Show me the money

Note: This is a long post with nothing new to say about the kids. Thought I would mention that in case you wanted to skip this one!

So…Richard and I both got detained by TSA in the Raleigh-Durham airport. The full body scanner revealed we were both wearing money belts. Mind you, there is nothing illegal (nor dangerous to other passengers – which is, as I understand it, the purpose of airport security) about a money belt. In terms of air travel safety, a money belt is no different than a wallet. So the issue was about the amount of money (even though they never asked me how much money I had nor did they count it themselves) not the belt itself, but it was because of the belt that the money was discovered by TSA. So the simple preventative measure here would have been to put our money belts in our backpacks and put them through the conveyor where it would not have been detected. Had it ever occurred to us that RDU TSA (to clarify, I do mean TSA, not customs) would have an issue with the amount of cash we had (I am not aware of a restriction on how much money you can travel with domestically – which @ this point, no one had even asked for my itinerary or asked me where I was going – but if they had, I was going to DC).  None-the-less, as all of this is going down @ RDU, TSA is intentionally vague about their screening processes for the purposes of keeping the average criminal from plotting some tricky attack. But by default, the average do-gooder such as myself occasionally gets erroneously lumped into the “bad people” group even though I’m nowhere near smart enough to be included in that group! Your average (or even below average) criminal would likely know better than to wear a money belt through a full body scanner if the money wasn’t on the up-and-up. But since my money is on the up-and-up, I was not concerned about my money being detected. I thought it would be an acknowledgement that I had on a money belt, maybe I would have to prove that it was indeed only money (and nothing dangerous), and I’d be on my way. RDU TSA having an issue with the amount of money I am carrying never occurred to me! So next time, I will be more criminal minded and hide the money just like TSA suggested!

The whole very intense debacle went on for probably 30 minutes. It was all very confusing. No one would really tell us what they were doing nor would they tell us what they considered us to have done wrong – and believe me, I asked! We provided every piece of information they asked for including our passports, my driver license (which I realized later I was not obligated to provide because I had already provided my passport and I am not required to travel with my driver license), and our original I-171H which is Homeland Security’s approval of us to adopt Ukrainian children as proof of why we had the money. And still, I didn’t understand what was going on as we stood there while they wrote down all of the information they could about us (on a legal pad) and made “phone calls”.

A little advice for those of you who may come after us, take the wrapper from the bank off of your money. Having the wrapper on your money gives the amount away at one glance. Also, look into bringing some of the money in thousand dollar bills. I don’t know if this is feasible, but it makes your stack look smaller.

I have to admit that I’ve always been confused about the money thing . The maximum amount has always been unclear to me (US vs Euro – I was told it was Euros which means in US dollars it is more – but with exchange rates changing all of the time, how do you know how many US dollars a Euro translates to?). Plus, we could never find the Euro thing in writing. But I felt confident in my understanding that the money was to be declared to customs upon entry into Ukraine; not to security upon exiting the US. And while the TSA screeners wouldn’t directly respond to our questions about what we had done wrong, I did get the impression we should have already declared the money (to whom I do not know) but I still don’t know for sure… because in the end, we did not declare the money in RDU and they let us go.

In general, it was a bad experience that didn’t need to happen. It was crazy. And disturbing. And boy did it set the tone for our anxiety levels as we passed through customs in Ukraine (more about that in a minute). And all that for what? There never was any increased risk to anyone!

So with our anxiety levels heightened, you can imagine my panic when during our 6 hour layover in DC, a bunch of authorities showed up with a dog in our boarding area. I’m thinking “What is wrong with these people? I haven’t done anything wrong! It’s *my* money and I’m a good person trying to do something good!” You know, all kinds of stuff goes through your head! But they weren’t for me. Someone had left an empty backpack one row over from us in the boarding area. I can tell you that paranoia is all consuming when it kicks in…

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We had an overnight flight to Frankfurt but didn’t get any sleep. Note: when you’re seated in the last row of the plane and they tell you your seat reclines, they mean just a little but not enough to make a difference L). But the good news is we got through DC and Frankfurt without any additional attention to our money belts.

In the mean time, we do a little more research about the money limit and only find information that raises our anxiety levels. Our prayers were that we would get through Ukraine customs without being asked to count our money (because by this point, we realize we’re pretty sure we have too much). We do realize that no one else that we know of who has come before us has had to count their money @ customs in Ukraine, but then, no one else had the issue we did @ RDU. So we’re feeling like green martians and not the least bit confident that we wouldn’t have another “encounter”.

