Feeling brave

Pictures: First three taken near McDonalds; 4th from top of the funicular

Thanks again for all the comments. It helps so much to hear from our kids and friends. Billy, Scheri, Teresa and James: You are often in our thoughts and prayers; we regularly do the math to try to figure out what you are doing at a particular time--like now you have just recently finished lunch and are back in school for the afternoon. Lord, please be with my kids today. Give them incredible peace and security and a sense of your very real presence with them constantly. Thanks to ALL who are helping care for our children--babysitting, laundry, morning routine, basketball games, meals, hugs, kisses and prayers.

We didn't have a set schedule today so definitely stayed up late and slept in. Last night Meredith and her husband showed us how to use the underground Metro system so we got up our courage and tried it ourselves. It turned out to be quite easy and very cheap--the equivalent of 10 cents one way. The trickiest part is figuring out at which stop to get off--I'm slowly catching on to the pronunciation of some of the letters but today I was mostly relying on how the word looked so I could recognize it at the proper station. Of course, we also counted how many stops were between us and our destination, too. When we got to our stop we found a McDonalds and had Big Macs, fries and soda--I wish I could figure out how to enable the cyrillic alphabet on this keyboard because I'd like you to see what the word Big Mac looks like even though it's pronounced pretty much the same. The 'B' looks like a lower case b with a tail, the 'g' is like an upside down capital L. 'Mac' is just Mak but pronounced something like mock. How is it that Burger Kings and McDonalds look so comforting when in a foreign country? [On the subject of how words look, the town where Caleb lives is called Vorzel and is spelled BOP3e(then a letter that looks kind of like a cursive r)and a tiny b]

We met up with Meredith and Mike and had fun visiting many of the roadside stands along the cobblestoned street up towards the SDA building and saw lots of pretty souvenirs. (For those not familiar with Ukraine adoptions, the SDA is the government agency that gives the official referral of a particular child. I think the SDA is actually the ministry that oversees adoptions on the national level. Someone who knows more can certainly correct me if I'm wrong on that.) We rode down the hill on this tram thing that again only cost 10 cents and saved A LOT of steps. We ended up at one of Mike and Meredith's haunts-a pizza place with English menus. I enjoyed the stuffed raviolis in creamy cheese sauce and Kevin tried the 4-cheese pizza with tomatoes cooked under the sauce.

Then we bravely got back on the Metro and made it back home without even getting lost. For those who don't know me personally, I am from a town with population 970 so the closest thing we have to a subway is the crawl space under our house or the mole holes out in the back yard. The last time I remember riding a subway was in Washington, D.C. the summer after I graduated high school and since I am an elderly member of RR that was right about the time of Adam and Eve.

We are scheduled to visit Caleb again tomorrow morning. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to measure him so I can buy this pumpkinseed some clothes. I think the little hiker boots we have at home may fit him about right. We'll see.

To all those hinting ever so politely for pictures of one certain young man, I am taking them but as always I don't know how to get them on the computer. (But Meredith saw them and can verify that he does exist) I got a thingamajig for Christmas that's supposed to solve this little dilemna but of course forgot to drop it into the suitcase.