Four Months!

Sorry we have been so silent. The pace of life has picked up since getting home four months ago. It is amazing that one rather small teenager can turn our lives upside down!

We went to Ohio for Thanksgiving. He was able to meet extended family for the first time. Oleg had so much fun with his cousins! We had turkey with all the trimmings for Thanksgiving. We had explained what Thanksgiving was all about and he seemed to understand. The day after Thanksgiving Oleg was jumping on a trampoline and came down on his ankle wrong. After a trip to the ER we found out he had a bad sprain. He now has a boot on.

It is interesting what stands out to Oleg. Someone asked him if he had turkey for Thanksgiving. He said no. He said we had pizza. We did go out for pizza one night. He had forgotten about the big feast with 20 people! Go figure.

The sprained ankle has cramped his style. He hasn't been able to go to the skate park. That is his favorite thing to do. It will be amazing if he wears his boot as long as the doctor said to.

Christmas is coming! Oleg has been telling us what he wants almost every day. He wants a new scooter to use at the skate park. He wants to look with us online to find just the right one. He is very persistent! He wishes there would be snow for Christmas. I will be happy if the temp is below 80 for Christmas!

School is going well, thought he doesn't like it much. His English is improving all the time. Last night we had a pretty good conversation about the Lord and life in English, with a little help from a translation app. God is working!

All three of us have experienced frustration as we go through the adjustments. The language barrier is the hardest part. We also have to get used to being parents for the first time. We are trying to figure out what things don't really matter and what definitely needs to be addressed. We are all learning.

2 1/2 Months!

We have been home 2 1/2 months already! Time is flying by. Oleg is doing well at school. He will even come home and do homework without too much of a fight. His language arts and ESOL teacher has him excited about earning points by answering questions in English. He copies and pastes them into Google translate, answers them, and has it translated. In the process he is picking up more English. He has been making friends with good kids. That is a real answer to prayer.

Oleg is going to church with us. On Wednesdays there is a Jr. High service. He has been going with a friend from school. He doesn't understand much of it but enjoys playing basketball afterwards. We go to the Saturday night service at church and Oleg goes with us but doesn't really know what is going on. We all go to dinner with a group of friends after church. He is not shy. One time he was entertaining the whole group.

While there is a break from soccer, Oleg has been enjoying the skate parks in the area. He soars over the ramps and curves. It is fun to watch him. He is getting really good!

This has been an adjustment for Oleg and for us. To go from being a childless couple that got married later in life to now having a 14 year old son that doesn't speak much English has been a real roller coaster. We are getting on the job training in parenthood. God is faithful. We know that He is working and that the outcome will be good for Oleg and for us.

6 Weeks Update

It is so hard to believe that we have been home 6 weeks already!  The time is flying by!  Oleg is keeping us very busy.  We have two soccer practices a week and one or two games on the weekend.  We have a break for 3 months from games now, but the practices continue.  Oleg love to go to Andretti Thrill Park and ride the go karts and playing in the arcade.  He also loves going to an indoor skate park.  He has been using his scooter there but wants to get a skate board soon.  He loves to be on the go!

School is going ok, though he says he doesn't like it.  He is picking up more and more English.  We can tell that he understands more and he is speaking more English.  We had one of Oleg's friends here for an overnight.  They had a couple hours at the skate park and then were home for the rest of the time.  I expected more noise but they were pretty quiet.  No complaints here!

Oleg is very talkative.  He is pretty quiet since he doesn't speak the language well yet.  When he gets home he likes to Skype with friends and relatives from Ukraine.  As soon as he gets on with friends he talks a mile a minute.  It is amazing how fast he can speak Russian.  I look forward to when he can speak English as fast, I think.

There are challenges as we all adjust.  Oleg gets frustrated sometimes when we don't understand him and when the app on our phones doesn't translate right.  Sometimes we tell him something and think he understands only to find out later that he didn't.  We can tell that he doesn't like rules.  He has been very independant up to now.  He is affectionate and happy, most of the time.  God is good and we know He is working and has great plans for us all.

