Park Hotel Ivano-Frankivsk

... signed some more papers and looked through their photo albums to try and find a baby picture of Talia. Unfortunately they didn't have one. We did get her vaccination records and her medical records. The director walked us to her room, shook our hands and then he was off! I went with one of the caretakers into another room and got Talia changed. She was so excited for her new outfit and especially her shoes! We gave the caretakers the ...

... Monday morning we will all stay at Pasha and Roselana's house. Talia will sleep in bed with me and Scott will be on the pull out bed in the adjoining room. Monday morning we travel to obtain Talia's passport. Hopefully they will have "the old" passports there still and we will be able to get the passport done in one day. If they have "the new" passports it could be anywhere from 5-7 days for us to get it done! Once we get the ...

... ran off to play with her group.<br><br>We haven't heard anything new about the H1N1 issues here in Ukraine. We should be fine to travel out of Svalyava on the train to Kiev. We haven't heard anything either about flight problems so we should be able to fly out next week unless something changes. <br><br>I'm so excited that we are almost done with visiting the orphanage! I need to pick out Talia's outfit for when she leaves! Scott and I are ready ...

... us to eat more of something, which is something like "a little more." Zhenia (their son, not our coordinator) was with us for dinner this time and smirked and said "choot choot?" and then said something I loosely translate as "fatso here already's eaten the entire pot," again, loosely translated. I don't care. Roslana makes the best borscht in Ukraine! After our meal, we played some rummy and went to bed, happy and with bellies full of borscht.<br><br ...

... s my mommy!" Haha. So she came out to us fine after potty time was over and we got her coat and hat on so that we could wander. We first went to look for the cats and that entertained her, but then for some reason she wanted to turn around and go back down the hall towards her room. We got outside the door to her room and then convinced her to go up the stairs with us. When we got to the top of the stairs she started to throw a tantrum ...

... reason they had moved Talia and her group to a completely different room on the opposite side of the orphanage! Thank goodness she saw us or who knows what we would have done when we got up to her room and there were 10 different kids there! So we followed and Talia saw us and came out to us, but from the start seemed kind of cranky. She didnt want to wear her hat they put on her - and of course the caretaker insisted she ...

... Roselana liked it, but Pasha just sort of grunted. Haha.<br><br>After dinner we played some more uno. I tried to get the regular cards out to teach them how to play "spoons", but they weren't having it! I had some more popcorn and this time I melted butter (mass-lo) over it so it was even better! Roselana (the daughter) got out a map and we showed her where Ohio was on the map. The family also told us that their region (or county comparatively) was ...

... I lamented the shortage of blue background eggs, before we headed for the bus station and out of town. I'll never know how it happened, but we were sold tickets for the 11:05 bus to Chernivtsi but told our bus was at 13:10. Understandably, we missed the 11:05 bus, but thanks to a wonderfully helpful lady who went about yelling at at least seven people in three locations for us, we were able to use our tickets on the 12:00 bus. Bureaucracy lives on Ukraine! In Chernivtsi, three more helpful ...

... up being very tasty! Sunday we did a bit more hiking and then made our way back to Ivano-Frankivsk again through Vorohta where we were welcomed with an amazing amount of people celebrating the fact that they had just voted. Whole families were sitting around drinking expensive wine and congratulating each other on a win for Yushchenko (the opposition candidate). As of yesterday however, there will be run-off elections on November 21st, no one candidate got a 50% majority of the vote ...

... because he was going to go and check on the accomodations. By this point Regine and I were ready to rinse off, as that air conditioning that seemed to be working when we initially got on the bus shortly turned off, and none of the windows could be opened, we were slightly sticky after 10 hours on the bus that should have taken no more than 4 hours (it's only 220 miles away). At any rate, Serhiy, our driver came back and informed us that for only 10 hrivna more we'd have rooms that ...