Day 28 - On the move again - Saturday Oct. 15

We are finishing our 4th week here in Ukraine! I can't believe it has been almost a month since we left home. Today was the move back to Sumy day. I am so glad we had these last three days with Sergei! Especially since Darren will be flying home after court. Yarik is going back with us to Sumy. We all got some breakfast and packed our stuff. We were still trying to get things together when we noticed taxi Sergei outside. We loaded everything back into his taxi and went off to the bus station. One of the days when we were at the orphanage, they gave taxi Sergei our big suitcase that we had left there with a bunch of coats and hats and gloves, etc for the kids. So this time we had to take that on the bus with us. It was too big to fit into the storage compartment, so we ended up just sitting it in the aisle. This bus was pretty average comfort wise, we were not completely jarred out of our seats at each bump, but our backs could tell we had been riding over bumpy roads for two hours and complained at the result! We arrived back in Sumy early afternoon and were all hungry. We walked our bags back to the hotel and checked back into our familiar room.

Katya and Yarik

In the meantime, Yarik's friend Katya said she was on her way over. We all did some internet time and Darren caught a short nap while we waited for her to come and join us for lunch. When she got there, no one could decide where to go. We started walking down the street and it was really cold. We decided to just go back to the hotel and eat at the restaurant there. We had left all of our food supplies with the Open Arms gals, so we did not have the stuff to really eat in our room.
Darren and I are pretty budget conscious, so we ordered some inexpensive choices. The other two had no concept of prices and ordered some of the more expensive items. Not the most expensive, but not cheap either. While we waited for our food which the waitress told us would take quite a while, since it was middle of the afternoon and they normally did not get these kinds of orders, Darren had gotten an email from his customer and had to go back to the room to get a computer working for them again. The two kids talked and laughed and enjoyed themselves. I sat enjoying their smiles. After quite some time, the waitress brought our soups. Darren had not ordered, soup, so we just ate without him. Next Darren's salad came and I went to let him know. He was in the middle of trying to sort out a problem and said he would come as soon as he could. The other two also got salad and ate theirs. Darren still did not come. Our main meals started to arrive, so I went back down and he cut short his call to come to eat. We had our main dishes and Darren left again while the rest of us finished our meals. I paid the bill, which was the highest one yet and we all went back to the room. Sad thing is, the kids did not really even like some of the things they ordered. I am guessing that they have never had the opportunity to try most foods and have no clue what they might like. I just wish it had not cost so much to find out. Oh well, next time we stick to Pizza! Katya had to get back so she left.
We had called the gals at Open Arms about coming to pick up our stuff. They said around 7 would be fine. Vitaly had come over for a little while to visit as well. He walked with us to the bus stop and we thought he was going along with us. He put us on a different bus than we had taken before and then he walked away! Okay, I guess he knows which is the right one, so we rode this bus and soon saw some familiar buildings. We got off at the right stop and walked to the apartment.
The poor girls were having a tough day! The location that they thought they had for the retreat fell through and they had to find a new place fast. Their building had just had the heat turned on, but to work, each apartment had to drain their radiators for the heat to flow to the next apartment. So neighbors were coming to them demanding that they get theirs working, so the heat would flow through. It was pretty crazy chaos...a little reminder of home! ;-) We visited a few minutes and then Anika called a taxi for us to take our stuff back to the hotel. It was pretty late, and we had planned to go back to see Sergei the next morning, since the train was running again, so we tried to get some sleep.