Choo Choo and Chernivtsy

Tuesday was train day. We slept in late, went to a great pizza place Lynne recomended and looked around at the local malls. Then back to the apartment for one last look around and to grab our suitcases. Andre the driver is amazing, again managed to fit all 18 of our bags into 2 cars. Richard and I walked to the SDA aroung 4:15 while the luggage was still being loaded to make sure we were first in line to get our referal. We were first however once the mass frenzy started to pick up documents we were actually second to pick up our documents. At 5:05 we were ready to leave to go to the train station. We actually got their with time to spare, which was greatly appreciated since we needed to take all 18 bags up the escalator and then down again and then down the length of the train to the last car were we loaded them into our 2 compartments. There we met with our facilitator Reisa. We split the compartments boys in one girls in the other and settled in for our 15 hour train ride.

Once the train got rolling we walked the 6 cars down to the dinning car for bread, juice, water and chips. Then visited the dreaded "train toilet" It was not as bad as I expected but neither was it pleasent. Of all the nights, this was the night I needed to use the "facilities" 5 times. It was difficult for me to sleep but the boys and Richard slept fine.

We then met up with our new friends and host at the rail station in Chernivsty. We dropped off paperwork on the way to our apartment, reviewed our itinerary with Reisa and then had free time till 1:30. Our host made us a wonderful lunch, the best we have had since arriving in Ukraine and then left us to settle.

At 1:30 Vasily the english speaking cab driver came to take us to children's services, he requested a larger van to come but after 20 minutes of waiting we opted to squeeze all of us into his 5 seat cab.

The Chief we were to meet with was at another meeting so we had to reschedual it for today at 12:00. When we came out of the childrens services office we saw Vasily standing at the back of the cab with an axe. Our new name for him is Vasily the axe wielding cab driver.

We were then able to head over to the Internate for our first appointment to pave the way to visit the boys at will.

The boys were outside waiting for us when we arrived, Alex lead the way to the directors office were we took up the entire office. The first words out of the childrens officer was "Wow" upon seeing our competed clan.

We then reviewed the boys medical history with the doctor and the meeting was complete. We had to leave with Reisa to go to a notary and then the railstation to overnight documents to Konstantine in Kiev. We left the kids with the boys at the Internate. Alex, Joseph and Kevin took the kids all over the place. When we returned a couple hours later we brought pizza and juice.

Kevin told his bible teacher that he wanted to have his birthday party now because he was going to live in America in April ( note: his birthday is in August), he wanted to make sure that he didn't miss celebrating his birthday with his class. We arrived with the Pizza just in time for the party. We brought plenty and after we were all feed and the bible class had eaten Alex and Joseph took left over Pizza to their friends.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home, this one was much bigger then the one we used in Kiev. We picked up a few groceries and then back to our apartment were we did laundry and called it a night.