We're HERE!!!

Oh are we EXHAUSTED!!! We've been basically awake since 3:30am on Saturday. It is now 7:00pm Kiev time which is 11:00am "home" time.

We're staying at the same apartment with Mark and Maria (the same ones mentioned in the Hartly's website). They are waiting for a second appointment looking for two little boys under 5. Such sweeties they are! They have taken us under their wing and have been showing us around and Maria even washed the pillowcases for our bed herself so they would "smell like home." We're here at the internet cafe together and we'll be "doing supper" together in a little bit.

About our flights though! Many of you know I've been whining about not using my Spanish for our trip. Well, here's an interesting twist. While we were waiting for our flight out of JFK, the gate was filling up, so I took my purse off the chair next to me for a lady to be able to sit down. She immediately said, "ktgdesgyrw" to me, which was in a language I didn't know. She saw the look on my face and said, "Espanol?" Ah-ha! We had a nice long chat then. She doesn't speak a word of English, and had been visiting her daughters here in the States. She is from Sofia, Bulgaria, so Spanish is a "foreign language" to her too. I had to help her figure out her tickets and explain why on earth the flight was so delayed in boarding, etc. Anyway, we went to Prague together, and when we landed there, we were able to chat some more. She also speaks Russian, so I hauled out my "Russian phrases for Adoptive Parents" cheat-sheets and she sat there tutoring me in my Russian. The funny thing was that the cheat-sheets are written phonetically in English, so she couldn't read them... I had to translate the English to Spanish to get the Russian. John started chuckling at this after a while, and we realized that here we were in the Czech Republic speaking Spanish from a translated English to learn Russian. I got a picture of her, and I'll post it later. I'm way too tired to even think about trying to figure that out right now. (And probably this message isn't going to make any sense at all to anyone besides me and John, but oh well.)

Anyway, our apartment is great. It has a washer and even a refrigerator. Mark and Maria bought it this week! There are stray cats all over the place, and a pit bull decided to find out who we were. Big, big dog. *shivers*

I feel for Mark and Maria who are on a tight schedule work-wise, and are still waiting on a second appointment. They have super attitudes about their situation though, so that has helped us with our "pre-appointment" jitters.

Having fun, seeing the sites... Talk to you later!

Btw, our phone number is 011-380-44-270-1198. We don't have a cellphone yet. Tomorrow we'll be doing stuff with Vika.