We meet Alina tomorrow!

What a great day. After waking up we had breakfast at the Potato House. It's your basic in-and-out restaurant. Not McDonald's and nothing fancy. More like a diner. We had sweet pancakes, which are more like crepes and were very good.

Around noon we met Roman, the director of a nearby orphanage that our friend Dana helped establish. We gave Roman some of the blankets and stuffed animals that the grade school and junior high students donated. He was humbled and very thankful.

At 2:00 we met our friends the Dickensons and Powells at the SDA for their referal appointments. We have developed a very personal, extended family-type connection with them and wanted to be there to support them and celebrate with them. We couldn't help but visit St. Andrew's Cathedral again.

We showed the families the way down to Independence Square. We had a Coke at McDonald's before heading back to the SDA for the 5:00pm pick-up of our paperwork. Once that was in hand we could go to the orphanage.

We leave at 4:00am for the eight hour drive to Izmayl. We'll meet Alina tomorrow afternoon. What will she be like? What is her personality? How will she react to us?

Below are more pictures. I tried to put captions in last night and failed miserably. So, I'll just put the pictures in and will try to say what they are at the end.










Our extended family: The Dickensons and the Powells.
Anne and I in front of the door that all adoptive parents go through at the SDA.
Foreign Affairs building.
Statue of Olga. More on that later if I get a chance.
Another amazing cathedral.
A group of street dancers (I thought of the great 80' movie "Breakin" when we were watching them).
Three boys on their way home from school. We had a great conversation with the one on the right. He spoke excellent english and was happy to practice with us.
Down, down, down, down to the subway. Actually, this was one of two escalators we had to take to get down there.
A replical of one of four "Golden Gates" from Kiev's past.