Sunday Afternoon

We heard that the Lawrences landed, were a little delayed or something. Maybe it was the snow... yes it's snowing again. Big, white, fluffy flakes. We were hoping to see them but it doesn't sound like that will be happening. Who knows. So I thought I'd take some pics of our apartment and post them on the blog. This is where we have been staying. This is the tv/living room, also Natasha's room. There is an enclosed balcony behind that pink curtain.

I didn't realize this one was so dark. This is our room. The best bed we have had this entire trip : ) Yes, those are our clothes drying on the radiator. There is a drying rack on the balcony, but it's so cold it takes two days for things to dry. It doesn't take quite a day to dry them on the heaters.

Our lovely little blue kitchen. There is a washing machine under the counter.

This is the view of the sea of apartments out of our kitchen window.

So yesterday we decided to go for a drive through the country side, very legal. While driving we got into a bit of an accident. Poor Vladimir's car! This little blue car pulled onto the highway and his signal was still flashing and he started coming into our lane only a few feet infront of us. Vladimir hit the horn and the car just kept on coming over (they were going to make a U-turn at the break in the road). So Vladimir ended up going around them in the island, where they hit the end of his car. Which pushed us into the left lane of on coming traffic. Thankfully no one was in that lane and Vladimir was able to get us back into the island between the two roads. The little old couple were to blame when the ------ came because it was not a designated U-turn spot. They were "gypsies" according to Natasha and so we waited an hour and a half for their son to come and check things out and then to go get money to pay for the repairs, otherwise his dad would have had his lisence taken away. It was interesting. The ------ held both parties driver lisences and car titles until they came back with the money. If they hadn't of come back and we left then they would have pursued ticketing the old man and taking him to court (where he would have lost his lisence and maybe his car). Vladimir said it would have been about five years before he would have seen any money. So we put the donut on while we waited and then stopped in the next town to get a new tire.

(Troy didn't want me to say anything about the P-----, so you'll have to fill in the blank)

Trying to pull the dent out a bit so it would stop rubbing on the tire.

The poor, damaged car with the spare tire on.

Little blue car that hit us while trying to make a u-turn.

So on our drive to Kr in the red van we hit a BIG pot hole and it messed up one of the front tires and we had to stop and have that fixed. On our first drive down south earlier this week Vladimir got pulled over for speeding and would never think of paying off the cop to get out of it. That would be illegal. This little drive down south we got in an accident. We still have a couple drives left to take... what is yet to come?

So we didn't go see any children on our drive because that would be illegal. Tomorrow we are doing the paper work to see a couple kids down south. If all goes well we will travel on Tuesday to go meet them. Hopefully they will be excited and want to hang out with us and we can start some more paperwork.

Troy wants to go shopping for some really warm sweaters before we leave because he is always cold and we will be in the middle of who-knows-where for a week or so. It is pretty farm land, but in the middle of no where. Good chance we won't have internet or cell coverage. The U phone had cell coverage in different areas out there, so we'll load it up before we leave.

This is the turn off of the highway to who-knows-where. About 20 minutes down and around and through two very small villages was where our drive ended and we turned around and came back to the city. We got in about midnight. A very crazy, but in the end, eventful day.

So we attended church again at the K English speaking branch. I took the camera and forgot to take a pic. The cab dropped us off on the other side of the buildings and stores and we got a little lost, but a nice teenage boy that we showed the address to took us too the building. He was really nice, spoke a tiny bit of English. Everyone in the branch is so kind and it was nice to see them again even though we just met them last week. We met Dave who works at the US Embassy and he told us to write an email to the embassy explaining our situation. We will do that and after hearing about more problems in Plotava, once we get names, we are going to call him and see if it would help if everyone adopting sent in a complaint... we'll let you know today/tomorrow.

Thanks again to everyone for your comments, thoughts, prayers, etc. We have had our ups and downs but this has been really difficult and the only thing keeping me from falling apart (aside from Troy) has been all the support at home.