Traveling!!

In the last 48 hours, I have traveled 1,362 miles to get a new birth certificate listing us as Emily‘s parents and changing her name from Anna Ravlys to Emily Rebecca Mertes. This was necessary because Emily was born in a different region than the region her orphanage is located. It has been a very challenging trip. Reflecting back on it brings to mind the movie “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.” The only mode of transportation from that movie that I didn’t use was airplane.

Tuesday morning started early at about 7:30. We stopped by the court to pick up the court decrees. I spent the day traveling with the other two families while they got birth certificates and passports for their children. This travel was done by car and van. We were so busy that we didn’t get to eat until 7:00pm.

After these documents were obtained, it was time for all of us to travel to Kiev. The other two families are in their final days here and had embassy appointments to make. I was going to continue traveling to the town Ichnya, Emily’s place of birth. The original plans were to travel to Kiev by train. There wasn’t any room on the train so we had to travel to Kiev by bus. A twelve hour bus ride overnight was difficult to put it mildly. I don’t think anybody slept very much during this trip.

In Kiev, the other families checked into their apartment then headed to the Embassy. I got into a taxi with Anya for another two and half hour ride to Ichnya. Upon our arrival, we located the Records office. We went into the office, showed them our paperwork, and requested the new birth certificate with the appropriate changes. The clerk discovered an error on our court decree. Two numbers were transposed on the court decree number. The clerk refused to issue a new birth certificate with this error. We informed them that we traveled a great distance and can’t repeat the trip. An arrangement was made to have the court correct the document and fax it to their office. Then, Anya signed an affidavit stating that she will bring the corrected original to their office.

After getting the birth certificate, we went to the notary to make copies of it. Then, we had to drive quickly to make it back to Kiev in time for my train back to Donetsk. Our driver made good time on the return trip; however, we nearly collided with a cow that had wandered on to the road. The driver couldn’t swerve because another car was approaching in the oncoming lane. He was able to brake quickly enough to avoid hitting it.

We arrived in Kiev with enough time to catch our train. Due to traffic during rush hour, Victor and I used the subway. This was a new experience for me. I was amazed they could fit so many people on those trains. It didn’t seem safe. We arrived at the train station about an hour before our departure. We took advantage of this time to eat dinner before being stuck on the train for twelve hours without anything to eat.

We boarded the train at about 7:05pm. I used the time before departure to try to text Laura while I still had a wireless internet connection. I was able to text her a few times before the connection was lost.