Sunday, November 13, 2016

Around the World in Eighty Days

Only we did it in four.

That's right, folks, nearly 14,000 miles in four days. It was such a whirlwind trip that we didn't even bother to adjust to the time change.  We left Houston Tuesday morning and 30 hours, two airplanes and one five hour train ride later, we arrived in Charlie's region around midnight. We went to a nearby hotel to "sleep" for the night on what can only be described as a box spring.  Literally. There was no mattress. Want to know what happens to your old box springs when you set them out by the curb?  They're sent to Ukraine and disguised as mattresses. I have yet to sleep on anything resembling a comfortable mattress in the five different places we've stayed during all this.

We went to visit the next morning before court.  I know we said we weren't going to visit but our facilitator told us Charlie would be in court so we figured if we were gonna see him we might as well work out the kinks prior to, instead of during, court.  We went to the orphanage for about an hour where Charlie was less than enthused about seeing us, especially me.  He warmed up quickly enough, at least to Brent, and our visit was quickly over.  We went to eat lunch at the local pizza place we frequented a few times during our last visit and the waitress remembered us from a month ago.  We used the intermittent wifi signal to try and translate the menu and, when she brought the food over, the waitress commented on the irony (in pidgeon English) that the Americans ordered the Americana pizza.  We went back later after court for coffee and she then commented (again in broken English) on how we came to Ukraine just to hang out at the pizza place.  I took that to mean that we've been accepted as honorary Ukrainians as this point.

We headed to court which went pretty much as I expected.  The judge read through our dossier, the jurors and prosecutor asked the questions we knew they would ask and our facilitator improved on our answers to said questions as he translated them from English to Ukrainian.  I mentioned earlier that Charlie was there; because he is healthy and over a certain age, despite his special need, they ask his opinion.  We know enough Ukrainian to know he told them he was going on a car and plane ride with us and that we had dogs!  At least we know where his priorities lie.  =)

After a short deliberation, the judge said yes! and we can now introduce (drum roll, please) AESON NAZAR SANDERS!  He is finally ours!!!



I can also tell you that his 12th birthday was November 11 and, since we didn't plan on visiting this trip, we didn't have anything to give him.  Parenting fail number one.  Don't worry, kid, there will plenty more to follow, I'm sure.  Per his nanny's suggestion, we went to the grocery store and buy juice and candy for his class and we got to take Aeson (weird to call him that instead of Charlie, right???) to the store with us.  He was immediately drawn to the baby in a nearby shopping cart but was otherwise really well behaved.  I'm really hoping this is a good indication of behaviors to come.

Shortly after the grocery store we hopped back on everyone's favorite train for that five hour trip back to Kiev.  No rest for the weary!  We arrived in the city around midnight and, having just sat in one place for five blessed hours, we were of course wired and had no interest in sleeping.  We finally went to bed about 3:30 am.  The box springs in this apartment was either loads more comfortable or the previous 3654 hours of travel had finally caught up to us because we slept until almost 11:00 that morning.  We bolted out of bed so that we could meet our driver at noon.  We went to have some papers notarized and then went to have traditional Ukrainian dumplings for lunch.  They were uh-mazing in a way I cannot even describe.  After lunch our driver took us to see the sights of town.  This was one of the first times we've had to sight see and we had so much fun.  We saw the World of Miniatures museum which was an entire museum of handcrafted objects all smaller than your pinky nail.  I think the largest one measured eight millimeters in size; you had to use a microscope to see them.  One of the exhibits was an entire detailed chess set placed on the head of a pin.  It takes a special kind of crazy to be that detail oriented.  We went to the Lavra which is a monastery in caves.  We didn't get there in time to see the caves but we did get to see the inside of one of the most beautiful churches I've ever laid eyes on.  The detail was breathtaking.  I couldn't take pictures inside the church but I did take some really good pictures of the outside and the view of Kiev from the roof.



The judge would not waive the 10 day wait period so unfortunately we weren't allowed to bring Charlie/Aeson/Nazar home with us.  Brent will be flying back as soon as the wait period is over and our son will finally be able to come home!  We cannot wait.  I know we may have exhausted our share of prayers at this point but we're gonna ask for just a few more.  I will be posting a photo dump soon with all of our pictures from our visits during the first trip now that I can but until I can get that together, I'll leave you with one more parting shot of Ukraine.