends we've made here in town, then back to the hotel. We
know which minibuses to take to the hotel, the city center, DendroPark,
Furshets, and the orphanage. We took Marina to Dendro park twice while we
had her with us - my dad will kill me when he sees the photos - he is an
engineer at Disney and never allowed me to go to those seasonal carnivals
with the rickety looking rides - and here I am a new parent and I'm letting
my daughter go on these rusty, rickety rides that look like they are from
some horror movie. But she had fun, and a whole afternoon there cost us $6
USD.
I will post photos again soon - its just a pain to sort through all the
hundreds we've taken and put the good ones on the memory stick and then have
the internet cafe guy plug in the stick (they won't let you plug it in
yourself)
Melissa
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