Long-Winded

This is bound to be a long-winded post. We will see. It is 4:30 in the morning here and 6:30pm at home. I just slept for six hours and woke up restless. I haven’t taken the time to journal at all yet, so I am going to dive in now.

We woke up at my mom’s house at 4am on Friday. The night before I had gotten to rock and cuddle my little Maggie when she woke up with a bad dream and I can still imagine her warm, trusting little body against me. That was a good way to part from my girls. We tucked the girls in, got dressed, and set out the picture albums that we got for the girls that have pictures of our family in them. I hope they help our girls feel less homesick.

My mom drove us to the airport and we got there a little before 6am. It took us awhile to figure out how to check in…. they have these new self-check-in terminals and we had no idea what we were doing. Luckily, we eventually got figured out, paid for our extra bag ($50) that we are bringing a few health supplies in for a friend, and headed down to our terminal. Security was a breeze.

We got to our first terminal with plenty of time to spare so we sat and lay on the chairs, talked a little and dwelt on the fact that we get to meet a son. We tried not to dwell on the losing of a son… even though we are comforted that God knows best… or that we will not be bringing our Jordan home on this trip. Eventually, we boarded our plane and I took a dramamine to help with the motion sickness.

Our first flight was with United and was almost 4 hours long (though we’re on the plane a bit longer if you include the time before we take off and after we land.) The flight seemed long and uneventful. I crocheted a little, we ate our sandwiches and adjusted our watches. My watch got set for the time at our final destination, Brian’s was progressively set as we traveled, for the local time zone.

We landed on time in Chicago and had a comfortable amount of time before boarding our 747 for Frankfurt. I can’t remember Chicago right now…. all the airports are a bit blurred in my mind. It is really amazing how huge a 747 is! Two stories high and 10 seats wide (plus the two rows). All of our flights were completely full, but we were blessed to be able to trade seats with a passenger after boarding so that we could sit next to each other. (There were none next to each other when we bought tickets.)

The international flight was verrrrrry long and the seats were quite cramped, but they did pamper us all the way over. We tried to sleep as soon as we reached altitude, because it was 9pm or so at our destination. We had no success, so we both watched Maiden Heist at the same time on our personal computers. There were many movies available (several of which I actually thought I’d like to watch) and were free. Dinner came during our movie and was much more than I expected from an airplane dinner in economy. It was rice and veggies with cooked juicy chicken. Broccoli and pickled peppers, a roll with butter, a piece of Tillamook Montery Jack Cheese (Tillamook cheese on the way to Germany!), and a brownie with whip cream and a piece of a strawberry. That and whatever we wnated to drink with it for free. I started with juice. Then realized I could have a cold beer. Brian really trumped though, when he got a full plastic cup of red wine. Weird! Anyway, the beer was so-so and so was the wine, but it was a treat… dinner and a movie with the kids at the babysitters. Ha! 🙂

I crocheted and tried to journal, but I had been awake for too many hours and was too cramped. We landed on time after flying about 8 hours and we made our loooooooooong walk through the Frankfurt airport to our airplane. Many people still spoke English, but not nearly as well by this time. 🙂 It had been about 20 hours awake at this point, and we were able to doze for the first times as we waited in the lobby. My brain cleared a little and we boarded our last flight to our destination one hour late. They explained why they were late, but it was in German, so I don’t know why they were late. We did get to go outside into a bus that drove us across the tarmac to our airplane! We walked up a set of rolling, covered stairs to get to our last and smallest plane. (737?)

Two hours of flying later, we excited deboarded. We found the baggage area ok on our own and waited awhile to get our bags off. Hooray, all bags are here! We had our passport checked (got my first stamp ever in mine!) and went right through a deserted customs area. We didn’t have to look for Elena – as soon as we left the security area, she saw us and called us over to her. She initially looked much younger than I was expecting… and met us with her husband Chavdar and our translator and driver Dmitry.

She had dark brown, thick hair and their appearance in capris and t-shirts made my careful selection of clothes seem silly. Dmitry’s button-down shirt is too small for his stomach, so occasionally one of the buttons will slip it’s strained post and he’ll have a gap in his shirt. They are very welcoming and kind and at ease, so we relaxed and were grateful to climb into their van. It was about 2pm (24 hours since we woke up) here and quite warm. I didn’t know if I would be rude to buckle my seatbelt, but saw that the driver did and Elena didn’t, so no pressure there either, thank goodness.

Elena rode in the back with her husband for awhile, laying down on his lap with her feet up as they talked away. Eventually, Elena moved to the front seat and she and Dmitry talked and talked and talked. The style of talking is slightly animated, and each person talking overlaps the other by a little bit. We didn’t talk with them a whole lot during the drive, except tryign to ask a few questions and mostly getting the answers. Interrupting them to ask a question is a little tricky. They won’t think it’s rude to interrupt because that’s how they talk… but what if changing the subject is rude? I have no idea what they’re tlaking about! haha

The four hour drive (with two rest stops) was very, very nice. The van is older, but comfortable. Brian and I nodded off constantly and the rest was so sweet. Chavdar likes to coast sometimes for some reason, but nobody else seemed to notice that he’d coast, slowing down a long ways before putting the van back into gear and speeding up again every few minutes. He is a conservative driver and we were on a two-lane freeway most of the time, so we had no anxiety at all during the drive. No crazy passing, no fast driving. I think most of the time we went around 100km/h.

