Friday Frustrations 1/22-23

Frustrated doesn't begin to describe how we are feeling tonight. Friday we had planned on going to visit another young lady named Nadia who was smart and happy and kind, but her age was just a tad outside of our pre-approved age range. No problem to get that age limit upped we were told, but it did turn out to be a major one. It's more complicated than this sounds, but that's it in a nutshell. We won't be going for our second referral tomorrow and so will turn in paperwork tomorrow to request our third and last appointment at the SDA. We certainly hope we don't have to wait over a week to get it; time is flying by.

We hope we have the stamina to last through another appointment. Those of you who've never done this have no idea of all each appointment takes out of you, as you sort through and choose and reject files. They aren't files you're rejecting, though, but real children with hopes and dreams of better tomorrows. Sigh.

Before we found all this out we are in a fairly upbeat mood (though a bit nervous of course) so we met up with Gail and Craig again and tried to go explore another cathedral. There was some celebration or something going on in front of it, however, so we couldn't enter. Here are some pictures to show what we're talking about. We asked a vendor later on to explain what all that was about and we got quite an education about how regular people feel about their president, government and their so-called "freedom." His emphasis, not mine. It is so intersting to hear real people talk about the state of affairs in this country. This vendor told us what we had already heard, that in Kiev there are a rich people, some very rich, but that if you go outside of Kiev even twenty or thirty minutes, you find extreme poverty. He talked about his aged mother who lived on a "pensionary" but who lived dirt poor with so little help.

John also tried on one of those traditional Russian hats as seen in this picture. Wonder how many of those he'll decide he must bring home with him?

Sure hoping that the third time is the charm for us and that there will be a healthy and happy sevenish age child just waiting for us.

And so it goes here in Kiev.