Goodbye Kherson

Monday, December 22

Ira came a little after 8:30 to pick me up, then we picked up Alexander from the boarding school and then to the Tax I.D. office. Ira went into the Tax office, while we waited in the car. After a little while she came back to get me to sign the ledger, but first we had to make a copy of my passport. There was a office supply across the street from the Tax office. We are almost running from one place to the other to get back to the nice lady at the Tax office. There are two guards that you have to pass and I show my passport, they give me the head nod and we go down the hall to the office. Ira fills out a paper, I sign the ledger and in about 15 minutes we are done. The nice lady is going to send the info to Kiev today. Yea! Two down two to go. We rush back to the taxi and off to the passport office. Alex and Ira go in and I wait in the car with our driver. Ira rushes out to get me and we rush back in. Alex is waiting in the office. This takes a little while, we have another problem with Alex’s middle name not being the same as the Tax I.D. office, finally Alex’s picture is taken and I sign the ledger. Ira tells me to go to the car with Alex and she is trying to find out about the Registration office. When she gets to the car she says we need to go back to the tax office to fix the problem with the name and after awhile she is back. She suggest for Alex to go the apartment with me, while she pursues the document chase. Alex again very excited to be with us and in our small apartment. Jacob and him play, they watch cartoons, eat lunch, and play with the PSP. We had a good time. Alex is very interested in the computer but doesn’t know what to do. We are going to have fun when we get home to show him how it all works. Ira calls around 4:00pm and says that we had told the boarding school that Alex would be spending the night there. So she sent the taxi to pick us up. Jacob and I take Alex back to the boarding school and then are taken back to our little abode.
Ira comes back to the apartment by 6:00pm and we find out that she has been fairly successful. The registration document will be ready tomorrow and then she will take it to the passport office. The passport office with hopefully send it off to Kiev by Wednesday. This will give them two days to work on it and then send it back here to Kherson. We have been in Kherson for Four weeks and we are getting to leave tomorrow night Yea!. We are very happy to have a change of scenery. We are hoping that the passport will be ready by December 29th and we then could plan to come home on January 1st. This is still a great unknown. Maybe tomorrow Ira can find out more