Events of the Day:

Thursday was another slow day. The facilitators continued working on papers and we learned our court date would be Wednesday July 8. We were a bit dismayed to learn that recent direction from the central government to the regional courts was causing many regional judges some trepidation about waiving the 30 day waiting period for international adoptions. In our case, the assigned judge was nearing retirement age and was afraid his pension could be jeopardized if he used his own discretion in waiving the 30 day waiting period. Previously, Katherine & Oleg had great success in getting the 30 days waived for their clients. Unfortunately, it appears that our adoption may be the last to have the 30 days waived if it is waived at all. Aside from the stress of not knowing our fate until Wednesday, everyone is holding up well.

Oleg stopped by this day with a pay-as-you go internet card obtained from a local ISP and we finally got on-line. Rates were a little higher than US levels. The 33k dial-up line runs about $42 (US) per month but we were able to select an hourly rate - $0.69/hr on peak, $0.29/hr off peak with on-peak being 09:00 AM to midnight weekdays Mon-Fri. Of course, our local ISP at home had a server crash earlier in the week and email was delayed a bit. Since the local ISP was on the abuse.org list of bad actors as a source of US spam, the use of email is still a bit cumbersome since we have to use our home ISP's website to send all mail, but WWW works just like home and we can download mail to the mail client on our laptop without any problems. This just means we download, read, then go to a website to reply rather than replying from within our email program. If anyone is interested in the boring technical geek stuff related to tele-commuting to the US from Kiev, give us a call or drop us an email - Joe is more than happy to go on for hours discussing the details. Julie is just interested in which icons need to be clicked!

Today's photos show the courtyard behind the apartment as well as some of the interior - the kitchen with the automatic washing machine (front loader with directions in Ukrainian not English), the matching side-by-side European water closet & bathroom, and the large family room with a very tired Travis (bio-kid 2) crashed on the floor. The apartment has only 1 bed, but 2 couches. We picked up an air mattress which Travis found much more comfortable than the couches. Note that the family room photo shows a television at the far end of the room. This is a key point because that television is connected to a satellite dish that provides a window to the English-speaking world (as well as Ukrainian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, French, & Arabic). Fox News is Channel 51, the C-Span feed is available in about 5 languages and Music Videos (many from American artists) are everywhere. Kid's shows & movies are all dubbed over in Ukrainian/Russian, but luckily we brought along a few of our favorite DVD's. The laptop screen was an adequate size, but we were able to send the laptop display to the TV using the video cables we brought along. Again, contact Joe for the boring details if anyone want to know what to pack for an upcoming trip.