Oleg has been here one month!

Sorry we haven't posted for such a long time.  We have gotten really busy!  Oleg is playing soccer. They practice twice a week and usually have one game on the weekend, sometimes two. Believe it or not, a 14 year old boy is not content to sit at home in the evenings after school.  Our quiet lives have changed so much!  Tonight when I got home from work Oleg asked what we were going to do tonight.  He and Darwin went over to the community center to play basketball while I did a little shopping.

Yesterday Oleg said that he wanted to go to a park to ride his scooter.  He said he wanted to find a beautiful park.  In my mind that meant a park we could ride bikes and he could ride his scooter. We got to the park and he said, "Mama, park?"  I could tell it was not what he wanted.  We found out through our translation apps that he wanted a park where he could jump with his scooter.  He wanted a skate park with ramps, etc.  We tried to find a skate park for him but nothing was open. We took him to Andretti Thrill Park.  He loves the go karts and the arcade.  I'm sure we will be there again.

Oleg seems to be learning English slowly but surely.  We had a conference with his teachers last Friday.  One of them said that she has heard Oleg talking to other students in English.  He doesn't talk to the teachers much in English but is comfortable enough with the students to speak English with them.  Each of his teachers is doing something to help him with English.  His science teacher has a  phonics program she is using with him.  His Language Arts teacher showed us the program she is using with him so we can do it at home too.  We can tell he is understanding more and more when we talk to him.  We still use the translation apps on our phones quite often though.

Oleg has interesting eating habits.  He doesn't really like to eat breakfast.  I am glad that he eats a little something before starting school.  At lunch he eats a lot!  He likes the food at the school cafeteria.  It is much better than the food he used to eat at the orphanage.  His teachers have commented that he eats well at school.  When he gets home he is starving!  He eats a snack and then sometimes isn't hungry for dinner.  He loves bananas and sometimes eats 4 or 5 per day.  We have some banana trees in our front yard.  He will enjoy the bananas when they ripen.

We will try to be better at posting.  Thanks for going through this journey with us!

Week Two

All of you who are parents will not be surprised by this post. Darwin and I have never been parents so this is a big adjustment for us, and of course for Oleg. He has been in school for one week and has taken the bus to school three times. Oleg is not a morning person and does not like to get up. We start waking him up 30 or 40 minutes before he has to leave. The first day on the bus he forgot his phone and Darwin jogged back home and got to the bus stop with the phone, with a minute to spare. The school allows Oleg to use his phone for translation only.

Oleg has made some friends at school. We met one of them. P.J. seems to be a very good boy. He is helping Oleg get to his classes. He also put the translation app on his phone to help. Soccer started this week and we were happy to see that P.J. is on his soccer team. I never thought I would be a soccer mom!

The son of very good friends of ours, Sergey, is helping us with translation and has become a good friend to Oleg. He went with us to soccer and the coach asked him to be an assistant coach, to help with translation and coaching. Sergey has also taken Oleg to the Jr. High youth group at our church. We at hoping he will make good friends there and get well connected at church.

Darwin and I have been married for almost 10 years. We have had such a quiet, easy life. It has just been us and the dogs. We love Oleg and have no regrets about adopting him. Things are just different. :-) 

Before we adopted we took a parenting class at church. That is really helping us. We are trying to be consistent and set boundaries. Believe it or not, Oleg is testing the boundaries! Right now we have given him yard work to do and taken his laptop away for a period of time. I won't go into the reason, but it had to be done.

We are excited about what God is going to do in Oleg's life and in our lives. We know it is going to be good. We are really looking forward to Oleg learning English well. He is learning more every day. He is saying simple phrases and is understanding more of what we say to him.

First Week

This has been a busy week for us. Oleg is still in summer mode and wants to swim every day. We have been to the Palm Bay Aquatic Center twice. He loves the diving boards! He also loves the beach and wants a boogie board. Twice we had Sergey over. He is the son of good friends of ours. Sergey is Russian and has been a big help translating for us. He has also taken Oleg on a bike ride and spent time with him. 

