Saturday, Robert and I enjoyed our time to relax today and take it easy. We knew it was going to be a hot day today we stayed inside for a majority of the day. We exercised to our Tae Bo Billy Blanks Ab Bootcamp dvd and caught up on some emails, caught up on our paperwork and watched some movies. Around 4:30pm Dima came over to take us out on the town. He took us to a wax museum where they had some Russian Olympic figures, Russian actors, poets, Russian Presidents such as Lennon, Breshnif, Stalin and Arnold Swartzineger & Britney Spears. Dima then took us up one of the 7 hills in Kiev to the Russian Parliament building where all of the diplomats and political figures meet. We then climbed another hill to walk through Maritzzio Park that over looks the Dnipro River and Kiev. He then led us through the park where the first Prime Minister built a magnificent home where other countries presidents and diplomats stay while they are in town. Behind the gates of the Prime Minister home and building were approximately 15 tents that were set up close to each other with protest signs. Dima said that these people are still protesting the Orange Revolution that went on last winter. This is just a very small percentage of the people that were camped out protesting for 3 months last year when the elections were going on last fall. We then continued through the park and saw a lot of monuments of Russian composers, politicians and historians. We walked a little further and came to a free outdoor classical arena where people were playing their instruments. The arena was packed with an interested audience. We stayed and listened for a while as we overlooked the city and watched the roller bladers weave in and out of their cones on their toes. This city has some huge parks. If you are planning on coming to Kiev to adopt or visit, you must walk through some of these parks. A little further down in the park was a huge playground and a couple of ponies for the kids to take a ride on. Seems to be a common thing here in the city for people who can afford it. Robert didn’t want to pay for me to ride on the pony so I wasn’t a happy camper. =) I could see that he wanted to ride the monster toy trucks by the way he was watching the little kids drive them around. I said, “No not today…maybe next time”. =) By that time we were tired, our feet hurt and were dripping with sweat. Dima hailed the taxi bus and we went home. It was an exhausting day between exercising in the morning and climbing the hills in Kiev and all the walking we did. By the time we got back to the apartment Robert’s Mom & Dad called and chatted with us for a while. I was too tired to blog last night, so we just relaxed when we got home.
Sunday: In the afternoon we went out on the town ourselves. We took a taxi bus to one of the malls and did a little shopping in the wonderfully air conditioned mall. Of course we took our time to enjoy much of the cool temperatures as possible, have lunch and nosing in and out of the shops. When we were in the center of the mall in one of the shops a funny thing happened. All of a sudden out in the center of the mall this loud up beat music started blasting and disco lights were flashing to get everyone’s attention to come out of the stores and into the center of the mall. When we walked out of the shop to the center of the mall we saw this red carpet go up this ramp and around the corner along with this red velvet rope that bordered the red carpet. Well they started announcing something in Russian over the loud speaker like they were introducing the President of Ukraine or something. Then when we heard female names being announced Robert turned to me and said that he thought that it was going to be a fashion show with models walking down the red carpet. Well wouldn’t you know it that there were these 5 ducks…yes I said DUCKS that were running down the red carpet, flapping their wings like they were waving hi to us and running into the fountain (where the carpet led to). They were so FUNNY!! They were playing around in the water climbing on top of each other, flapping their wings real hard to get everyone wet and then got up out of the fountain and ran down the carpet the opposite direction and waved goodbye with their wings as they squaked Dasfidanya…or goodbye!!! One of the most hilarious things we have seen yet. Robert just shook his head in disbelief. Well that was our exciting day out on the town in Kiev today. We hope you had a good laugh about it as well.
Tomorrow will be our second appointment at the NAC. We are anxious to move forward with our adoption of our child, so please pray and be in agreement with us to have favor in finding our forever child. Once we select our child we will travel to the region where the child is located. Depending on the region and how remote or not it is will depend on if we will be blogging regularly or not. We will do what we can to keep you all informed as much as possible. So if you don’t hear anything from us in the next few days, don’t be alarmed. I will get a message to my mom if necessary to update our blog as soon as possible. As you know there are regions in Ukraine (like we have experienced last week) that their phone lines are not working or up to speed. So we’ll see where and if we are able to keep in contact with everyone. We love you and thank you all in advance for the agreement of our forever child.
No comments:
Post a Comment