Monday, July 10, 2017

First Days in Kiev

Our third full day in Kiev is almost complete and we have really enjoyed exploring our area. Our apartment is located in the Maidan area which is a large, popular tourist area. Maidan, also known as Independence Square, is where Ukraine's most recent Euromaidan protests took place in 2013-2014. As we walked along the streets and through the square, looking at the memorials that still remain, it was amazing to think about how less than four years ago it was completely full of Ukrainian people protesting and fighting to keep their freedom.  Other than the pictures and memorials on one side of the square, you wouldn't know what took place just a few winters ago. During the day the area is full of people coming and going (in fact on Sundays they even close the main street so that people can cross from one side to the other instead of crossing underground), restaurants, cafes, and stores line both sides of the street, and a large underground mall is going on underneath the street and square. We have spent the last three days wandering the square, people watching at outdoor cafes (or today, McDonalds because they had a little bit of air conditioning!), and managing to get by with the very little English there is. Very shortly after we moved to Korea we learned their simple alphabet so that we could at least read a menu and signs. However, we know nothing about the Cyrillic alphabet and there is much less English here than anywhere we went in Asia it seems. Fortunately, since Maidan is such a large tourist area, many restaurant workers speak at least some English. For dinner we have come to enjoy the buffet type restaurants they have because we can see the food before we point to ask for it rather than just pointing to something random on a menu. We can also get full meals for both of us at these kinds of restaurants for around $6.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the day we go to the State Department of Adoption for our appointment. We will have one hour to go through children's profiles and see if there is a child we would like to meet. Please be praying that we will find our child at this time who meets the age and special needs requirements of our home study. We are really hoping this first appointment will be successful! 

 On Sunday we got an early start and were able to get pictures with very few other people around




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