Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Calling Anya

We had a translator call with us today. The cell phone we were calling was for a friend but it sounds as if she has moved to a trade school. The school did answer and we got her on the phone.

She is such a sweetheart... She said she was crying today missing us so I'm really glad we called and got through. I think she is feeling really vulnerable and we will try to call every day even if it is without a translator just to tell her we love her.

As usual she had a ton of questions...
- when are you landing in Kyiv
- can my really great teacher who knows English come to lunch with us sometimes
- is daddy coming? Ashley? Amanda?
- do we have to stay at school all the time
- where is my phone that the facilitator promised to get me
- can I have Snezhana's phone number... Which btw we declined as Snezhana seems to be back into the old uncertain, fearful state and we dont want any of that rubbing off on Anya
...

We have arranged to call with a translator the morning before we fly out.

She did say she still hadn't gotten her luggage back from hosting... Which is disappointing and hopefully it will turn up. We had told her to leave anything here she really wanted to keep but she was so fearful we wouldn't come for her at the end that she packed pretty much everything up.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Who?

Going to give this a try... Blogging from the iPad. Since I haven't posted pictures for this blog I figured I would.


This is Dennis' sister Снежана... Most of you know this from our other blog. We will see how mixing Cyrillic into our posts does.


This is Аня... From what I can tell there are multiple ways to spell her name in Cyrillic but this is the one that transliterates correctly to how she likes it pronounced.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Finally the phone answers

We finally got ahold of the girls today.

First A, she and her friend V were ecstatic to hear from us. Even more so when we were able to say when our app't was. V speaks a little English and tried to act as an interpreter. We got I love yous in and A kept reminding us she doesn't speak English... Which we found humorous. We told them we would try to get a translator and call back.

A friend's son... Latvian who speaks Russian and English too... Was volunteered by his mom to come to the rescue. I think she may have enjoyed pulling him out of bed too much. This time A was more distracted by whatever was going on around her. Not so distracted as to keep her from flirting with the 13yr old translator. Man are we going to have to watch out for her. It was all good... Everything really got silly at the end with V and A laughing telling everyone on the phone they loved them. These girls are great fun.

I had to go work at a customer site today so I missed the call with S... So this is all second hand from Melissa. She finally answered but it was only for 4 minutes. They got disconnected a couple of times... I wonder if the cell coverage at the camp is poor. S was noticeably agitated about something and was with boyfriend who kept talking in the background. Who knows what she was agitated at.

S asked Dennis if he wanted her to come... Which of course he said yes. We all want her to come. Actually this is part of my concern... I totally get her telling the relatives and everyone she is going cause her brother desperately wants her to come. Shoot I'd do the same thing cause it is an easy yet powerful way to justify the decision. BUT she needs to actually want to come to be part of our family as a key reason... Ignoring D and not just because of college. Otherwise in 3mo she will be having a tough time, will resent D and us, and it will be much harder in everyone than it needs to be. This will be a discussion we have next month with her.

That was basically the end of the conv. S asked D if he wanted to talk to boyfriend to which he said yes... And the phone disconnected. Calling back just gave a busy response.

We have less than 3wks until we leave... Woohoo.. Please be praying for us.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

We have a date

We got our SDA date of Sept 12th today. We are excited and like before we'll leave just a bit earlier than we have to to allow us to adjust and deal with flight delays. Our oldest is coming with us and she is crazy giddy about it. I think her only disappointment is she has to go to 1.5 weeks of school before we leave.

Dennis is really happy to be going to spend time with grandma and grandpa. Sam is far more mellow but prays the girls will come home to us every time he gets the chance... He's also happy about the trip to CA because that is when his DSi restriction ends. He tries to convince me he gets sick to his stomach when he can't play electronic games :)

Melissa talked to the school principals today and I was happy they both seemed to be ok with the kids being out for what could be 4 weeks.

Melissa found a kennel that will take both dogs and they get to run in a fenced yard all day. They may not want to come home. It will still be one of the expensive aspects of the trip but she did give us a discount and she is one of those crazy dog people... So they will be well taken care of.

Now to go see what the weather is supposed to be like in sept and oct in Ukraine.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

[im]patiently waiting

Still waiting... Hopefully we'll get dates early this week.

Until then we've sent packages and are working on opening up two way communications. With S we will just wait to know if she will hold to her decision... With gma, boyfriend, and all the familiar surroundings to try to persuade her back. With A we just want to make sure she is reminded to have confidence we are coming as fast as possible.

I think we are going to try to send A a bouquet... Some others did that for another girl at her school and she got it. I had considered doing the same for my wife for gotcha day with Dennis but wasn't sure where to send them... Turns out these guys as persistent so I figure it is worth it.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Pacing

Not like pacing yourself but pacing back and forth. I admit I'm anxious to get our travel dates this week and kick off the crazy series of activities that have to happen. I'm excited that our oldest is going to come with us... We have a blast doing things.

Right now I will just be content waiting... And trying my first blog post from my iPad... Which we got specifically for this trip to give my daughter something to keep her occupied for the long waits. I'm going to ask her to keep a diary on it of her experiences... Maybe we can swing some school credit since she's going to miss a good bit of it.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Hosting over

The girls headed home yesterday... there weren't many dry eyes in the family.  Poor girls ended up on the runway for 4hrs at IAD before starting the 8.5hr flight.  Hopefully they made their connecting flight in Germany... instead of 5hrs to make the change they had less than 1hr.

We expect to hear our SDA date any day now.