The Road to Priluki

Now for the next leg of our journey…

On Thursday morning, the 6th of August….Rich and I were sleeping off our jet lag, when someone came pounding on our door! It was 9am- time to pack our bags and leave this joint! You have to be ready to move at a moments notice- we had no idea when we were going to meet Mira! Nicholai, our driver/translator, took us to Priluki which is two hours away from Kiev.


The drive was interesting. Ukraine has beautiful countryside- no high-rise buildings, no road construction (not really any decent roads either), lots of green trees and fields. We passed sunflower field after sunflower field. Beautiful!!! The flowers are harvested for sunflower oil and seeds as well as the flower. The people of Ukraine LOVE flowers!

We stopped at a sort of “rest stop” for coffee. Nicholai brought me out this cute little cup of “kaffe.” Not at all like a big StarBucks, eh?

Rich and I laughed at the outhouse behind the rest stop. We think WC must stand for water closet. These signs are seen quite often on restrooms. You won’t catch me using one of these!!!

Our drive came to a halt, thanks to this:

Interesting. Every man…or cow…for himself over here. And really, that is true. I hold on tight when I’m in a car over here- it’s insane. Very few traffic lights or painted stripes on the roads. No idea of the traffic rules, it seems like everyone just fends for themselves in order to get to where they want to go. SCARY!!!! Swerving all over the road to miss the potholes, creating a third lane of traffic just so your car can squeeze through, parking on sidewalks….

Once we got to Priluki, we headed straight to the orphanage after picking up the regional Inspector (minister of the Rights of Children). It is a really nice place- I’ll have more photos to show you later. We met with the Director (whose name is Lidia) and the chief medical officer of the orphanage. They are very nice ladies. All the workers in contact with the children are women. We have seen a few handymen around the place, though. We were able to explain why we have a heart for special-needs children and they just loved hearing about Lauren and seeing our family photo album. We are the first family to EVER adopt a special-needs child from this town but there are a couple of families right behind us!!! Reeces Rainbow is going to make such an impact on this place! It really is a wonderful town and the we have been very impressed with the orphanage.

We were able to meet Mira for the first time that morning, for just a bit. She was very scared, since there were quite a few people on the room- two of them being men (Rich and Nicholai). She’s a tiny little doll!! Very fine pale blond hair and big light blue eyes. Sweet natured, with a streak of fun!

Here are some photos I took of Mira and Rich the day after we first met her:

After the initial meeting, we headed to the only hotel in town. It’s nice and we feel safe there. There is a restaurant downstairs that seems to cater to all the parties on town, so we have only been able to eat there once. But we’ve managed to find a few other good eats around here- I’ll post those later!!!

I need to take photos of the hotel and some of the street vendors- y’all would enjoy seeing those! Life is so different here, but nice. People take the time to socialize, no one is in a hurry- yet everything necessary gets done. Hmmm….we Americans could learn from that.