Sightseeing in Kharkov...Day 18

Sorry, no pictures today...we are having some technical problems...we'll try to add some in the morning. We have a great one of Tom holding Elizabeth :-) and one with her mouth full of banana!

We just got back from visiting with Elizabeth. We got there early today and she was in the playroom by 4:45pm. She did NOT cry when she came to us today!!! Yeah. It wasn’t long before she was playing with us and, of course, eating. She likes to eat. Today we took a banana and she ate the entire thing! She’s a little piglet! She was letting Tom hold her tonight. It was so precious to see the two of them playing together! Melted my heart! We were able to try her new coat on, size 12 months and it fit great and I held the 18 month size clothes up to her, and they will be plenty big. Then, about 6:00 one of the caregivers came in and Elizabeth ran to her and that was it for us for the night. Tomorrow we’ll go back and try again.

This morning we went down to the internet café to read on the blog. So neat to hear news from home! At 10am we met Misha (one of our translators) downstairs and we went in the taxi with Slava (the driver) and he showed us a few sights around town…some statues, a miracle fountain (if you look at it when the sun in shining just right you will see a miracle…told Tom we could see Elizabeth without the fountain…she’s our miracle), more cathedrals (beautiful in the sunlight…in Kiev it was always cloudy so we could see the shining gold roofs there), the Organ Building (where they build organs), and the Opera House. He told us the square that in outside of our hotel is the largest city square in Europe, and the 2nd largest in the world (the zoo that we went to on Monday is part of the square).

He took us to The History Museum. The first part began 10,000 BC with archeological findings of bones (animals and humans), tools, weapons, jewelry, and pottery. It was all very interesting. On the second level of this beautiful building were displays about WWII. In 1941 the Germans came to Kharkov and took over the city until the spring of 1943, when the people of Kharkov reclaimed it. Soon the Germans sent more troops and took it over again until August 23, 1943 when the city of Kharkov beat the Germans for good. They have a street here in Kharkov named “August 23rd Street.” More than 500,000 lives were lost during WWII in the USSR (270,000+ military and 170,000+ were civilians). There were pictures of the war where you could see the hotel where we are staying in the background. Our hotel, ‘The Hotel Kharkov’, was built in 1936 so it was a fairly new building at that time and was (and still is) a very large building. There were also pictures of the people they had killed by hanging them from storefronts along the streets. It was sad to see all of that, but I really admire them for fighting so hard to keep their country. Elizabeth will be proud of her people some day.

After we left there we went to a huge children’s store. We got a really cute, soft winter coat for Elizabeth (that her daddy picked out :-) for $20 and another toy (Tom wonders if we will be able to get all these toys home and claims I am spoiling her, but I think we are just trying to build her trust…and spoil her…I’ve been waiting a long time for this, right?).

Misha and Slava then took us to the WWII Memorial on the northeast side of Kharkov. It was very beautiful and peaceful there. Two large stone carved statues were at the entrance and then we walked down a long granite path that was lined with pine trees (Tom kept saying “it smells so good!”) to ‘The Mother of the Homeland’ statue. She represented all the mothers that lost sons who were soldiers in the war. We could hear a thump-thump every few seconds and Misha said that was her heart beating. Next to her was a long wall with carvings on it which is where many of the dead were buried during and after the war. It was very interesting to see the history of Kharkov and to see how many different times the Kharkov region belonged to different countries (once it was part of Poland, once it was part of USSR, once it was part of Lithuania, and I think there was more even) until finally in 1991 the Ukraine became it’s own country.

After that Misha asked if we wanted to go for lunch and well, you know me, I can always eat. He took us to a very fancy Ukrainian restaurant and helped to order or food and then he left us to eat alone. I started with Krass (a national drink) which he explained was water made with bread and said it was very good. Well, we both drank some, but then we went back to Coca Cola. For our appetizer we split a bowl of borsch (beet soup) which was fgoosnea (which means delicious)! It really tasted great. It had beets (which you really couldn’t taste), other vegetables, and meat stock in it. It came with sour cream on the side that we stirred in. It tasted kind of like stew. It came with special bread (sorry, I can’t remember the name of it) to eat with it. For our main course, Tom had salmon with almond crust and I had a chicken breast covered with vegetables (red peppers, onions, cabbage) and cheese. We also split a baked potato with salted pork fat (this is also a national dish). It was very good and very filling. We couldn’t eat it all. It only cost 79 khrivna (pronounced grivna) which is only about $16.

We have some questions about Elizabeth, so we wrote them down and Misha translated them into Russian and we asked the caregivers tonight, like…how much does she weight? How tall is she? What size clothes does she wear? And what does she like to eat? We can read that she weighs 9.9 kg (21.8 pounds) and is 76 cm tall (30 inches) but the rest of the answers will have to be translated to us by Misha.

Then we went back to the hotel around 2pm to await our visit with Elizabeth. The weather this morning was beautiful, warm, and sunny; later it was overcast and looked like rain. I’m glad we enjoyed the beautiful weather while we could.

Last night we realized we have been here for 18 days, which hopefully means we have crossed the half way mark and have fewer days to stay than what we’ve been here. YEAH! Still no word on the court date.

We love you all and miss you greatly! Tom, Valerie, and Elizabeth