Nov 8: Waiting to meet him

11/8/07: It was Thursday, the day after our appointment. Our referral paperwork would be available later in the day, which Luda would pick up. We’d decided to drive to Mariupol rather than take the train. Luda & Leonid would be picking us up VERY early on Friday morning to begin the drive to Mariupol. So we had some time to kill.

Shortly after our SDA appointment the previous day, our power went out. And it was still out. We'd watched some movies on the laptop, but both batteries were now dead. So despite feeling kind of yucky (we'd both had a stomach virus over the past few days & Zack was still not up to par) we decided to venture out a little.

We went to lunch and explored the city a bit. We took pictures of St. Michael’s and St. Sophia’s. We managed to find our way back to the SDA and took pictures of the exterior. We bought a few souvenirs from the street vendors (there are a ton just outside of the SDA, most speak some English, and many accept U.S. currency), and took some photos of St. Andrews.


We went back to the apartment for a while, then went back to the underground mall for some dinner, and exchanged some more money before heading in for the night. Back at the apartment, there was still no power. We were lucky to still have hot water, so showers were taken with the dim light of a couple of small candles provided by the landlady. Of course as soon as we got everything packed, the power came back on. So we posted on the blog, and watched a movie before falling to sleep.

We woke up around 1:00 AM and it was obvious we were too excited to sleep anymore. We talked to some of our family on Skype, then finished our packing. At 2:30 AM, Leonid & Luda arrived. We packed our bags back into his van, and we were off on a 9 ½ hour drive to meet our boy.