Cutting it Close

Whewwwwwwwwh!  I can't tell you how glad I was to get off the final marshrutka. I was wrong.  The train ride was 14 hours each way--except something was wrong with the track on the way back so we had to wait for two additional hours while it was fixed.


That said, it was a beautiful ride.  Tons of forests and lakes and bright yellow flower fields.  I loved seeing wagons full of people being pulled by horses, and large white crane-type birds which make 5' wide nests balancing on the tops of telephone poles.  My favorite was a little babushka walking along the road behind a giant turkey and cow.  I sometimes feel I've warped back in time a few hundred years.


I even got to see Alex and his sister, Nastia while our train stopped in Dzhankoi for a few minutes.  Alex tried to get a train ticket to come with me, but wasn't able to because of the all the holiday travelers.  Hopefully tomorrow he'll get back to us.  I was dreading seeing him.  He was planning to stay for 2 days, but ended up staying for two weeks---in the same underwear and socks and outfit --- and no toothbrush.  Well, he was wearing new clothes and even had clean hair.  He and his sister looked so much better than I did after 44 hours in trains and buses---but I had clean underwear and a toothbrush.


We planned every detail of this trip down to the last minute allowing 4 hours to pick up the new birth certificate.  Only one problem---the head lady left town with the official stamp our birth certificate required.  She was picking up some kind of computer code in another town.  We offered to meet her there and drive her back to Ichnya in our taxi so she wouldn't have to wait 4 hours until the next bus.  With a little additional incentive she agreed, but this was off our course and meant we only had 2 hours to get the new birth certificate prepared.  She had never done the new computer system of registering a child and couldn't get the system to accept our information.  We finally left 20 minutes behind schedule without the new registration document.  Hopefully they'll solve what was wrong and fax it to us by Tuesday, the only day that passport applications are accepted in Simferopol.  Not sure if faxed documents are even allowed or if she'll be able to figure out what's wrong. 


Anyway we high-tailed it in our taxi out of Ichnya back to Kiev knowing that our train would leave in 2 hours at 8:20 pm.  I kept watching the distance signs and tracking our progress.  There was just no way we could be there by 8:20.  Vera called her daughter who lives in Kiev and asked her to get our bags out of the locker and put them on our train.  The driver said if he took us to the metro station 10 stops from the Voksal it would be faster than battling car traffic in the city.  We had 15 minutes to board the metro, ride 10 stops, run up the longest escalator in the world and then find our track and board car #14.  Oh, and Oleg needed to meet us at the metro to get the new birth certificate.  There was no way it was possible, but Vera kept saying "Just pray, Christie, just pray.  I never give up 'til the last second."  


I thought my walking and volleyball would have prepared me better, but I nearly had a heart attack shoving people aside and flying up those nightmare escalator steps.  I had to pause two thirds of the way up, but managed to quickly recover for my OJ Simpson sprint down the hall and up the stairs over the tracks to our train.  She was closing the door, but we jumped onto the last car any way and worked our way inside to car #14.  My chest and throat were pounding for 30 minutes, but we made it.  It wasn't possible, but we did it.  It's those small moments that confirm in a big way we're not doing this by ourselves.


If we hadn't made it, I have no idea where my backpack with laptop inside would have traveled off to.  The Lord was definitely with us.


Today was spectacularly beautiful and perfect.  There was even a jet ski having fun out in the sea.  Malvina and Kristina walked to my apartment.  They had only one hour before chores at the orphanage, so we just went to lunch.  The chemistry began changing today.  I had a new mindset to just love Malvina with all my heart no matter how she responded.  I stopped worrying if I should be more or less physically affectionate and just had fun.  I even got Malvina laughing---not because I said something funny and clever---because I said it funny.  She actually couldn't stop laughing, so apparently my Russian pronunciation isn't improving any more than my fitness.  

View of Kiev train station from Celentano's

View of Kiev from Celentano's

Yellow flower field

Crazy bird nest

Alex and Nastia