The countdown continues....

Another uneventful weekend in Ukraine. Eric and I ventured out on our own to do a little shopping yesterday. There is this huge outdoor market called 5th km that Eric heard about from an American pastor who lives here in town. Eric called him to see if their church was close to us by any chance and while they were talking he asked him about second hand clothes stores in the city. We hadn't come across any yet and the kid's clothing is very expensive and not of very good quality in general. 5 km has all kinds of new clothing as well as hundreds of booths that are what I would call a perpetual garage sale. We took a bus out from near McDonald's and did our shopping very successfully. With the help of our few Russian phrases, my handy dandy notebook and a lot of patience on the part of the vendors we were able to get 2 pairs of NWT fleece lined pants, a NWT sweat suit, two sweatshirts, new undershirts, pajamas, and new socks for less than $40. I think we did pretty well. I'm sure we could have gotten better deals if we would have had a russian speaker with us but I'm happy with it and the fact that we made it there and back without incident and can now mark "buy clothes for Jonathan" off our list is a great feeling. We spent the afternoon at Joseph's and got to meet his godfather. This man - Andrey - became his godfather on 12/6/06 when he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. Andrey is a doctor with three young children of his own. He speaks a little English and we were able to communicate pretty well with him. It was obvious he loves Joseph and we exchanged addresses and email so that we can keep in touch. We were a little nervous when we saw Joseph run up to this guy and give him a big hug and we are pretty sure we were a surprise to him as well. He handled it very well and seems genuinely pleased that Joseph has gotten a family. We also learned that his godmother was his nurse when he was in the "baby house" on the orphanage property. Today we will be doing some grocery shopping, visiting Joseph and working on paperwork. It looks like I will be going up to Kyiv on Tuesday to do some paperwork that needs to be done. We still aren't sure when the family will be coming home but every day that passes brings us one day closer!!!