Tom and Katrina Richardson Family Blog

2010-07-19T22:56:00.001-07:00

I thought maybe we should try and get this blog thing up and running again, now that we're doing something a little more exciting than sitting at home cutting up perfectly good fabric, and sewing it back together again, and doing the gardening (which means I'm watching the grass grow). Anyway, for those of you who don't know we're in Alaska, and have been for the last month. It's been an unforgettable experience, our only complaint would be the weather. So far out of 30 days in the state we've had two without rain, and only one of those could you call sunny. The ferry system has been great, the fishing was great, the scenery is absolutely incredible. It's taken awhile to get used to the sun NEVER going down, but now you just go to sleep when you're tired, could be 2AM,doesn't matter, we're on vacation. I'll try posting a few pictures if I can figure it out.

Bye for now

Tom

2007-05-14T02:01:00.000-07:00

Well I still can't get the new camera to work with the computer. In case you haven't heard our camera was stolen after I left it at the inter-net cafe. Also, our normal Internet cafe is non-operational today, they said maybe tomorrow. This one is about a 15 minutes walk away and nearly twice a expensive, still only $1 for one hour, but it is better ventilated. Also, I can't get our home email to come up from here. Anyway I can't get the camera and the computer of communicate. so I won't be updating any photos today.

We're still doing well, making progress in the bureaurcacy and relationships with the twins in small steps. Inna pretty much lives with us at our apartment, while Alina still likes to sleep at the internat, I think because she can stay out later.

We went downdown yesterday looking for shoes for Inna, she has a very specific type and style in mind. After going to the market area and looking through maybe 2 dozen stores we still were not able to find what she wanted. We also drove through a market area for animals. Dogs, cats, rabbits, chicken, turkeys. There were literally hundreds of kitten in large cages for sale, and at least 100 dogs and or puppies. It was kind of like a fleamarket for animals.

Katrina did find some soveniers to buy, so we're not coming home empty handed. Katrina, however, took a pretty hard fall yesterday, bruised her hand, shoulder, and knee, and sprained her ankle pretty badly, so she's going to stay off of it for a couple of days. Nothing broken, no aputations in the works, just tweaked it pretty good.

Donna called yesterday for Mother's day, and it really made Katrina homesick. She was pretty weepy, and kept saying she just missed Donna and wished she could have talked to her for longer. Which brings up something I heard about. You can purchase on line phone cards at Noblecom.com on which you can call the Ukraine for about 9 cents per minute. Katrina would love a phone call, she's getting pretty lonesome without her phone buddies. If you kids try this, I'll pay for it!

I'm going to try and access the email one more time before I leave, so I'm logging off, bye for now.

2007-05-11T02:47:00.000-07:00

The weathers getting warmer, we're seeing more bare arms, and I even saw a man in shorts today. He was probably an American. The temps be in the mid 70's, very humid, but the wind in steady even heavy at times, so it be very pleasant. For us coming from the northcoast where its very cool, anything over 70 is a very warm day. The highest temp ever in Arcata/Eureka is 86 degrees and that was a very rare day. We're hoping to get down to the sea shore today or tomorrow, I'll try and let everyone know what that's like. Gotta go out of time.

2007-05-08T03:28:00.000-07:00

Well, we had our court date yesterday. Which went smoothly. The judge asked us our names, birthdates, about our families, and then out of the blue asked what our incomes, and assets were. We were a little surprised, as we weren't sure we wanted to tell everyone our net worth, but we complied. We were concerned that the girls wouldn't understand that we aren't rich, even though have a decent net worth.

After the court date we decided to go to the city center to get the passport photos for the girls and their new passports. This turned into a major event as the girls didn't want to go, for a yet to be determined reason, after a sort of melt down they complied, we got the photos, met the Dearingers for lunch, and came back home.

Since then they have been well behaved, not quite sweet, but a little closer anyway. Inna stayed the night with us in the apartment, stayed up late, did her laundry, watched TV, talked on the phone, and slept in late this morning. Sounds like all the teenagers I know.

Now we're just waiting for today's events to unfold all of the new surprises. This is not going to be easy, we only hope it will be worth it.

2007-05-04T04:49:00.000-07:00

Natash, our interpreter, is back. she'd gone back home to CarKiev for the last 5 days. She assures us we will be able to make our May 23 flight. But we don't know quite what to believe, sometimes I think people here tell you what you want to hear. If everything goes smoothly we should make it with a 1/2 day to spare. Today I saw two men carrying a roll of carpet down the side walk. It was probably 12 feet long and 12 - 15 inches in diameter. I don't how far they were going, I assume they had come from the Market near us. Still it's a little different from what we're used to be seeing.

2007-05-03T04:56:00.000-07:00

These are pictures of the orphanage (Internat). They were taken by Inna. It's pretty run down from the outside. It appears to be a old school. The inside is rundown but very clean. The food they eat appears to be adequate, nothing fancy. The Kids were all carrying around fruit at different times. The worst thing we can see is a substancial lack of supervision. The kids pretty much come and go as they please. If they leave they've no place to go and wind up on the streets. We understand some kids come and go all the time. The girls cut school today to come and stay with us.

2007-05-03T04:52:00.000-07:00

Inna, Vera, and Alina. Vera's being adopted by a family in Chicago sometime in June. They pretty much eat, and eat, and eat, at our apartment. They do all of the cooking and most of cleaning, so it's been pretty easy.