Oleg starts school on Monday. There is a good ESOL program there. We are hopeful that it will help him learn English quickly. We can tell that he is understanding more every day.

Having a teenager in the house has been stressful. Becoming a first time mom at 57 is not an easy thing. I am learning that teenagers argue and want their own way. It is hard going through that with a language barrier. We are trying to institute an allowance if Oleg cleans his room and bathroom. We will see how that goes. He does like US dollars so that should be motivating.

This afternoon we met a couple who adopted two boys from Russia two years ago. The boys are now 15 years old. It was so helpful to talk to someone that has gone through what we are going through.

We have been to church twice with Oleg. He is used to Ukrainian Orthodox. Our church is not what he is used to! Tonight at church we met a Russian woman that came to talk to Oleg. Also, a friend of ours, Oksana, who is also from Russia, came to talk to him. He was very happy to be able to speak Russian with someone. Next Wednesday Sergey is going to go the the Jr.high youth group with Oleg to translate for him.

I will post next week to tell you how school is going.

The first 48 hours in a new country

We arrived in Orlando at 6 PM Saturday, and went through immigration. A standard part of this is a secondary document review into which we brought a packet prepared by the Embassy adoptions unit to be given to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service.  We waited almost 2 hours but Oleg now has a 1 year Green Card.  The Visa was a one use, one time document. The Green Card will allow travel outside the country if needed.  We will be applying for his Social Security Number and then for a US Passport.
Until age 18 he will hold dual citizenship. At 18 he can decide to either keep both or renounce his Ukrainian citizenship.  Should he keep it he becomes eligible to serve either country's military.  It's something to think about.
We've had him at the beach on Sunday afternoon and at the city's local aquatic center this afternoon.  The center has a tube slide, and a pair of 1 meter springboards.  He liked this a bit better than the beach, but he's not tried surfing yet.
Tonight he had his first moments of missing his homeland.  He's been a trooper through it and it caught up with him this evening.   Our usual night owl turned in before 7 PM.
We noticed a distinct turn in his behavior once we arrived in Frankfurt with German and English being spoken, but very few other than some passengers spoke his language.  Many children in their home countries are more bold and wanting to lead the parents around.  Being dropped into a foreign country where you know little of the language is a humbling experience.

We have been talking with various schools and will try to enroll him in our nearest middle school.  Stone Middle School.  They are best equipped for English and Second Language learners.  Oleg's learnign style is not yet self motivated nor disciplined. The added contact with his peers will also spur him on to learn.  We do have a Rosetta Stone license and will see how he likes that.   Once he gains competency in our language other doors will open.  The school has had good reviews and many reading this in our county will recognize the school.

Oleg and his Visa

Oleg received his travel Visa from the US Embassy yesterday.  It was rather painless.  They tell you to expect up to an hour but we went from security through the whole process in about 25 minutes.  Thursday afternoon was very quiet there.  We had to peel Oleg off the ceiling of the taxi and off the shopping mall ceiling after his Visa, 'Happy Camper' doesn't begin to describe his emotion.  We went to Dreamtown in Kiev yesterday, a pair of shopping malls with the third floors dedicated to amusement parks.   One has arcade style and roller skating, and Two is a water park with sauna, jacuzzi and all manner of pools.  It's a bit like the Mall of America split in half, with the halves 500 meters apart.

Oleg and His Visa:

Ready to Travel!

Crazy Oleg!

We had our first appointment at the American Embassy this morning. It went well. We will go tomorrow afternoon to pick up his visa. That is our last bit of paperwork here. We also went to the hospital for immigrants to have Oleg's TB test read. It was non-reactive.

As our time is winding down I have been thinking about our 11 weeks in Ukraine. All in all it has been a wonderful trip. God has been so faithful to us and has lead us every step of the way. We have met wonderful people and we are so excited about our new son, Oleg. We know there will be many challenges ahead and we know God has great plans for our family.

