We Are Officially Approved To Adopt Vova!

Well it took a little more than 20 minutes for Judi and I to be approved to adopt Vova. It was a much more informal process than we imagined, and most of the time our interpreter spoke with the Ukranian officials. We also did not find out as much information about Vova that we had hoped for. We do know that his father was born in 1958 and mother in 1969. He has a sister who was born in 1993 and had been in the orphange with him until she "aged out" at age 16. Vova is very healthy and there were some awesome photos of him in the file at ages 6 and 8. All dressed up in a suit! They said they would give us the photos once we adopted Vova, if we gave them replacement photos. Tomorrow we board the train at 5:00 p.m. for an 11 hour train ride to Kherson. We hope to see Vova on Thursday. If you want to comment on the photos, try signing up as members. If that still doesn't work, shoot us some comments on facebook. Some of you have asked me to write more, post more photos. Some of you have even demanded more humor from me (D. Funk). Well, as you will see below, I deliver on all requests. First some photos of our apartment.

First photo is of our living area. Second photo is our kitchen and the third photo is our bedroom. All in all, the apartment is very nice.

St. Andrews church built in the 1700's right across from our appointment with the SDA.

Ukranian War Memorial

Statue of My Norwegian Viking Warrior Relatives. Okay, not really sure about that, but they sure look like Vikings, don't they? Didn't the Norwegians conquer a bunch of eastern european countries before the dark ages? Need to do some research on that one. Ok, now a funny story. You know that everytime you go to Disneyworld or any other theme park, the cartoon characters, whether they be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy or whomever, are always in character. That means around the children or anyone, they never take their heads off. The reason being, of course, is they do not want to traumatize the children. Well, aparrently that custom is not practiced in the Ukraine.

The guy decided to take a smoke break right there on the job site. It was just too funny a shot to pass up. You can see Judi, partially in the photo, egging me on. So we were laughing at the guy, and he noticed us snickering. He then walked up and started talking to us in english, making small talk, etc. He then started describing the different statues around us and their specific meaning. Then he grabs my camera, and says: "Here, me take some great photos of you and your wife in front of these incredible sites." I say: "Hey, that's very nice of you. Thanks." He then takes the following photos:

After all is done, the guy hands me my camera back and says: "That will be 10 gryvaias" (ukraine dollars). I said: "Uh.....yeah...right, of course." As I walked away, I turned and looked at that headless monkey man, and thought of only one word: "Respect!" Thanks for all the love and prayers coming our way. Keherson here we come! Next post may be a little late due to the 11 hour red eye train ride. Jake and Judi