So Beth's clothes are locked in a shed. She has grown out of all the baby grows I packed.
But no matter! We just cut the feet off. She thinks this is great, but she is seven and a half months old and thus quite easily pleased. She looks equally excited about light switches, my nose, bits of wood and flinging herself backwards without warning.
Oh, where to start and what to say. I want to go to bed so this won't be a long or interesting one but i'm very aware that facebook stati do not a newsletter make. And i can't be bothered to write a newsletter so this will have to do.
John paid an insane man from Poland to drive him to Ukraine. Said man slept for 2 hours but drove for three days and nights, chain smoked (but won't eat white bread because it's bad for his lung cancer), pumped out eastern european dance music and force fed John cheese sandwiches. I'm not sure what to say about the journey, but the fact that the stress of it gave John stomach ulcers/ misc belly pain for days should help illustrate the impact that being held at customs for 7 hours can have on a boy.
After days of being fined for ridiculous stuff and arguing with people, John arrived in Vinnitsya. But our stuff somehow got classified as 'commercial' and thus was seized by local customs. Everything we own is now locked in a shed.
So after a week of Oksana marching about shouting at people, they've said that they know it's personal items but hey ho, we have to pay 30% customs tax on everything. They decide how much it's worth. We find out on Monday how much we have to pay to buy back things like third hand hoodies and a broken sofa.
Every annoying person with a modicum of power wields it with a mighty force. It's all about who has got the rubber stamp, the precious rubber stamp of dreams. And the papers, the legendary papers of faff and the loopholes of merry chase. The corruption and silliness of this part of the move have given us all a laugh.
I say 'laugh' I mean 'hysterical desperate cackling'.
Stupid stupid.
Oh well. Had a good pray yesterday and stopped feeling like at any moment I was going to strop off and humph my way back to England. Got some peace. And some trust. God is big and he loves us.
So...we get the keys to the transition home tomorrow. We've got 6 weeks before stuff kicks off (teams coming from America etc) so we're going to focus on
- making the house more clean and less uggers
- three Ukrainian lessons a week
John paid an insane man from Poland to drive him to Ukraine. Said man slept for 2 hours but drove for three days and nights, chain smoked (but won't eat white bread because it's bad for his lung cancer), pumped out eastern european dance music and force fed John cheese sandwiches. I'm not sure what to say about the journey, but the fact that the stress of it gave John stomach ulcers/ misc belly pain for days should help illustrate the impact that being held at customs for 7 hours can have on a boy.
After days of being fined for ridiculous stuff and arguing with people, John arrived in Vinnitsya. But our stuff somehow got classified as 'commercial' and thus was seized by local customs. Everything we own is now locked in a shed.
So after a week of Oksana marching about shouting at people, they've said that they know it's personal items but hey ho, we have to pay 30% customs tax on everything. They decide how much it's worth. We find out on Monday how much we have to pay to buy back things like third hand hoodies and a broken sofa.
Every annoying person with a modicum of power wields it with a mighty force. It's all about who has got the rubber stamp, the precious rubber stamp of dreams. And the papers, the legendary papers of faff and the loopholes of merry chase. The corruption and silliness of this part of the move have given us all a laugh.
I say 'laugh' I mean 'hysterical desperate cackling'.
Stupid stupid.
Oh well. Had a good pray yesterday and stopped feeling like at any moment I was going to strop off and humph my way back to England. Got some peace. And some trust. God is big and he loves us.
So...we get the keys to the transition home tomorrow. We've got 6 weeks before stuff kicks off (teams coming from America etc) so we're going to focus on
- making the house more clean and less uggers
- three Ukrainian lessons a week
- working out how to get around the city by ourselves like proper grownups
The team are lovely. Proper lovely, and Ukraine is actually very pretty and nice. I think that when we were here last time my mad pregnant hormone brain convinced me that Vinnitsya was full of pointy toothed high heeled witches wanting to beat me about the head with primitive cooking equipment.
It's actually a fairly normal, nice town with some shops and some parks and quite a lot of fountains. Feel a bit silly for panicking so much about moving here - it's somewhat pleasant.
Right I must retire to the boudoire. And don't worry about us - we're bunked up in a flat that's very nice with people who are very nice, and I completely overpacked for our plane trip here so actually me and Beth have LOADS of clothes! Hooray!
love you. xxxxxxxxxx
The team are lovely. Proper lovely, and Ukraine is actually very pretty and nice. I think that when we were here last time my mad pregnant hormone brain convinced me that Vinnitsya was full of pointy toothed high heeled witches wanting to beat me about the head with primitive cooking equipment.
It's actually a fairly normal, nice town with some shops and some parks and quite a lot of fountains. Feel a bit silly for panicking so much about moving here - it's somewhat pleasant.
Right I must retire to the boudoire. And don't worry about us - we're bunked up in a flat that's very nice with people who are very nice, and I completely overpacked for our plane trip here so actually me and Beth have LOADS of clothes! Hooray!
love you. xxxxxxxxxx
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