One Year Ago, Settling in

Once we knew we were staying in Dniprodzherzinsk to adopt, Yana wanted to find us other places to stay. I was happy and comfortable at the hotel, but it didn't have a kitchen, laundry facility, or English TV. She said she had an apartment for us to look at. She said it was a nice, safe place with 2 bedrooms, kitchen, laundry, cable TV for $75.00 a night. Being thrifty I really just wanted to stay in the hotel. It was cheaper and I didn't plan on doing much cooking anyway. Later Yana negotiated the price of the apartment to $50.00 a night so I agreed to see it. (Jon didn't care either way). I knew it would be easier for Yana to be able to stay with us when she was in town. The apartment was very nice. New furnishings, new "European" kitchen, etc. It was on the main street in town within a couple of miles to the orphanage, and it was owned by the orphanage doctor. It had two huge entry doors, one on top of the other, with an elaborate system of locks using giant skeleton keys. We were told to never open the door for anyone. This was supposed to be a prestigious apartment, was this type of security necessary??? Anyway, sure we'd stay there, it was nice.

We packed up our stuff at the hotel and went back to move into the apartment. The doctor, Luba and her husband were there to show us around. As it turned out this actually was THEIR apartment where they lived. It seemed a bit awkward displacing them, but the salaries are so low there it would be a huge sum of money for them and they would live with their son.

They were the nicest couple we met on the whole trip. Very genuinely kind and friendly. Luba was very short and stocky with red hair, a huge smile, very talkative, and had very nice fur coats. Nikoli was tall and thin, more reserved, quiet and gentle. Neither of them spoke or understood one word of English. Luba proceeded to show us around the apartment talking a hundred miles an hour in Russian, smiling and laughing. She would point to something and say very deliberately JA- O -N, or S-H-A-L-I in a French sounding voice. There was a clothes line in the main hallway, about 12 feet above the floor and there was a step ladder to use to get the clothes up there. The kitchen had an oven, but she didn't know how to light it. The washing machine was in the bathroom and drained directly into the bath tub (we saw this everywhere). There was a nice TV with a satellite dish. Well, maybe we would get by.

Yana arranged for Luba's son Vlad, to drive us to the orphanage each day. We would walk in the morning every day and Vlad would drive us in the afternoon as it would be dark (and cold!) Vlad was a nice guy but also spoke no English. He could only say Hello and Goodbye, but he was there without fail each day to drive us to and from the orphanage. We were never sure what he did for a living but he seemed to be available all the time and had more than one cell phone. There were some very expensive cars behind our apartment building, we don't know who these people were but we called them "mafia". Weren't sure if it was a good or bad thing to share a building with "mafia"!