Jet Lag

Nervous, anxious, jet lag...I don't care what you call it but I am not sleeping. And because of this, Ukraine has the longest days ever!!!

"Ally, how many days have we been here?"

"It's Wednesday Kim." She replies bluntly with an are you flipping kidding me look on her face... "We have 5 more days."

I have been staying up until 4:00am watching Netflix, on Facebook, reading and basically anything I can do quietly in the dark while Ally sleeps. She rolls over in the middle of the night, I look at her and say, HI ALLY...she grunts at me and goes back to bed.  Maybe you should try some essential oils she says. I return the are you flipping kidding me look.

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We leave Karen's apartment in Kyiv and will not be back until Monday night, so we pack up and take showers, knowing that the place we are traveling to will not have working showers and possibly no hot water.

We head to our SDA appointment which starts at 3:00. We are done by 3:30 and started heading for the car through an open market.

The SDA agent and I pose for a picture

We look at beautiful hand painted Ukrainian eggs as well as stacking dolls. Roman, our facilitator tells us we need to go, so we get into our new driver, Sergey's car, and drive to the airport to pick up the missing bag. Yes it was found!!!  All in God's perfect timing, right before we leave to see the kids. 

At the airport, the Customs officer asks for Ally, and she looks at me. I check the tag...oh no, my bag has her name on it. 

Roman asks me as Ally gets pulled into questioning behind sliding doors, "what's in there?" With a nervous look on his face. 

"Vitamins, gifts for the kids, whiskey, stuffed animals...just a lot of stuff." 

 "Oh, maybe he is thirsty," he says jokingly.

The sliding door opens and she walks out with the bag. I asked what that was about and she said they asked what was in it and then X-rayed it. "No big deal"

It's now around 5:00 and Ally and I still haven't eaten all day. We were busy packing in the morning and didn't think about it, but we are now getting a little HANGRY.   We ask if we can stop and get something on the way to the region.

Well, I don't know if you have been driving in Ukraine, but it's definitely not Southern California, and there are no drive throughs off the two lane highway.  The only place to eat was a gas station half way between the region and Kyiv. A two and a half hour ride and we were able to get a bag of potato chips and a coke. 

We finally get to the motel and it is sold out!!!! You read it right.  

This place is in the middle of no where and all the rooms are taken. We need two rooms, one for me and Ally and one for the facilitator. Roman told us that in his 5 years of working in this region this has never happened. The women at the front told us there was one option, so we followed an old women up 2 flights of stairs and down a dark hallway...creepy.  She unlocks the second dark wooden door on the left and Roman starts laughing. I peek my head past him, and I see a small room. There are 3 twin beds shoved against the walls with no bathroom. That's not going to work. 

Don't worry because although there is nothing else for miles, if we turn around and look across the street there is another hotel.  It looks like a giant mushroom where the Smurfs or a bunch of Fairies should live but it's a hotel and it had available rooms.

Actually, ALL the rooms were available. Weird! On one side of the street there are no rooms and on the other side all the rooms are available, but then again God works in crazy ways.

It's like that bible story when they have been fishing all day and didn't catch anything. Then Jesus says to them to throw their net to the other side of the boat. Then they had like so many fish.

Well, we threw our net to the other side of the street and we asked the price. It is 200 hryvnia a room more than the other hotel. 200 hryvnia more!!!

Well since that averages to about 36 dollars more, we decide to splurge. I mean this place had bathrooms and working showers in the room. Look at all those fish God gave us, toilets, showers, toilet paper...amazing.

Oh but no wifi in the rooms, so no Netflix until 4:00am?

We finally sat down and ate at 9:00 pm in the hotel's restaurant for the first time today.  Ally and I both had a delicious bowl of borsch. We check our phones, called our husbands, and then tried to think of middle names for Alex and Yana because I will need to ask the judge if I can change their names. Adam (on FaceTime), Ally, Roman, and I came up with 4 options of middle names for them to choose.

It is 2:00 am now and Ally is sleeping as I am writing in the notes on my iPad.

Tomorrow is the big day, I will see the kids and bring the orphanage some supplies and Alex and Yana will get to pick their middle names

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I will make sure to post pictures when I have access to wifi on my Facebook adoption page and try to write something about it, but my first priority after seeing the kids is to sleep. 

"And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:19