Passport Received!

We went to the passport office with our Simferopol helper, Dmitry this morning and after a short wait we received Liam's new passport. The lady at the passport office has a reputation as a meanie. She has given others serious problems in the past. So you have to treat her like the Soup Nazi....try not to make eye contact, don't ask any questions, sign your name and move on quickly before she changes her mind. Our friend Ed got into an argument with her the other day and she said to him, "All you Americans do is take our children away and send them back when your tired of them." (A reference to that woman who sent her adopted children back to Russia on a plane.) Later he tried to appease her with a "gift." He was just ahead of us in line this morning and everything seemed to go well for him, thankfully.

So now we are sitting in our apartment watching Daffy Duck dubbed in Russian and waiting till it's time to go to the train station. We will leave at about 3pm get a bite to eat, meet Ed, Dina and their kids, Aidan and Colin who will all be on the same train with us then it's off to Kiev. Our appointment at the U.S. Embassy is tomorrow morning. We hear they are very pleasant and helpful there.

Photo: Artwork that Liam did on the computer last night.

In Kiev we will stay at a hospitality house run by a Christian woman who runs it as a ministry to adopting families in Ukraine. She offers a place to stay free of charge which is great.