Day 33 - May 17, 2007 - A busy day in Kiev

The train ride went smoothly. Here is a picture of Natasha already settled in the train for the night.



We arrived in Kiev at 7:00 am. We went directly to the doctor to get Natasha's medical exam. We met another adoptive family at the doctor's office. They were completing the adoption of their son. This was their second adoption, they had adopted two girls a couple of years ago. We exchanged contact information and hope to hear from them after we have returned to the states. We then went to the US Embassy to get Natasha's visa. We met up with the same family we saw at the doctor's office. We also met another family who was just completing their adoption of two year old twin girls. Since both families were in front of us in line, Gail gladly volunteered to hold one of the girls until it was our turn (they will also be on the same flight from Kiev to New York so I'm sure Gail will get a chance to hold them again). By the time we left the embassy, it was after 1:00 pm and everybody was hungry, so we went to eat lunch (we ate at the same cafeteria dad & I did when we were in Kiev in October). We then picked up our tickets for our flight home on Saturday, stopped at the store for a few groceries, and arrived at our apartment just around 4:30 pm. We spent most of the day in the van running from place to place. Once we got into our apartment, we were ready for a chance to rest and update our blog. However, we had to call the apartment manager back to get our Internet working. We are now settled in. Everybody is tired and anxious to get some rest for tomorrow. Natasha is enjoying watching Nickelodeon on the satellite TV. Tomorrow we will pick up Natasha's visa in the morning, and then spend a little time looking around Kiev. Our facilitator, Angelina Zherevichuk, will leave us tomorrow and fly back to Donetsk in the afternoon. She has been an excellent help throughout the whole process and we will miss her.

To all our friends and family, thank you for all of the prayers and comments. (Yes, Gail did get everything packed in time for our departure to the train station - our driver looked at all of our bags and thought he would have to make two trips, but we made it on time and with everything). Natasha already misses Helena, and we look forward to keeping in touch with Slavik and his family.
That's it for tonight as get some needed rest before our last full day in Ukraine.
God Bless and good night,
Bob