Kiev!

We finally made it to Kiev late last night. We are staying in a 1 room apartment in downtown Kiev, not near Independence Square, so we are unfamiliar with where we are.
We are staying near St. Volodymyr's Cathedral which is beautiful.

The past 2 days have been pretty long. Our paperwork chase took us to the village where Kasey was born. We had to get his original birth certificate changed. When we got there on Tuesday it was discovered that the court decree had a mistake in it that 4 different people missed, but the lady at the birth certificate office caught. So, we could not get his birth certificate that afternoon. Also, there was a mistake on the original document that severed the parental rights of the mother, the year was omitted on the document.
Of course all of this happened at the end of the day, so we could not get any documents fixed until Wednesday. The next morning Scott and I with a translator went back to the courthouse to get the document fixed. Took almost 2 hours, and they started working on it as soon as we got there. Ostap, our facilitator went back to the village to find the judge that terminated parental rights to get him to fix that document, which he did. Then Scott and I and a driver drove to the village to get the birth certificate done and pick up Ostap. Long, long day. But it all got done.

We came back to White Church by 3 and had lunch. Then we went to the orphanage to hang out with Kasey and his groupa as he said his good-bye's. He kissed and hugged everybody at least twice. All his caretakers stopped by to say goodbye. We brought him his new clothes to change into. We found a Cars long sleeve shirt that he loves. He was very very excited to put on his own clothes. When we went out the door to leave and put on his jacket he was practically jumping up and down for joy that he was leaving-I had a hard time putting the jacket on him. It was about 8pm by the time we left White Church and started driving to Kiev. He was excited to be in the car. Of course 8pm is his bedtime and he fought sleeping the whole drive into Kiev. He behaved very well.

We do have a wireless connection here, which is nice. But the apartment is not nice, and we decided to find another apartment as soon as possible. Then we may not have a
wireless connection anymore.
It's about 7am here as I am posting. Scott is out looking for food and Kasey is still sleeping. We are going to go get his new passport started today. He gets to have his picture taken again. We are hoping to get the passport expedited, if not, it will be 7 days before that is ready. I am really praying that we get it expedited.