The Journey From There To Here

 

Do you hear the people sing?/Singing a song of angry men?/It is the music of a people/Who will not be slaves again!/When the beating of your heart/Echoes the beating of the drums/There is a life about to start/When tomorrow comes!

 

In some places there is nothing but graffiti. There is one word that comes out through all the tagging. "Revolution".

 

Dave sez, Our flight was really long. It wasn't too bad from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Chicago. We were both anxious about the trip. I had a pop tart for breakfast; as usual, Cathy skipped breakfast. Checking our bags in, we had to adjust the weight: one bag was under weight, one was over. We got through security, only losing a can of Barbasol shaving cream, shower gel and anti-bacterial soap. They looked over Cathy's insulin and we were on our way. Cathy's insulin would get checked again in Frankfurt. We got a bite at Burger King near our gate at MSP. We were looking forward to splitting a Chicago-style hotdog and an Italian beef at O'Hare, but we ended up running from one gate to another with just minutes to spare.

 

Chicago to Frankfurt Airport (Frankport, is one I saw there) is about seven and a half hours. It is a very long seven and a half hours. Especially when you have THAT kid, kicking and punch the back of your seat. I totally understand that some small children find flying - especially seven hours - to be a challenge. But this kid was torturing me. We were trying to doze as much as possible, rather than spend the entire flight from home to Kiev awake. Chicago to Frankfurt seemed like the best time. But not with THAT kid kicking my chair. I settled in watching about a half dozen episodes from Season Three of The Big Bang Theory. Cathy had found it under a tab called Box Sets and suggested it. She started The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and immediately fell asleep. She wasn't sitting in front of THAT kid. After finishing my The Big Bang Theory six-pack, I started Frozen. I managed to watch "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman" and "Let It Go" twice before we landed in Frankfurt.

 

      

     

 

 

Frankport is quite possibly one of the circles of hades. The gate that we arrived at was "Z" - maybe for "Ze plane". Bekause ve gott off ze plane. (apologies for the "snark"; my mother is German and Cathy's whole family is German; so it is not intentional. If you are German, I'm sorry. Not for offending you, but that you are German - Bazinga.) The gate for our flight from Frankfurt to Kiev-Barispol was gate B. In true sitcom fashion, we hustled with our carry-on luggage from Z to B. A winding, circuitous, labyrinthine maze through Frankport. I felt like Bugs Bunny trying tunneling and making a wrong turn at Albuquerque. We wound our way through Z as far as we could go. Then we caught a shuttle train to B terminal 1. Then we found the gate that was marked on our boarding pass. B-26. We didn't have seats together, so when I checked if we could adjust our seating assignment, the very nice ticket agent told me that our gate had been changed to B-56. Which was not only back the way we came but downstairs. I think we were actually closer to the Earth's core because it was much warmer than Gate B-26...and I think I saw several vertically challenged individuals mining for either diamonds or coal. They were whistling. (That's right, I have no problem insulting Germans, but I will not offend vertical challenged individuals.)

 

Our flight from Frankport to Kiev-Barispol boarded on a transport bus that drove another circuitous path winding around the outside of the airport. I thought we were heading for Berlin! Finally we made it to our plane, and had the choice of boarding from the front or back of the aircraft. Our seats were near the Emergency exit. The flight attendant was adamant that we put all of our stuff in the overhead bins - because we were sitting by the Emergency exit. Minimizing the potential for anything loose to fly out of the aircraft in the event said emergency. Which is something I really want to be reminded of while on our journey - the potential for unexpected emergency. Thank you, for making my flight that much more enjoyable. I know you have a difficult job, because you have to sometimes be the bad guy to people like me...

 

So any way, we made it to Kiev, were picked up by Igor, the orphanage director and the driver. He told me his name, but as hard as I was trying to remember it, I was trying to stay awake, and give both of them the impression that I was fine and in no way did I want to curl up into a ball and sleep for thirteen hours. Which is exactly how we spent our Sunday morning.

 

They drove us to our apartment. Amazingly enough, we are in the same neighborhood we've been in before, when we were bringing Justin home. We are behind the Hilton hotel. Our first apartment in Kiev was in a building next door to the Hilton. We are a block away from where our friends Mike and Andrea stayed, across the street from an Irish pub called O'Brien's. We are familiar with all the grocery stores in the neighborhood. We are a five minute walk from the SDA office where our appointment is Monday at noon.

 

Les Mis "The Barricade"

What we did see coming around Independence Square were the remains of barricades made of brick, tires and fence barriers that were used to block off construction. There are a lot of green wooden fences that usually surround construction sites. sections of those are now around the Square. The Square itself is sectioned off by barricades. In some places there is nothing but graffiti. We were walking around a bit this afternoon. We saw a building that looked like their Exchange building that had been burned out. Sections of the brick sidewalk had bricks pulled out for the barricades. The pizza restaurant down in the subway mall is closed. May be for remodeling. We'll see. Along the street where the Double Coffee restaurant is - a number of the families we know that, like us, have come to Kiev to adopt, know where the Double Coffee is - there is graffiti. The word that jumps out from all the tagging is the word, "Revolution".

 

 

The fashion statement here these days is camouflage. There is a lot of camouflage. We saw uniformed police the last two trips; there are still a lot of police visible. Maybe we're noticing them more. Maybe they are more visible and projecting a greater presence.

 

What tomorrow holds for us is that we will meet Igor and our facilitator a little before our SDA appointment. We go to the SDA to ask permission to adopt Masha. They will pull out her file and tell us her story and ask if this is the girl we would like to adopt. I guess we could have asked about her when we were here bringing Ethan home, or sometime over the last twelve or more months. But, Cathy and I knew this day was coming and we would hear all about her. Justin needed his time; so did Ethan. So, now, it is Masha's time. We will hear her story, ask permission to adopt her, and then on Tuesday at four in the afternoon, we will get the referral, the permission to go see her and spend time with her at the orphanage while we wait for our court date 20 days from tomorrow. Ethan was 19 days, which was an amazing blessing. We will see again the judge that we saw the last two times, bringing Justin and Ethan home.

 

It all starts tomorrow with The Story of Masha. Her name translates "Maria". So we will be hearing how Maria came to be at the Cradle of Children's Hope orphanage.