Our Six Flags experience to Kiev...compliments of Vitali!

For those of you living in New Braunfels, imagine driving on Walnut Street (between Albertsons and HEB) for 2 hours, at 80+ miles an hour, with no seatbelts, while driver watches an American movie with Ukrainian voice overs, while, at the same time, arguing with his girlfriend on the phone...this is a day in our life with our driver Vitali! For those of you outside New Braunfels, imagine a Six Flags rollercoaster on crack!

That said, we arrived safely to Kiev today for our SDA appointment for Nikolas. All went well, we expect our official referral letter tomorrow. Since we are not able to pick up our referral letter until late tomorrow afternoon, we are going to use this time to tour St. Sophia's and St. Michael's cathedral. We are fortunate in that our apartment this time is located on Independence Square which is only 3 blocks from the sites! In addition, we are celebrating tonight for many reasons:

*2nd SDA apt over...proceeding with the adoption paperwork for Nikolas
*we are feeling a very strong bond from all three children (pls see picture of Sveta's surprise text to us last night)
*Tanya (Sveta's older sister) graciously signed separation papers to further the process
*we had our first shots of Ukrainian vodka...very smooth...
*we finally have a somewhat comfortable bed to sleep in tonight
*we found salad and vegetables on a menu...we ate very well tonight for the first time!

Coincidently, the celebration was perfect timing to the atmosphere in Kiev...we were able to see fireworks from our balcony.

Tomorrow, we expect to head back to Zhytomyr later in the evening...hang on...here comes Vitali!