So it's home again, and home again, America for me!

Yes, we truly are home!  Finally!  And the lines from the poem by Henry Van Dyke describes how we've felt the past several days:    "So it's home again, and home again, America for me!  My heart is turning home again, and that's where I long to be."  As expected, we literally did not know until almost the last minute when we'd be flying out and even then, the flight got cancelled.  We raced and rushed the entire week just trying to get Maxim's new passport from the Ukranian government.  In addition to those lovely "expediting" fees, there was a bottle of brandy exchanged.  Why, we don't know.  Just while on an extremely tight time crunch and on our way supposedly to meet up with the man who was hand carrying Maxim's passport, suddenly the taxi pulled over.  Out hopped Alla saying something about she didn't know why but the guy had told her to bring a bottle of brandy.   So she returns with the brandy and we race on to the metro stop where she's been told to meet the man who was meeting the man with the passport.  We get there and surprisingly easily find the man.  Alla and he disappear for a few minutes and she returns to the car.  Then we head exactly back to where we had been before the "brandy" call came in.  The man we met there had to himself carry back the passport to his office and put an official stamp on it.  Finally, it was done.  I signed a piece of paper on the trunk of the taxi and we raced off again.  We were trying to get to the Embassy where John was waiting before they closed.  We barely got there before the Embassy closed, too late to get Maxim's visa printed that day (a bottle of brandy cost us dearly!), but they did agree to go ahead and do our interview.  They also promised to have the visa printed first thing the next day (Thursday) by around 9 a.m.  The plane was to take off at 11:10 so it was cutting it very close for us, but we decided surely luck must somehow be with us since it hadn't been for so very long so we packed all our belongings Thursday night.  We put everything into a minivan taxi Friday morning and rushed to the Embassy.  After sweating it out for thirty minutes I was finally handed Maxim's visa!!!  Yes!! That meant we could now leave the country.  IF IF IF we could just get to the airport and all checked in before the flight departed at 11:10 a.m.  It was a race to the finish line, literally, a race.  We were all three huffing and puffing by the time we finished getting our luggage checked, paying for the change of the flight, going through security checkpoint after checkpoint, getting the adoption documents scrutinized very carefully, and the best part of all, having John almost not be allowed to cross out of their border.  Yes, remember the lost passport incident a couple days after we arrived in Kiev?  Well, it came back to haunt John.   Turns out if you don't have the official stamp in your passport showing you entered the country, they are not going to let you leave the country!  Luckily, John had found the lost passport and was able to prove that he had entered legally into Ukraine.  So, finally, we were on board the plane.  We heard the safety spiel they always give.  We taxied down the runway, well, for a little while, and then the plane stopped.  We passengers all assumed we were just waiting for final clearance for take off, but after about fifteen minutes, the pilot came on and told us we were having trouble getting the right engine to start and that maintenance was coming out to check on it.  After a long wait with no definite decision made and all of us hoping that the plane could be easily fixed and would still fly, we were disappointed to learn that the plane would not fly that day.

There are many other details of the past week, but the fatigue has taken over again.  Our bodies went through so much our entire trip, especially that last week.  On top of that both John and I were sick the past two weeks.  I came home with an ear infection so the ascent and descent of the plane was painful.  The six hour time difference is not an easy thing to adjust to now that we're back home.  What I am trying to say is that hopefully there will be time and energy to blog more in a day or two, but this entry must be short.  I did want to let everyone know, though, that we're home so wrote even though the story must end abruptly for now.

Oh, don't mean to stop without saying that Maxim is doing great!

Charlene