After lunch at Domino's Pizza with Roger, a man from Kentucky, and her adopted daughter, Alorna, we went back to the amusement park we went to yesterday. Oleg did a kind of obstacle course. It was high up in the air and had a couple of zip lines. He would walk over rope bridges, swaying bridges with slats of wood tied to rope. He had a harness with big clips to attach to the different overhead wires. If this had been in the US there would be a person at every station ensuring the clips were fastened securely. Here each person had attach them. Oleg did great and had a fun time. We will post pictures tomorrow.

Pictures of the Oleg on the zip line obstacle course.

More craziness after the Visa Visit.

Florida Bound Saturday!

Our son Oleg's passport will arrive via overnight train at 7 tomorrow morning.  We have appointments for him at the hospital to examine his Mantoux test and pick up translated records. We make an appointment for obtaining his Visa in person at the Embassy and then go Thursday afternoon to pick that up.  Our travel agent already has us booked on a flight home Saturday, we leave Kiev at 5:45 AM lay over in Frankfurt for 6 hrs and then fly to Orlando arriving at 6:05 PM if everything is on time.
Yesterday I picked up a sinus infection and have been battling that.   God has been good and I've gotten some rest and a prescription is coming.   I'll have a long week work wise too as this is the 2nd Tuesday Microsoft security update week.  That starts for me and my coworkers in just over an hour from now.   Pat took Oleg to a hydro park on the Dniepr River along with the other family adopting a girl. they live in Louisville KY and we'll likely be sharing one leg of the flight home with them.
Thanks for your support and prayers, we've been blessed and graced extremely well here!   We'll also continue posting to this as we get home and make room for Oleg.  Many blogs stop when the family is home, we'll try and keep ours up as there will be many new and interesting things to say in the  days, weeks, and even months to come.
Darwin

Moving Right Along

Today we went to the hospital that does medical exams for immigrants. Oleg had to have a short medical exam and a TB test. We got there at 9 am and found out we needed passport pictures and that the TB test would be done around noon. We had three hours and it took a lot of that time to take a bus and get the pictures done. When we got back to the hospital we waited in line to go into three different offices. We were done by 3 pm and have to go back on Wednesday to have the TB test read.

While we were waiting we met a woman who is in the process of adopting four children, two sets of siblings. She has had nothing but problems the whole time. She was working with an agency and a facilitator but they were not being very helpful. It made me so thankful for the facilitator that the Lord provided for us. She really knows what she is doing and she has helped us the whole way through. We have become good friends.

Oleg was patient for the most part as we were waiting at the hospital. It was very hard for him to get up early to be to the hospital by 9 am. After lunch at a Ukrainian cafeteria we went shopping for a few things for Oleg and then went to a park so he could jump on a trampoline. He needed to burn some energy!

We got news that Oleg's Ukrainian passport should be in the hands of the facilitator in Simferopol tomorrow. She will send it to us in Kiev by train, arriving on Wednesday. Hopefully we can get what we need done at the American Embassy on Thursday and Friday. We could fly home on Saturday or Sunday! We are excited about bringing Oleg home. Please pray that it all fits together.

Fun in Simferopol

Oleg's sleeping schedule is opposite of ours right now. He likes to stay up till 2 am and sleep till 2 pm. We go to bed at 10 or 11 pm and get up in the morning. Our facilitator is a night owl usually so she and Oleg get along quite well. We will have to get his schedule changed when we get home.

Yesterday Oleg wanted to go ice skating again. We picked up four girls that our facilitator knows. Oleg knew two of the girls that used to go to the same school he did in Kerch. He is good friends with one of those girls. They all had a great time. After skating we took them all to McDonald's. A first for Oleg. He thought the cheese burgers were too small so he had a cheese burger and chicken nuggets. He still prefers a full meal, starting with borscht.

We leave tomorrow evening on the train to Kiev. Maybe after a week in Kiev we will be heading home. We are really looking forward to getting our son home!

Please pray for the girls we went skating with, that they will all be adopted. They all want a family. Thanks!

