Greeting from Kiev

Well, we are safely here in Kiev.  Not sure why the post is reading Sunday, 11/18.  It's actually Monday morning, 11/19 here.  We flew out of Logan on Saturday around 7:15 pm.  The flight was about 7 1/2 hours into Amsterdam, then about 2 1/2 hours to Kiev after an hour and a half layover.  Pretty uneventful, but we lost 7 hours.  We arrived around 1:30 pm in Kiev, though to our bodies is was still only 6:30 in the morning.  It is just going on 10:00 am here, while it is 3:00 am back home.  We essentially lost Saturday night en transit, though we did manage to sleep an hour or two on the plane.  Both flights served full meals - clearly foreign airlines ;-).  Went to bed last night around 5:30, slept until about midnight.  We both were awake for a few hours, then went back to sleep until about 8:00 am.  Right now, I feel like I got a full night's sleep so hopefully I've got the jet lag worked out and will be able to go to bed at a more normal hour tonight.  Hard to say, as neither of us has ever done any travelling that required us to change our watches by more than an hour or two - definitely a new experience for us.

Our facilitator, Luba, met us at the airport (though it took about a half hour or so of wandering around before we found each other).  She set us up with an apartment here in downtown Kiev - 3 rooms for $65/night.  It's austere to say the least, but we're not sure how much to expect from things yet - is the lack of basic necessities such as paper towels and waste baskets typical and are we just spoiled Americans?  Hmmm...  we'll need to find a store today to pick up some essentials.  There was about 1/4 roll of toilet paper, so we're not complaining.  Nonetheless, it's in a convenient location and is in a very secure building so we're OK.  There's an internet cafe just across the street (where I am now) where we can access the internet for the equivalent of about $3/hour.  They also have phone booths where we can make calls to the U.S.  for about $.15/minute, so we're definitely not disconnected.

Just trying to take this experience one day at a time as it comes.  Julie and I both agree that we've never felt like such outsiders before.  Any other place we've travelled has been either in the U.S. or in true tourist 
destinations like the Carribbean, where we were surrounded by people just like us.  The people
here seem friendly enough, though somewhat aloof, and taking a course in Russian or Ukrainian
(both are spoken here) wouldn't have been a bad idea.  The immigration agent at the airport, though, definitely seemed annoyed with us and our lack of language skills and was pretty brusque - "stupid Americans" he seemed to be thinking.  Of course, we could have taken him all wrong.  Probably not.

Our appointment with the State Department of Adoption (SDA) is at noon today.  Luba is meeting us at the apartment around 11:00 and she'll be accompanying us every step of the way, thank God.  She'll be our translator and will be able to interpret the children's files, medical records, etc., for us.  Thank you to all of you who have been praying for us - please continue to pray for a good referral today.    Assuming we've accepted a referral, we'll probably be here in Kiev for another couple of days and then will travel to the region where the orphanage is located.  We'll post again as soon as we can to let you know how the appointment goes.