Second Trip.....

After another loooonnnnggggg trip! Lori, Russ and I made it back to Krivoy Rog in one piece.  We origionally were flying from Kiev to State College, but since we had an earlier court date, we decided to fly home earlier.  We found cheap flights to JFK.  Since each flight was going to cost us $1,600 a piece to change, we ended up buying round tickets from Kiev. We planned our return flight to bring us back for our seconde trip so Saturday's flight was our return flight.  I know, it's confusing. Dusty was the only one to not use the return flight.  He must have made an impression here because everyone keeps asking where he is!

The drive to JFK was a little crazy.  Now I know why the flights were less expensive because it took forever to get through traffic to get there and we kept getting lost as the TomTom would lose connection.  Luckily we left early so we made it in plenty of time.  JFK was very easily layed out so it was pretty easy to get our flight.  You just have to deal with the hassle of driving through the city. We opted to find a parking lot about a mile away that shuttled us to the airport. Reserving it beforehand was a good idea as it was really quick and easy.

When we landed, we were greated by our Ukraine adoption facilitator who explained to us that we were going to take a van ride back to Krivoy Rog.  Wewere under the impression that we would take the less expensive route by overnight train.  I was really looking forward to being able to stretch out my legs and maybe get some decent sleep, but that thought ended quickly. We traveled by van the previous weekend and did not have a good trip at all.  The trip is about 5 1/2 hours when the roads are dry.  When we landed yesterday, the roads were snow covered.  I don't like driving 20 minutes in snow covered roads, let alone hours after already traveling for about 16 hours! The roads here are in not good condition.  You've got potholes the size of a car and the driver has to swerve to miss the potholes.  Makes for a very uncomfortable drive.  Not to mention the cost is a lot more expensive! The drive ended up being over 7 hours long!  With having only one pit stop, my bladder was screaming from having to go to the bathroom and hitting all the bumps. There are a lot of gas stations a long the way, but they must close early on Sundays because nothing was open. I really didn't want to try and explain to our non-English speaking driver that he could pull over and I would just use the restroom along the side of the road like I did in my cycling days. I could just see the headlines now "American killed by getting hit by car because she had to take a bathroom break". That wouldn't be good. I can see Dusty shaking his head right now:)

Today is going to be pretty similar to our first trip as we will visit the children after school.  I am hoping that Syvette is not too overwhelmed having four families here at one time! She is busy with another family from our area.  They just arrived this morning to Krivoy Rog and meeting the future daughter today.  I remember that day with Dima like it was yesterday! Thinking back, it's been about 3 weeks ago already! Dusty and I missed Dima while we were gone.  I feel bad that Dusty is not with me to see Dima again, but before we know it, we will all be home together as a family!

P.S. I apologize ahead of time as I may have incorrect spellings. I think I need to change it to check for English not Russian as it says every word is misspelled.