It's What Time?!?!?!

Ok so this is my first time posting to our blog...Amanda usually keeps you all up to date on everything. It is currently almost 1am here in Kyiv and as usually I am awake. I am not taking to the sleep schedule change very well.

Today was a very interesting day. We had the priviledge of meeting the Burman's! What a wonderful and special couple! They are going through some struggles with the other girl that they are trying to adopt out of the institute. They had their SDA appointment yesterday, but we haven't heard yet how that went. Please be in prayer to soften the director's heart of the institute because she is dead set against allowing the Burman's to adopt their little girl!

We had the opportunity to go out to lunch with the Burman's today to a Ukraine buffet. At first I was really excited, especially if you know me and how I get around buffets. But much to my dismay, it was not all you can eat, but we got more food than we could eat and it was very reasonably priced. The buffet worked kind of like an a la carte lunch line.

Interacting has been quite interesting here as well. Between the grocery store and the restaurant, I think we got pegged right away for being American! :) They are very nice and usually put up with me struggling trying to order something from the deli or at the cash register trying to check out. There is a lot of pointing and smiling going on. My Ukrainian language practice before we left the states has been to no avail. It seems the louder and slower I talk, they still don't understand me and I get a lot of wierd looks from everyone else in the store.

I am definitely leaning toward liking the grocery stores over here much more than the ones back in the states, eveything is so fresh here and local. It is reasonably priced, but much is about the same as the states. We are really looking foward to being able to go shopping once we arrive in region in Simeferopol where we hear everything is much less expensive.

I don't want to break it to Amanda yet, but I think I might have found a new love of my life, open faced grilled ham and cheese sandwiches! These things are amazing!! I have never had any cheese like this before in my life, and we come from the dairy state and had some really good cheese. It is yellow like cheddar, but is lighter and has holes in it like swiss. It tastes like a cheddar and swiss cheese combo. If you eat is cold it is great, if you melt it, it tastes even better! Some how, some way I am going to figure out how to get this stuff shipped home...anyone interested in splitting 50 pounds of cheese?!?! :) I will update a picture of the sandwich if time allows before we leave to go down to region.

Tomorrow we should receive our referral in the afternoon and early Friday morning we are flying down to region with the Burman's. We are so blessed to have another couple that knows what's going on and also speaks english! So far this trip has been seemingly flawless. Which has been such an encouragement to Amanda and I, especially seeing all the problems we had with paperwork while we were still in the states. Please keep praying for us and the Burman family as we continute forward together toward getting our babies! We know that without all of the prayer warriors that we have at home, none of this would be possible!

P.S. I know we talked to a few of you at home and Stephanie is on our prayer chain at church. Please be praying for her family as well. She has been one of our biggest supporters in helping us get through this adoption over here. She found out in one day that two of her children are going to need surgery and another is getting pneumonia. Please keep them in your prayers!

That's all for now, hopefully see you all again when we get in region! God Bless!