Back In Sumy

Well, friends and family, here I sit in Sumy on a Saturday night at the internet cafe. After two hard days of running all over the countryside to not only get the proper paperwork but make sure everything is spelled correctly with absolutely no mistakes.....thank goodness for my interpretor, he's really a god-send. Today we found out we have to wait until Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning before Kol has a registered tax number (similar to our SS#) then we apply for his passport which should take 3-10 days. So it's hurry up and wait!!!!
Yesterday will be a day I'll never forget. Anton the interpretor, the driver Alexi and I set off to the town Kol was born in to change his birth certificate. About half way there Alexi's car starts overheating. After a few miles of us adding water via a hand pump on the side of the road, the car can go no more. Well, it's cold outside. Just a bone-chilling cold this old boy from Louisiana has never experienced. Thank goodness we flagged down a car and he was able to pull us to the next village. In the meantime, Anton just wouldn't give up and called the birth certificate office to plead for them to stay late on a Friday night, which they did.....(imagine that). Anton and I hitched a ride with someone to the next town where we find a taxi that takes us to the NEXT town and the certificate office. A lady finally gets our paperwork finished and we're on our way!
We get the taxi driver to bring us back to the town Alexi is in and we pull up to a garage behind a house where they still are working on the car. We finally are on our way again but the car is either running too cold or too hot. We make numerous stops on the side of the road as we travel back to Sumy that night but we finally make it!!!! Friends, you just can't imagine how bad the roads are and you'll be tooling down the road in the middle of the night with dim headlights and all of a sudden someone on a bicycle crosses the road in front of you. I just can't believe there is no "human road kill" on the sides of the road.
Sometimes I think I am going through the pregnancy on this one!!!!
Even though it was a day never to forget, I did see things we just never see at home. The truly simple lives of the country folks riding down the side of the road in a horse pulled wagon carrying hay with the riders sitting up on top of the hay in the extreme cold. Or rivers frozen over and people ice-fishing in fur coats!!! The people are very poor but also very proud, and honest as the day is long.
I visited with Kol this afternoon and was re-assured I am truly a very lucky man. He's really a great little boy.