When we got close to where we are stopped for the night, we got off on what was like a long country road. There were some crazy people passing unsafely here, but thankfully, it wasn’t us! 🙂 My first impressions of the living situation here: The buildings are large and are not wooden, mostly. The roof of choice is red tile. There are a few buildings here and there that are new construction, but by and large, the buildings look old and run down, like nobody has been able to afford to update or perhaps even do basic repairs. The laundry is hanging, of course. There are many, many apartment buildings… more of these than single dwelling homes. They look discolored and old.

As we drove, I was able to pick out that there are white people here and Roma people. I can’t tell the difference between the different heritages of white people. James was Roma. We saw horse drawn carts at work. The drive was through primarily agricultural country. It reminded me a lot of Central Oregon in the summer, but not so dry as Bend is. There were many fields of sunflowers (not blooming yet) that are for makign sunflower oil. We stopped at a small stand and bought some fresh cherries. mmmm The Roma people and families I see, do look like they are part of the most poor group.

When we drove up to our hotel, I was worried at first at how much it would cost. It is a new building and looks like a mini resort. There is a beautiful pool, white tablecloth restaurant, girl in a fancy summer dress behind the counter…. thankfully I learn that it is about 35 euros a night; what I was expecting to pay. Funny thing; they turn the lights off in the halls to your room. Getting to our room after dinner was interesting. It is a small hotel; only about five rooms on our hall, so at least we weren’t lost. Our room is small but comfortable, with two twin beds (a box spring and mattress on the floor each) a tv, a soft chair, a desk, a bathroom…. very much like a US hotel, only different).

We have pushed the two beds together to sleep closer to each other. I don’t know what’s going on with the bedding. There is a flat sheet folded around the mattress for the bottom sheet. Then a folded sheet under the pillow. Then a lightweight comforter. So we put the folded sheet on the floor and slept under just the comforter, which is really quite enough as it is very warm in our room. Our window opens onto the roof (really, the big window opens so we could walk out on the roof). I am looking forward to my shower soon. (it is 5:15am now)

Dinner was lovely… and very long. We sat outside by the pool and slowly ate through a tasty, small-portions dinner. I had a dinner of lettuce, tomato, cucumber with lots of shredded feta on it. THere was oil and vinegar available… I used a bit of oil. Then I had stuffed peppers. That was not at all like US stuffed peppers. They had two sweet red peppers stuffed with yummy melted white cheese, cooked and flat and then fried in a light breading. It was delicious! Brian had a yogurt and cucumber salad and then fried squash (was inside a light breading with a little cheese to). It took almost 2 hours to get everything, but we just sat around and visited and tasted each others dishes. We participated in conversation for awhile and then they slowly stopped explaining things and just talked long and constantly as good friends and family would. We would have liked to have gone to bed much sooner (and not finished our dishes) but they encouraged us to stay and we had a very sweet evening time, although we were tired.

We got to bed around 9:30pm and it didn’t take long to fall asleep, even with all the new noises coming through our open window… dogs barking, dogs yelping, unfamiliar birds, people talking, cars driving. We woke up to an early morning bird chirping and flying around our window and an occasional cat yowl. I hear a rooster too.

Oh! At around 7pm – just before our dinner, we were able to skype with the girls! Anna doesn’t look like she is missing us much yet and Maggie seemed happy to see us. Neither cried. 🙂 It was GOOD to see their faces, mid-morning at home. I look forward to more chats! Now it is 7:30 their time…. I wonder if I should try to skype them? Brian is still trying to rest, so perhaps I will wait until tonight.

Sooon I will shower and we will have breakfast and then visit with my parent’s friend Maggi. She is staying home from church so that we can visit her this morning. I didn’t remember about that when I asked to visit her this morning. I’m grateful that it will work out, though. Today we drive the final 3 hours to our son’s city and meet our host family. Tomorrow at around 10am, we will meet the director and our son!

Regarding the second child, we still do not know if we will be permitted to visit him. If we are permitted to visit him, we do hope to commit to adopting him. Perhaps we will change our minds as more information comes, but how can we say, “We don’t know if we want to adopt two boys” when we already decided that when we committed to Jordan? We have asked God for wisdom and for guidance. We’ve prayed that He will open and close doors and Shepherd us in His will. Thursday, radio songs reminded us that we need to trust God and be willing to go into hard circumstances. Friday, a movie I watched part of (The Adjustors) was about taking advantage of free will to pursue what you are meant to do even when it’s not easy or mainstream. We will take one little step at a time. At thsi point, the biggest hesitation that I have for committing to “Vince” is that it will likely delay our adoption process 1-2 months.

Pray for us! We’ll write more when we can!

Pictures to come.