Saturday September 1, 2007

Hello Everyone:
It is September 4th and I now have time to post the information about the trip home. We awoke at 6:15 AM (10:15 PM Friday evening - Iowa time). Our driver picked us up on time and we arrived at the airport in Kiev by 9:15 AM. The Kiev airport checkin is very different from the US airports. You have to wait with your luggage in the airport until it is two hours before check-in-time and it is posted that you can check-in. This basically allows you to pass through to the check in counter, where you then check your luggage. Oour luggage was under the weight limit and we were thankful. All the luggage is weighed together, not separately like the US. After check-in we went to the gate. Sergey made friends with a Russian speaking girl named Susha. They ran around until time to board the plane. On the plane he made friends with the family sitting in front of us who had a son about the same age as Sergey so they traded electronic toys back and forth during the flight to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam at the gate we met a couple who had just spent two months in Odesa, Ukraine, on the Black Sea visiting the lady's father who is in poor health. The lady is Ukrainian and spoke Russian with Sergey. That helped ease his tension and restlessness. The flight to Minneapolis was about nine hours and we arrived on time at 5:30 PM. Just before we arrived Sergey fell asleep and it was very hard for him to wake up. He was tired, afraid and just generally in a bad mood, which made going thru customs challenging. The customs officer felt sorry for us and passed us through. There are some rewards for having an uncooperative child!!! We picked up our luggage and went to the van. We arrived home in Spencer about 10:00 PM. Ironically enough it was just two weeks almost to the hour that we spent on the adoption process, which is a near record according to our agency people here in the US. Once in the house Sergey had to check out everything and was very happy to find toys and familiar items from his visit in January when we hosted him. He finally crashed about midnight but woke up at 5:00 AM the next morning. That is definitely jet lag sleeping pattern.

Again thanks to everyone for following our journey.
Rex, Liz and Sergey