Excited Kid in a New City

Oleg has never been to Simferopol. It is the capital of Crimea and is larger than Kerch. His eyes light up whenever we pass a park that has rides or things to jump on. After a long boring day of doing things for the adoption he needed to do something to burn off some energy. He wanted to go ice skating. We were not ready to injure ourselves, so he went by himself, with us watching. This was his first time to ice skate and he did great! He was going frontwards and backwards, spinning around. He did fall some, but kept on going. He makes friends very easily and got pointers from a couple of guys. He even helped a little boy that fell to get back on his feet. Can you tell I am a proud mama? :-)

We don't know what today will bring. There is a skateboard park Oleg wanted to find. Darwin has to get a new suitcase, his has a broken zipper. Saturday we take the train to Kiev. Hopefully everything there will move quickly and we can travel home soon!

Gotcha! Now in Simferopol

August 6 and 7 were two jammed days with getting documents ready for the passport for Oleg. We have been graced with faster than expected results in obtaining birth certificates, and our trip to Simferopol though the car was packed, we all made it Tuesday afternoon.  We arrived with 20 minutes to spare - or wait 2 more days to apply for his passport. This application then required a full 8 hrs of going between the police records office - since Oleg has a new middle name and last name, they need to see a clear history for Ammala, Oleg Kevin as they say it here.  We then had all of our documents (Application for child Passport with USA permanent residence, from us, Application for Citizen Travel Passport from Oleg, and a letter of obligation from us to report on him to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington once per year till age 18).  notarized and then went to the Ukrainian citizen immigration office in Simferopol and finally got his photo taken. Notarization in Ukraine is done by lawyers.   Another family was at the exact same stages and the kids spent the day talking and being bored waiting for each appointment to finish.  Oleg knew their girl from a summer camp a few years back.  This family is from Louisville KY.  We then asked for permission to have our facilitator based here in Simferopol pick up his passport and put it on a train to Kiev next week.  This was granted, it's not common but does happen.  A prayer answered!  We can then all leave for Kiev on Saturday night. That will be our last long - 17 hr or so train ride. We will then have more appointments with physicians and the US Embassy there.    The consent to have someone other than a parent  pick up Oleg's passport saves us at least a half week.  We don't have a fly date yet, but it's much closer now!   We need Oleg's passport and visa before we can book a flight. Though perhaps all we need is the proof via an application number for the visa to do this.  The Embassy will weigh in on that.

An Hour in the Catacombs

Today we went to see the Catacombs outside the village of Adzhimuskay which is a short drive from Kerch. The Catacombs were once a limestone quarry used to build parts of Kerch from the 1830's or so.  Over the years about 9 KM, - over 5 1/2  miles worth of land had been dug out with numerous tunnels all connected.  In World War II the Nazi's had intended to drive the Soviets out of Kerch to control the strait connecting the Azov and Black Seas, which would have given Hitler a valuable shipping alternative in the region.  The Wehrmacht garrison began occupying Kerch in November 1941.  The Soviet Red Army had been starting to use the old quarry as a hiding place. In May 1942 a siege by Hitler's Wehrmacht began and it lasted until October 30, that year.  In early July the Soviets defeated the Wehrmacht and for a short while seemed to be winning, however they ran out of food, sustainable water and ammunition.

