Monday, 14 May Sunday and Monday pretty much ran together….It’s Monday evening in Kiev as I draft this, and Mark and I are both running on about an hour and a half of sleep since yesterday morning. Around 11:00 on Sunday morning, the Maxwell clan stopped by to see us off, and Mark’s parents came about 11:15 to take us to the airport. After many pictures, the guys piled all the luggage into the car, and we were off! We arrived at the Fort Wayne airport a little more than an hour before our flight, checked our bags, and breezed […]

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Tuesday, 15 May Mark to Christine: “Hey, honey, what time is it?”Christine: “It’s 3:15”Pause…Mark to Christine “Hey, honey, what did I just ask you?”Christine: “You asked what time it was.”Mark: “Uh, what did you say?”Christine: “3:15.”Mark: “Oh, OK, Thanks.” We’re a little zoned out, but I think we’ve made the transition to Ukraine about as well as can be expected. we spent Tuesday in Kiev, getting a feel for the city. We went to bed around 9:30 on Monday, dead tired. We both woke up about midnight, and decided it was time to put the sleeping pills we brought to […]

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Wednesday, 16 May Wednesday at 11:00 AM was our scheduled appointment with the SDA; the State Department of Adoption and Protective Rights of Children. This is the first official step in our adoption activities, and without their approval, we would be headed back home without Masha…so it’s a very important step. We got up early on Wednesday, made a cup of tea, checked email and uploaded the Tuesday blog entry. We showered and dressed for our SDA appointment (skirt and blouse for me, slacks and a shirt (no tie) for Mark. Our driver Sergei picked us up promptly at 9:30, […]

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Thursday, 17 March Today, we didn’t have any real plans, so we took the opportunity to sleep in a little bit. And then a little turned into a lot. We got up around 11:30, which left us just enough time to pack all of our stuff, eat lunch, and check email. Mark walked out to the grocery to pick up a few bottles of water and some snacks for the train. At 3:00 on the dot, Zhana arrived with a new driver who would take us to the train station. She had thoughtfully prepared us a care package for the […]

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Friday, 18 May, 2007 Today was the day! Our train arrived right on time at 9:00 AM. We were met by two drivers; one for Fred and Lisa, the other for me and Mark. We both had so much luggage and the cars were both so small that Sveta barely fit in our car! We dropped Fred and Lisa off at their apartment, and then drove to ours, about three miles away. The apartment here is very large, and comfortable(unlike the elevator, which *barely* holds three very friendly people. There are two bedrooms, an eat-n kitchen, and a separate living […]

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