River of Thoughts

Christine Royse Niles — Changing the world one word at a time

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The Week and a Half In Review

by Christine | Leave a Comment

Wednesday, 23 May 2007 We are starting to fall into a bit of a routine, so I want to take the opportunity to provide a Cliff’s Notes version of our trip so far….. We have been in Ukraine for a week and a half, and we are traveling with our friends Fred and Lisa, who are adopting a child from the same orphanage where Masha lives. We left Fort Wayne on Sunday afternoon, and arrived in Kiev mid-day on Monday. We met with the Ukrainian State Department of Adoption (SDA) on Wednesday to obtain official permission travel to Masha’s city […]

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Surreality

by Christine | 1 Comment

Wednesday, 23 May 2007 The sun seems brighter here, and we are generally waking up on our own shortly before the alarm sounds. This morning, I made some tea and read a bit before tidying things up and setting off on another day’s adventure. I did find that I was very irritable this morning…or I should say Mark found out. I think that although we’re settling into a routine, I’m having a little trouble adjusting to not having control over what’s going on. Add to that the anxiety of becoming a new parent, but not really being able to start […]

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Banana Split

by Christine | 1 Comment

Tuesday, 22 May After the running documents around all day yesterday, today’s agenda was pretty open at the start of the day. Mark took a walk around our neighborhood to check out the shops, and discovered that we have a lot within walking distance, and we made arrangements to be picked up at 10:45 to go to the internet café and spend an hour or so, and to get our laptop connected. We were scheduled to meet up with Fred and Lisa, and to pick the girls up around 1:00 for the afternoon….but things don’t always go as planned around […]

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Fish Treats

by Christine | 1 Comment

Monday, 21 May (good day, busy day, long entry!) Up at 8:30 and after a chemically-induced full night’s sleep, we woke to no hot water. We have now learned to shower when you can…a “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em” lesson in opportunity management. Mark had decided after a hot and dirty day at Extreme Park that he’d wait until morning to shower. He made good use of the “personal wipes” that we brought! About 10:15, we got a call from Sveta telling us to be downstairs in ten minutes so we could go to the courthouse to meet with […]

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Extreme Day

by Christine | Leave a Comment

Sunday, 20 May 2007 Since the first day we arrived at the orphanage (OK, so that’s only two days, but it seems like longere…) Masha has been asking to go to “Extreme Park.” Apparently, at least one of the families that came ahead of us took their child to an amusement park in town called Extreme Park. Seems now that all the kids have decided that this their adoptive parents purpose in life is to take them to this place. We were originally going to try to put this off until later in the trip, but for a number of […]

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