 For the next three months the group of up to 13,000 at its peak began a resistance to capture as their last hope of defense.  There had been no advance planning of extra food or water so getting these became missions in and of themselves.  For light, they burned old tires, and scrounged up wire to run a few lamps off of an old tractor used in the limestone mining process. That tractor is still down there.  They resorted to eating livestock which was war casualties, and when the meat was gone, they boiled the skins and bones as soup.   They had a salt and a sweet water well for awhile until the Nazi's polluted them - they were located outside of the quarry and indefensible. To obtain water they. relied on condensation of the limestone 10-16 meters down - 33-50 feet underground, which would give less than a quart of water per day, that they gave water only to their hospital patients.  One girl named Maria had successfully carried many buckets of water from further away back for the patients, however she was eventually shot by the Nazi's.  They had an operating room to remove bullet fragments and a recovery ward. The patients got the most water daily -  received about a tablespoon of water per day. Those not in the recovery ward were allowed to wipe their lips once a day on a damp cloth. The air temperature in the quarry at their depth runs between 45 and 52 degrees year round. This was the only thing working in the favor of the people since it put less of a demand for water on them. During the resistance the Nazi's bored holes into  the quarry and pumped gas down - the same as which was used in Auschwitz for example. In one day over 1,000 of the Red Army forces were gassed.  The resistance forces fashioned blankets to cordon off parts of the quarry when they suspected that the Nazi's were boring more holes.   This resistance crumbled on October 30, 1942 at which only a few survivors of the 13,000 who started remained.  There are 2 mass graves underground with about 3,000 dead beneath the large marble slabs.    I've never been to a death camp before but this network of limestone tunnels qualifies as one. 

This part of Kerch history was covered up by the Stalin government and only hinted at during the Khrushchev years.  In the 1980's it become more widely known around Ukraine and Russia.   

The resolve and resourcefulness of the defenders of this quarry in their tremendous adversity is awe inspiring. 

The heroism of the Red Army and citizens of Kerch and Adzhimuskay was commemorated in the monument atop Mt. Mithridates which we showed in our last post. 

Here are a few pictures, we will add some that our facilitator took later on.

Entrance to the Adzhimuskaya quarry / Catacombs

Map of the quarry network, the red parts are fully known. 

Some artifacts from the Rd Army resistance 

Sculpture from expended ordnance. 

Expended shell casings became oil lamps 

Mural showing scens from the lives of the resistance fighters. 

Nazi bomb that failed. 

The weapons of the resistance 

Our last weekend in Kerch - some sightseeing

The 10 day wait after the court decision is up as of today! We thank God for His faithfulness, and for leading us in each and every step.  The law though gives one business day and then the court decree can be published - that will be Tuesday morning the 6th, aka Oleg's Gotcha Day.   On Monday we will visit Oleg's school and have  tea and cake with the staff in the afternoon and go to the hospital to order Oleg's birth certificate listing us as his parents.   Tuesday morning we pick up the decree and the certificate and then will travel to Simferopol, the Crimean region capital and apply for his Passport.  Next Saturday Pat, Oleg and our facilitator will travel back to Kiev for a medical test for Oleg the following Monday.  I will go also if the authorities permit our facilitator from Crimea to pick it up for us.

Knowing our time here was coming to an end, we took in some local sites and went to the best beach yesterday.  This morning we visited the Adzhimuskaya quarry which was a hideout for up to 13,000 local citizens and the Soviet Red Army during May - October 1942.  I'll blog about the quarry visit in another post, to be brief, it is very solemn and yet awe inspiring to see it.  I make mention here because the place we went yesterday includes  a monument erected by the Red Army to commemorate the heroism of the citizens of Kerch and Adzhimuskay against the army of Adolf Hitler.

This picture if you look quick may resemble our Washington Monument, it is one erected by the Soviets designating Kerch as a Hero City, it is along with Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk, Odessa, Brest, Tula, and several others.  It is located on Mt. Mithridates.  

It is 432 steps to the top, not all are even nor smooth

For the heroism of the citizens of Kerch 

 The next several pictures are the view from the top, it is worth the climb!  Pat has had some knee trouble here and been a real trooper! and with God she made the trip without much affect.

Russia in the distance and what we think is an oil research ship. Exxon is checking out the Black Sea for potential drilling spots. 

Oleg spent many a happy summer day swimming, diving, flipping here at one of the city's street front water parks. 

Another beach used often by Oleg and the people of Kerch 

There is active archaeology and possibly treasure hunting at the top. 

Some pictures of the ruins of the first settlement here in the 7th,6th Centuries BC. The city was called Panticapaeum. 

Eternal Flame for the cities, Adzhimuskaya is one listed here. 

Kerch and Feodosia - about 40 miles away are listed on this side of the flame.