April trip report
Sunday April 29th
Flight back via Budapest to Zurich, with a mess in Budapest… 🙄
Friday April 27th
The road back to Nikolaiev was full of police controls. Vika always gets along well with police. Other than many kilometers there isn’t much news to report today 🙂 . Ah yes, spring finally seems to arrive to Ukraine!
Thursday April 26th
Today, we visited in the name of OBS school internat (boarding school) at Zeleniy Gay and on behalf of LAdS France we visited specialized orphanage ZGO. We decided to finance a new heating system as continuation of the water project.
Little Vika is recovering well three days after her difficult operation.
Wednesday April 25th
Today was a day off! We had to settle some administrative tasks and we walked to city and in parks. After these extremely busy past days we enjoyed to experience Ukraine as a ‘tourist’!
Tuesday April 24th
Today we took Stacey to the morning train to Kiev. After we visited the internat school (boarding-school) of Gradijsk we drove by car to Kharkov, where we met Galina.
Little Vika underwent a 5 hours operation today at KCC. We will know more soon.
Monday April 23rd
We spent the day with the director of the Baby House in Kremenchuk, we discussed the current projects and we bought shoes and clothes for the kids. Stacey conveyed messages of the American families, which adopted children in Kremenchuk, to the director. A well filled day and finally it became a little warmer.
Sunday April 22nd
We met Stacey and her daughter Emily (4 years old, originally from Ukraine) after some initial communication difficulties. We travelled all together to Kremenchuk, where we arrived quite late. Our two Americans suffer from jet lag and the evening was short and all went early to bed.
Saturday April 21st
Very cold day in Kiev where we even had a little snow. We visited the adorable girl Vika in hospital and we have celebrated birthday of the nurse! Vika’s operation is still scheduled for next Monday, her health is now much better.
Friday April 20th
We arrived in Kiev today where we found a suitable apartment quite easily. We survived a heavy rain storm on the motorway and we were fined only once for speeding 🙂 .
Thursday April 19th
The weather is quite cold and windy, yet partly sunny. Today we took Kathrin and Thomas to Odessa, from where they will fly back to Switzerland on Saturday.
The refrigerator was already delivered to Snigurivka this afternoon, as planned. The director was extremely happy and can almost not believe it.
Wednesday April 18th
In the morning, we visited a school in Snigurivka (60 kms east of Nikolaiev) where Olga Igorivna Barkova could complete her desired education. The director is ready to accept Olga although her prior education doesn’t really meet the requirements. Olga still has until August to take her final decision.
In the afternoon, we’ve visited Kherson Baby House to asess the windows replacement project for which phase III is now finished. We also met chief of teachers who showed us the different rooms proposed for the Montessori classroom.
We finished our day buying and organizing transport of a large refrigerator with freezer for the Snigurivka school.
Tuesday April 17th
This morning we picked up Olga Igorivna Barkova at bus station and we’ve visited together two schools in Nikolaiev vicinity. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a suitable school and we had to change all our plans.
At the ministry of education in Nikolaiev we received another address, where Olga Igorivna Barkova could get her education in accounting and computing. Tomorrow we’ll drive there…
Monday April 16th
We paid a long visit to Nikolaiev Baby House where we attended a lesson in Montessori classroom which was realized last year. We all were amazed how kids were learning and were very pleased to notice the huge teaching improvements. We also had a thorough tour of the site where director Olga Ivanovna wants to build a Montessori playground and now better understand her motivation to get it done. Such a project will perfectly complete existing indoor Montessori infrastructure and can only further help children to progress better and faster.
Sunday April 15th
Pascal traveled by train from Fribourg to Zürich, from where he flew together with Tom and his sister Kathrin via Budapest to Odessa. The trip went without problem. In Odessa Vika picked them up by car and they have arrived safely in Nikolaiev.
Pascal is on a new marathon of approximately 2 weeks (from April 15 to April 29) across the whole country.
