September 25, 2002

We asked Inna to pick us up around 9:45am so that we could be at the orphanage to visit with Evan around 10am. When she arrived, Inna told us that we would need to go to the orphanage and pick up Evan so that we could get his passport photo taken. We couldn't quite believe what we were hearing: we were going to take Evan out of the orphanage? Of course! The orphanage staff knows Inna very well, and knows that she'll bring him back. Well, ok then!

We picked up Evan (in his very cute "outdoors" hat) and loaded ourselves back on the van and drove downtown. Evan was fascinated by the ride, keeping quiet and watching everything very observantly. He sat on Lee's lap the whole way--unconcerned, but very interested in everything. He really seemed to enjoy what must have been his first ride outside the orphanage in at least a year.

When we arrived at the photo shop, Inna quickly carried him off into the shop, while Lee and Kristin waited in the van, watching flashes coming out of the store through the glass door. Inna and Evan returned, and we all got back in and drove back to the orphanage. We had just enough time for a brief visit in the visiting room, some cookies and juice, and stacking cups. We were joined for a while by a little girl and her prospective parents (from Barcelona, Spain). Her name was Monica, and now that we'd seen her and soon-to-be mom and dad a few times, Kristin gave them her business card and they gave us their address in Barcelona. We took some pictures of Evan and Monica playing together, and told them we'd send them a copy. (Inna was impressed that we could communicate with them without sharing a common language. Then again, she'd been impressed the previous day when we bought a pad of sticky notes and a notebook by ourselves without her help. Despite knowing that we've traveled to all sorts of places on our own, she still seemed surprised that we could do things by ourselves.) Monica's mom told us that they were returning to Kiev this afternoon. (Dad was already out running down paperwork.) We congratulated her and Monica, and said goodbye to them.

After returning Evan to his group, we drove downtown to the Internet cafe and checked our email. There wasn't much there, since we'd just checked it the previous evening. We returned to the apartment, stopping by a flower stand on the way back for some flowers for Galena, which she greatly enjoyed. We had a very nice lunch, took in a bit more of the Donetsk experience (the water had been shut off in the apartment for the afternoon), and rested.

Inna picked us up around 3:45pm, and we returned to the orphanage. On the way there, she explained that we had good news: everything seemed to be going well enough that we could expect to have our court date on Friday and fly back to Kiev Friday evening! We needed to go to the travel agency to buy tickets for the flight that afternoon. By the time we got to the orphanage, we had realized that we would need to have enough Ukrainian currency (grivna) to buy the tickets, that we didn't have that much cash on us right now, and that the currency exchange would close at 5pm. Kristin and Lee were concerned that we'd have to cut our visit so short, but Inna happily proposed that we simply take Evan with us! The orphanage trusts her, after all, so why not?

We bundled Evan in the car again, and off we went! We first visited a currency exchange, where Lee exchanged some of his U.S. cash for grivna. Then, we drove to the travel agency. Evan and Kristin sat in the lobby while Inna and Lee made the ticket purchase. The plane tickets were the equivalent of about $40 U.S. each (one each for Kristin, Lee, and Inna), and Evan's was about $2 U.S.. (Wow! Gotta love those special kid rates!) All in all, it was about twice as much as the train tickets would have been. But comparing a 13 hour train trip to a 75 minute plane trip made the choice seem pretty obvious. Lee was particularly satisfied when he saw Inna writing out Evan's "new" name on the paper for the travel agent: Evan Dimitriy Liming. It was perhaps the first time that name had been used for an "official" purpose, and it felt good.

While we were running errands, we passed by a night club we'd seen on previous trips downtown and advertized on billboards throughout the city. It was the Chicago night club, sporting colorful signs and a large hand-painted billboard for Tom Cruise's latest movie: Minority Report. We enjoyed seeing his name written in Ukrainian cyrillic characters: TOM KPy3.

We returned to the orphanage. Kristin and Lee and Evan went for a walk around the outside of the orphanage, while Inna returned downtown to continue working with the inspector on our case. Evan was fascinated by the pools of water on the ground made by the early morning rain. When Lee showed him his reflection in the water, it was hard to get him to turn away from it. We walked back and forth along the C-shaped path around the building, looking at flowers, stray cats and kittens, chestnuts, leaves and branches. We spend some time sitting on a bench just outside the door into Evan's group's rooms (they have both indoor and outdoor entrances) watching the children in the daycare next door playing on their playground. Lee made Evan laugh and laugh when he took the foam rubber shape that Evan had been holding in Lee's face into his mouth and shook it around, making a growling noise. Pretty soon, Evan was shoving the shape into his mouth encouraging him to do it again (and again, and again...)

We went inside to the visiting room upstairs, where Evan had a new treat waiting for him: bread with butter! He didn't know what to make of the oily, slippery stuff on one side of the bread. After licking it once or twice, he got the idea and started eating the bread. He wasn't as thrilled with it as we'd expected, but he ate it all up, and we were satisfied knowing that he would have that much more meat on his tiny bones when we started our trip back to the U.S..

We went straight back to the apartment after returning Evan, and had a nice dinner and restful evening working on logic puzzles (from our travel supplies) and watching another episode of Buffy. As we got ready for bed, we were still marveling over the idea that in less than 48 hours, Evan would be our very own son!