2007-05-02T05:59:00.000-07:00

I'm having trouble getting pictures onto the blog I'll again tomorrow.
TomR

2007-05-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

Well, just to keep everyone up to date. We've completed to first round of paper work in Odessa, visited the notary a couple of times, met the director of the orphanage, and the social worker. Our papers are now in the hands of the bureaucrates, we did get a date and time to appear before the judge, May 7th at 9:00. Once that's completed to everyones satisfaction wait for 10 days, in case someone comes forward to protest the adoptiion, then we get new birthcertincates and passports for the girls. Then it's off to Kiev to the US embassey to get US passport for the girls, they'll have duel citizenship until they're 18. To get the US passport the girls will have to be finger printed, have security checks and physicals. This takes a couple of days. Then it's home.

As to the country of Ukraine. I'm actually quite impressed. I had somehow allowed myself to believe this was third world country, with no infastructure. We're experienced non of the horror stories I had heard about. We've alway had power, plenty of hot water the toilet have been clean, and have all had commodes.

This is what I've noticed and experienced.

Everyone walks, most people don't have cars, kind of like living in any big city I expect, cars are expensive, you don't want to park them outside, and most things are a short walk away anyway. We went to a market area across the street from our apartment, it was mostly building material. Everything was there you would need to tackle any home project. Lumber, concrete mix, insulation, windows doors, light fixtures, cabinets, bath fixtures, nuts and boldts, everything. It was all set up in old shipping containers bolted together with a common roof, electricity, sheetrocked on the inside. This market covered nearly a whole city block, it was like a maze getting around in it. Everything was painted and clean and very nice. People were packing lumber and concrete away on their shoulders. This people are tough, they do nearly everything on foot. We've been to simular markets with clothes, and fruit and vegetables.

We're eating out of the markets, and cooking food in the apartment. We can't always read the lables, so we look at the pictures on the lables. There haven't been any major surprised yet. In reality the girls have been doing most of the shopping and cooking for the last week. We still have trouble understanding the prices when they're spoken to us. We just hold our hands out with money in them and let them take what they want, so far we have been ripped off bad enough to notice.

All the old people appear to have apartments and a pension from what I understand. Many of the old people sell something in front of their apartment. We've seen sunflower seeds, peanuts, flowers, potatos, herbs, cigaretts, and clothing. The apartment house we live in has 5 floors, we're on the forth floor, no elevator. While their's not much grass around, the area between the apartment buildings has been divided into garden areas. They're wll tended for the most part. Mostly growing flowers, but I've seen Zuccine, potatos, onion, peppers, and cabbage, as well as various herds growing.

The people all dress in dark colors usually black. NO one going outside without a coat even on the 70 degree days. I don't think I've seen a bare arm anywhere. However, the young women wear VERY short skirts, and VERY low cut blouses, but heaven forbid they should bare an arm.

Our apartment is nice, nothing fancy, three bedrooms one bath, VERY small kitchen. The beds here are Hard. We're toughening up.

2007-04-25T03:02:00.000-07:00

Alina and Vera (Veronica), a friend of the girls, she's being adopted by a family in Chicago.

2007-04-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

Inna and Natasha, our interpreter, at a resturant in downtown Odessa. Natasha has been very helpfull and girls really like her.

2007-04-25T02:55:00.000-07:00

The girls with their grandfather. We were able to meet him. He seems like a very good man. He lives near CarKiev, which is about 5 hours away by car. As you can see he's quite short, but a very powerfull man, barrel chested, thick powerfull hands, piercing steel blue eyes. I like him immediately. He spent 27 years as a midshipman/radioman, on diesel submarines for the Soviet Union. We were the first Americans he had ever met, he was very nervous. I wish I could have spoken to him, language differences are such a pain.

2007-04-25T02:52:00.000-07:00

Just two more looks at their room. They're actually pretty nice rooms. Not many personal items, but clean and neat.

2007-04-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

The girls, Inna on the left, and Alina on the rights, in their room in the Orphanage. There's eight girls to a room, it's spit down the middle by the wall on the left, so the appearance is that there's four girls to a side. The women Katrina's talking to is one of the teachers.

2007-04-25T02:36:00.000-07:00

The first picture, is where we hung out in Vienna, the second and third and pictures of the inside of our apartment in Kiev, very nice inside the next is a shot of the outside of the apartment. There are literally hundereds of these aparts in both Kiev and Odessa. All look very run down on the outside, but as near as we can tell and clean and neat and well kept on the inside. We were told the beds would hard, but that was really an understatement. The beds are basically wood boxes with a matteress of 2 inch open foam rubber. It's like sleeping on carpeted floor only harder. I'm used to it, it's kind of like camping, Katrina is ready to fly home to her own bed. She'll toughen up over the next four weeks. There is iron work everywhere some of it is very nice, some is just rebar, but put together in very interesting ways.

Finally got to an inter-net cafe.

2007-04-25T02:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally got to an inter-net cafe, so I'll try and update this blog. We spend the last four days running around getting paper work done, and spending time with the girls. The paper work is maddening, but necessary. Unfortunately we're running into the May day holiday. Everyone takes most of the week off. We won't have our court date until the 7th of May, we were hoping to get it for this week. We have 10 days of a waiting period after the court date. Then it's back to Kiev to the US embassy for a security clearance for the girls and new US passports. We hope to be on the plane home by the 23 of May.

We made it to Odessa

2007-04-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you all know we made it to Odessa this morning. We rode the train all night, and will now start meeting with officials to start the process. I'll give more details on our adventures later tonight.
Be all right
Tom and Katrina

On the Way

2007-04-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

This is still a test. This is us getting ready to board the plane, on our way to the NE last fall. It was a great trip, but the big trip, Ukraine, starts on Sunday. We'll try and keep our activities posted as we go. Have and great day!

TomR