I know I’ve managed to skip over a few days (and what seemed to me like thousands of hours!) but I wanted to report that we are all in Seattle!  It feels great to be home, although it’s incredibly hard to believe Oatie is gone.  She leaves behind a gaping hole.

Mr. Na and I rode the train from Kramatorsk to Kiev–and from there, we stayed for another day before embarking on a 36-hour journey home.  Let me tell you–we hadn’t planned on a 36-hour journey.  It was the most miserable traveling experience I had ever been through and it’s left me not wanting to travel again for a very long time!

First off, I was sick.  So even the train ride to Kiev was scary.  Between not being able to breathe and feeling flu like symptoms, I was pretty afraid to be traveling alone with Na without Pa.  I woke up sometime during the night with a very bad bloody nose.  I must’ve given my poor schnozz a run for its money what with all the blowing and nasal decongestants I was taking.

I felt ok when we got to Kiev and we went straight to the American Embassy so I could fill out Audri’s paperwork.  The whole thing took only an hour.  Klas then took us to a new apartment, which was the very same apartment we had when we first brought Mr. Na to Kiev!  Of course, he didn’t remember it, but the lady renting it out to us sure remembered Na!  She was amazed–which seemed to be the trend throughout the trip.

I even managed to nap, and when I awoke, a fellow adoptive couple called to see if we could all get together for dinner.  They had just adopted an 8 year-old girl and were heading home in a few days.  I looked forward to getting to know them.

Na and I took the Metro–his fifth underground Metro–and we met the family and shared each other’s experiences over dinner.  Their daughter is lovely.  She seemed to be at ease with Peter even though he couldn’t speak any Russian!  After dinner, we walked around and I noticed that my eyes felt kind of gooey and my vision was getting blurry.  When we said our goodbyes and went back to the apartment, my eyes were hot pink!  I had caught pink eye on top of everything else!

It was 11 p.m. and there weren’t any Aptekas open…plus we were being picked up at 8:15 to go to the airport the next morning and it seemed unlikely anything would be open beforehand.  I was in agony.

The next morning, I woke up at 6–showered, woke up Mr. Na and we headed outside to look for some breakfast.  We found a little kiosk right at the bottom of the Metro steps that sold mini warm apricot croissants.  They hit the spot, but my eyes were still giving me a lot of trouble.

Lucky for me, when our driver picked us up, he told me there was an Apteka in the airport and that he would get me a bottle of Sofradex for my eyes.   Everything was much better until we got to the ticket counter and right after our driver left us, I noticed that instead of our flight leaving at 10:55, it was leaving at 2:40!  I had just given our driver the last of my Ukrainian money to give to Pa when he saw him the next week.  We had five hours to kill in the airport, no money, and very little to eat for breakfast.  I just stood at the ticket counter and cried.

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