Love Hate

Our poor, kind landlord has been working all day on the plumbing himself.  Our apartment looks a demolition site, smells like a porta-potty and sounds like the inside of a jet engine.  The toilet seemed to be clogged all night long.   We all had to go down the hall to my parents studio apartment to use theirs.  When I went to get in the shower this morning, the contents of the bathtub were...well...the contents of the toilet.  Okay, I can do without a shower for another day.

Dad studying Russian on the soccer field

The drive to the orphanage was, as always, a challenge to see if you can hold on to the contents of your stomach.  It is always a non-stop game of chicken. At any rate, it was cheaper because he cut 5 minutes of the ride.  We got to the orphanage at 11am to see a special presentation for Russian Week on Alexander Pushkin and Crimea in which Liza had a speaking part.  The assembly, which looked like 100 students participating, was fantastic.  They lack many things, but a good education is not one of them.  I can't speak for other orphanages but this one is filled with loving authorities who do their best to fill gaps in their charges' young lives.  A few of the kids even had English lines. Liza is a very calm public speaker; no nerves, no forgotten lines, no flushed cheeks.  She was brilliant.  We were so proud of her.  She was exceptionally glad that we were there.  We were the center of attention as all the children knew we were her family.  It is rare for them to have anyone else in the audience but students and teachers.  She was super chatty during our brief time with her and even played soccer with us today.

The assembly room filling up with students

Liza giving her speech :)

Our 4 girls playing soccer together

Our daily walk

She had a busy rest of the day so we left there and went to bowl for an hour.  They were not happy to see us.  A new woman behind the counter glared at us, rolled her eyes and took every opportunity to look exasperated.  We were conversing with her in Russian, we knew the routine of covering our shoes with little stocking booties and planned to feed all 8 of us lunch there, but that was not enough to make us valued customers.  It feels bad to be unwanted.

The kids wanted to walk through the part on the way back and ride the bumper cars but we realized halfway there that we had only 17 UAH left.  The facilitators aren't answering their phones this evening and seem to have thrown in the towel on moving up our court date.  They were supposed to find out if we could have special permission to take Liza out for her legal birthday tomorrow.  But at the moment it looks like our 16th wedding  anniversary and opportunity to be with her for one of her two birthdays is going to be mirror every other day here.  We will get a few hours to walk around the grounds, kick the soccer ball, watch a movie on a 6 inch screen.  That one is hitting a little harder and not so easy to tune out.

Our daily despondency hit us on the rest of the walk back through the city.  Most of each day we try to focus on a plan, execute our chores and errands and visits, read a book, talk about the future, explore something. And then...then thoughts of home creep in, fatigue tugs at our eyelids and we wish for our own beds; the city noise jumps on our one remaining nerve and we dream of a few minutes of peace; hunger pains twinge and we crave a real home cooked meal.  When we arrived at the apartment we found the landlord drilling something in the dismantled bathroom.  Sigh.

A little levity goes a long way

We have a love hate relationship with Ukraine.  We are here for a beautiful purpose and we get to see our sweet girl for a few hours a day, but there are forces here that deliberately delay the goal of getting her home.  The culture is unique and fascinating, the food is fresh, we are here all together in the same place, we are learning a new language, we are growing as people.  Though so much of this process doesn't make an ounce of sense to me.  I don't know why their system is such that families go home financially and emotionally exhausted with their new child(ren).  We are both.  I don't know if I've ever in my life been challenged physically, spiritually, & emotionally like this before.  Tuning out the noise (literally and figuratively) is a constant effort.  Minute to minute.  It has been 19 days since we left home, almost three weeks.  At least three weeks left to go.  I'm still waiting to round the corner to a state of peacefulness.

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6 hours later...We decided to pressure the facilitators into at least trying to get Liza a day pass with us tomorrow for her legal b'day and our anniversary.  Sixteen for both.  Sixteen feels momentous.  She is the reason we are here and yet we spent most of our time neither with her nor accomplishing anything for the process.  If we don't speak up for ourselves, no one is going to speak up for us.  Sparring the tough Ukrainian exterior of the people here has thickened our skin, tremendously. The facilitators are saying they think we can take her to lunch and a movie tomorrow.  Hanging on to that hope tonight.

Court is set for Tuesday, December 4th.  That's not what we prayed for and we feel disappointed about five more wasted days.  I've been asking God a lot of  two year old "why" questions.  The facilitator told us tonight that she is meeting with the judge tomorrow.  She said it's to go over paperwork.  You have to understand that they have had our dossier here in Ukraine for 2 solid months.  And still they go over it, and still they make us wait, and still we are "not the parents".  I realize I sound entirely impatient.   I don't care.  I HATE the fact that this is status quo here.  Hate it.