River of Thoughts

Thursday, 7 June The cries of a thousand warriors filled the air as darkness enveloped their underground lair. OK, so it was more like about 40 teenage boys hollering when the power went out at Com.bat, the internet café we’ve been frequenting. The first version is so much more poetic, dontcha think? Today’s internet time was nearing its end. Lisa was copying some photos, and I had just finished uploading the last couple of days’ posts (I hope), and I was preparing the email for distribution to y’all when, in an instant, the room went dark. Gone were the sounds […]

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Wednesday, 6 June It dawned on us this morning that our time in Ukraine is almost over; we only have five more days in town. On Monday morning, our 10-day waiting period will be over, and the court decree for our adoption will be final. We will be able to pick up all the court documents and then go to the orphanage and pick up our daughter!!! From there, we will drive to the capital of the region to get Masha’s new birth certificate and passport, and she will officially be Maria Elizabeth Niles. We hope to get this completed […]

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Tuesday, 5 June This morning, we witnessed one of the strangest aspects of Ukrainian culture we’ve seen to date. There are no dumpsters in/around our apartment building, and it took us some time (and some interesting conversations) to figure out where to throw out our garbage. We finally found that in each stairwell, there is a chute, down which the garbage can be flung. This chute is not quite wide enough for a pizza box, we learned, and on our floor, there is a “pusher” for garbage that gets stuck. Until today, we had no concept of what happened to […]

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Monday, 4 June I spoke too soon about the rain. And the heat. And if there’s not much to do except go to the park on days that are hot and sunny, there’s even less when it’s cold and rainy. We spent another quiet morning reading, writing, going through photos. We received calls from both Sveta and Kseniya to coordinate our driver to pick us up at noon, but when noon rolled around, there was no driver. At about 12:15, Kseniya called to tell us that they couldn’t find our driver and that they were looking for another driver to […]

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Sunday, 3 June For the first time since we landed in Ukraine, I uttered the words “I’m cold.” Outside. The day dawned with the promise of sun and heat; I dressed as usual in lightweight capris and a camisole, knowing that we would be outside most of the day; I gave up carrying the contingency sweatshirt weeks ago. But clouds began to form late in the morning. We picked Masha up at 11:20, and sat on a park bench outside the orphanage to share with her the plans for the next couple of weeks so she would know what to […]

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