Talk About a Bump in the Road!!

OK, so I am going to go back a couple of days to Monday just so you can get the jist of what it has been like the past couple of days. I forgot to mention in my last post that we woke up Monday morning to no hot water so none of us could shower. We went to visit "R", which from now on I will call Roman because he is legally ours, only to have him give us attitude for both visits. No hugs, quite defiant and all that goes with that. We started to think he didn't like us any more :) We left there to go to the internet to check on our plane tickets... and nothing. I tried to call my sister who has been the liason for booking our trip home (God bless her!) and got to talk to her for about 30 seconds when my cell phone lost the connection. I had just put a new minutes card in but apparently it didn't work. I couldn't call our facilitator, my sister or anyone to help with the tickets. The best part of this day was we went out for dinner with a couple we met from Manitoba (yes, English speaking halleluiah!) We had many good laughs over our adventures with the language barrier and trying to communicate with the children.
We got home about 9:30 and my sister called 2 minutes later on the apartment phone. I just started to say how glad I was that she called because my phone didn't work and we lost the connection. We waited and waited for her to call back hoping she would have good news about our tickets. She finally got through again and said our agent had 3 tickets booked but I had to call the RBC Rewards myself because my ticket was booked through them. Good in theory... except I couldn't call out on my phone. She called RBC and got them to call me on the apartment phone (which by the way I can't call long distance on). By this time it is 2:00 a.m. here and needless to say I am a bit stressed. RBC called and informed me that to change the return date on my flight it would be $3000.o0. I just about fell off my chair. She was very nice but said that was the best rate she could come up with. (By the way, this will be a very long post so feel free to stop reading anytime:) I asked her to call our travel agent because of course I can`t call out and she said she can`t make outbound calls. It could have been the fact that I was almost in tears and saying `You mean I am in this country and can`t get home unless I pay $3000.00`that got to her, so she phoned our travel agent. She still couldn`t get the price he did so she finally called Air Canada direct and got a rate of $417.00. Whew... another crisis under control. So, we wake up the next morning, and still no hot water. We boil some water and do our best at sponge baths (not so good compared to a shower). We do some final running around with our facilitator for paperwork, then go to pick up our little man about 1.5 hours before the train leaves. We get to experience the McDrive (McDonalds) again because that is all we have time for. We pick up Roman and he was pretty excited. We put his new clothes and shoes on and he is ready to go. The orphange director and deputy director say goodbye to Roman and of course, I cried. Roman was soo-oo excited about the train and was actually pretty good. He didn`t go to sleep until 11:00 but understandable seeing as this was his first train ride. Oh, by the way, as luck would have it there were no 2nd class train tickets, so we had to pay 3 times as much for 1st class (no matter what class you are in, the bathrooms are still disgusting). I have retrained my bladder since we have been here... 16 hours in no problem!!
We meet with our main facilitator and that goes pretty good. We get to our new apartment with internet (which is why I am doing such a long post) and a couple of English channels. It is really nice and the landlady speaks English and is very helpful. Well, we no sooner get here and the driver says he is suppose to take my to meet our other facilitator at the Canadian Embassy (keep in mind that I haven`t had a shower in 3 days) so I freshen up in 3 minutes and head out the door because only one of us goes to the Embassy. In the meantime, Dan and Syd are holding down the fort at the apartment with Roman who by this time is going beserk checking out all the light switches, plus ins and oh yeah, the bath tub. We get to the Embassy and if you can believe it, I don`t have our passports (again) as Dan always carries them and we are always together. Our facilitator gives me all of the documents before I discover I have forgotten ours. We get our passports and on the way back to the Embassy, I am looking through the documents that `Y`gave us and can`t find Roman`s passport. I call and she says its there but I am looking and it isn`t. We pick her up, go back to the Embassy as she thinks I may have dropped it but I know it wasn`t in the package to begin with. She goes home on the metro to check her apartment to see if she left it there and in the meantime the driver wants to know where I want to hang out while we wait for here and the tears start (not him... me!:) So he goes to where the market is by the SDA and thinks it would be therapuetic for me to walk around (he doesn`t know what else to do with this woman who is crying) and look for souveniers... wrong, that was the last thing on my mind. To shorten the story a bit, the passport was never found and `Y`is on the overnight train right now going back to Donetsk to get another one. Can you spell `MELTDOWN` In the meantime, Roman is slowly destroying our new apartment. He picked up the phone to talk, dropped the receiver and it fell apart. No more phone in the apartment. Dan goes out to find a supermarket because we have no food and can`t find one. In the meantime, Roman loves the tub so much he decides he`s going in again... clothes off in 3.2 seconds and in the tub. I say no and firmly hold the tap so he can`t turn it on. Well, 20 minutes later, guess who is getting a shower... yes, Roman won the fight. So after that, Dan, Roman and I (Syd opted to stay home for some reason:) head to the market to point and purchase the bare necessities for the night and head home. Roman is being really good now and is very tired so I gave him a piggyback home and Dan and I both thought he would be ready for bed soon... no such luck. He got into the apartment and got a new burst of energy! This time though, he wasn`t destructive and we played scary monster, hide and seek and whatever else we could think of in between. The little darling is snoring as I type this.
So, the bottom line is please say a little prayer for us that we get the new passport in time to get our paperwork from the Canadian Embassy, so we can make the flight that took 3 days to book on the 15th of July. Sorry for the long post but it has been an eventful past couple of days.