Friday, July 2, 2010

No clearance yet but an interesting dinner

Well the bummer is that our Interpol clearance did not come through yet. The processes don't map up time wise so the first SDA appointment was 6/23 but we were only at the 28th day in Interpol clearance space, and they require that you allow up to 40 days, so we have been waiting for that and the 40th day is 7/06. So, we will not be in court on 7/05, hopefully on 7/07 and last resort on 7/08. Craig has a flight out the night of 7/08 so please send some prayers our way that the timing works out. It is frustrating that everything was going so smoothly in the beginning and we've hit this snag.

We were going to camp in the afternoon so we went to the local bank to exchange $$(completely on our own) and met a young woman who heard us speaking English. She asked if she could help us ---and it turns out she worked at Hershey Park when she was in college for the summer. She loves to speak English and walked us to the local marketplace where we ran into Larissa, Sergei's teacher; we are becoming locals. Larissa tapped Dana on the shoulder, Dana turned around and inadvertently tapped another woman in the head and got chewed out in Russian for about 60 seconds. We decided with Larissa and her husband to all have dinner together tomorrow night and Yanna (the delightful young woman) can be our interpreter!

We did spend the day at camp INSIDE THE GATE and just hung with Sergei and his friends. Thanks to those of you who sent birthday cards and I am sure there are more on the way. We went over to the orphanage and picked up 11 and delivered them to camp. He had a blast opening them and reading the messages. There was a show @ camp celebrating the forest with music and dancing....Sergei tried to blow it off to play soccer (futbol) but got reeled in by the head counselor. He then got some soccer in with socks with more holes than you could imagine, along with a very dirty goalie shirt and we sat on the sidelines and cheered.

So..here is the dinner deal. We have been eating mostly in the hotel and decided to walk to a restaurant very close by that had outdoor dining. Upon arrival, we realized that the menu was all in Russian and we couldn't read it, so we said thank you and began walking away. A guy called for us and told us that he could speak English and could help us intepret the menu. His name was Valery and his English was not good at all. He also was smashed but harmless. He kind of sort of helped us pick out a chicken dish (which WAS one of our best meals ever) and then sat and attempted to talk about World War II, the Flyers, why the heck we were in Severodonetsk (we said we were visiting a friend who was a teacher---easier that way), how old we were, if we wanted to do vodka shots....again, harmless but not how we anticipated our night to go. You gotta figure that some of this stuff is bound to happen on a three week trip!

We should have a more positive update on the local scene after dinner with Yanna tomorrow night! And again...any Interpol connections???? Send them our way.

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