Passing through Passport Control in Ukraine was slow but otherwise painless. We quickly & easily located all three pieces of our luggage (so two huge Yays! We are on the ground safely in Kiev and we have all our luggage!). The only remaining obstacle is passing through customs with our money which is, despite considering lots of alternatives, still in our money belts on our person. We fill out the declaration forms and indicate we have the maximum amount of money we can bring into the country (and Ima tell ya’, we had more than we declared but what do you do?!). And we pray nothing happens that would reveal our lil’ “accounting” error. So you can imagine when the customs agent looks at my forms and says to me (while emphatically nodding his head up & down) “You each have ten thousand US dollars?”, I emphatically nod and reply “YES”! Because, well, we do… And I emphatically nod at Richard who emphatically nods also. (It was kinda like doing “the wave” but in a more bobble head way!) We were being extended some much needed grace. Or maybe they simply do not care. Either way, I’ll take it! And for that, Mr. Bobble Head Customs Man, I will spend all of my money (even the money I didn’t tell you about) in your lovely country!! When Mr. Bobble Head Customs Man hands us back our declaration forms & dismisses us, we all but run toward the exit door! And just on the other side of the exit door is the “I’ve got you from here” face of my facilitator! Ahhh…such relief!!

Our facilitator drove us to our apartment & helped us get settled in. The apartment is adequate in size but the décor and some of the functionality is not what we are accustomed. I guess it’s part of the charm… More importantly, it works for us for the next few days!

A bit about Kiev if you’ve never been here, it’s a large city (3 or 4 million people). Most of the buildings appear to be very old and most are not charming at all. There are some nice architectural details on most of the building but the paint colors aren’t really appealing and paint is peeling and bricks are crumbling. There are AC units or venting or something sticking out of windows and sides of building. And there are fire escapes everywhere. And there are electrical wires (they would NEVER meet US building codes – they totally scream “FIRE”!) and there are water & gas pipes sticking out of everywhere. None of this in-and-of-itself makes the buildings unappealing but, all of things are done to the buildings with such randomness. Fire escapes aren’t always ugly (or even noticeable) if they are installed properly and are consistent throughout the same building. That’s not the case here. It is not like the US where we go to great effort to build our utilities into the structure so they cannot be seen. Also, repairs or additions to building (such as awning or entry ways) are not well integrated into the building and ultimately takes away from the appearance. The long & the short of it is the city (at least what I’ve seen so far) lacks charm and, unfortunately, it is quite dirty. But it does feel fairly safe. Oh, and there’s plenty of parking. Parking on the sidewalks is pretty common and there do not appear to be parking police here they way we are used to in the US.

There is an entry door to our apartment building that has a code to enter. We don’t know the code, so we have to ask the “concierge” (I think that word has a different meaning here – or at least, it does in our apartment building!) let us in. She has this tiny little room right inside the building and it appears as though it’s where she lives! I usually say a few words to her in English and she just nods (am I in bobble head land?). Maybe I’ll figure out how to say something polite to her in Russian.

Once you enter the building, there is an elevator. It’s tiny and scary (I’ll take a picture but I’m just sure it won’t do that real thing justice!). Three people can get in the elevator at one time but not without touching each other. We’re only on the third floor and prefer the steps anyway. About the steps, I can easily see how our friend fell and injured herself while she was here. Every surface you walk on is uneven. There are wooden platforms here & there that I guess are an effort to reduce the unevenness of some places, but they create their own inherent risk! The boards are sometime rotted. Many of them have gaps between them and most of them have loosened up and are unstable. Even inside the apartment, transitions from one type of flooring to another (and there are several of these) are not level. Maybe I could appreciate Kiev a little more if I could look up instead of down all the time!

The door to our apartment is doubled (not as in, if you open them both you have a wide entry, but as in you have to open them both to pass through the doorway). The exterior (to the hallway) door is wrapped in black leather (probably faux) and has two locks. They are a bit hard to use. I’ll take a picture of the key and post it. It’s quite “primitive”!

We’ve eaten at two restaurants in Kiev. The first one was O’Briens, an Irish pub (I’m easing my way into the Ukrainian culture!) and the second was called Double Coffee. They both had menus in English and the staff spoke enough English to accommodate us during our dining experiences.

For me this is a HUGE negative; there is cigarette smoking EVERYWHERE here. You simply cannot avoid it the way you can in the US. There is smoking in all restaurants. It truly ruins a good meal. It’s just gross… So we bought ham & cheese & bread to make sandwiches but couldn’t find the mayo in the market. We saw Nutella (they had some other versions of Nutella that were “swirled” – I don’t know what was swirled in but it looks yummy!) but indeed, no peanut butter!

The women in Kiev dress mostly in black, super mini mini-skirts and stiletto heeled boots. It is mind boggling when you consider that all of the sidewalks are either broken and uneven or they are cobblestone and broken. I’ve also seen quite a few women wearing shorts with pantyhose (who does that?!) and boots.

It’s still cold here, not frigid but still very chilly.

Our first night here neither of us slept all that well despite being exhausted. We went to bed really early (I’m not sure but it was no later than 8:00) and I woke up @ 10:00. Of course I was looking at EDT, so initially I thought it was 3:00 but then I saw the “PM” and realized I had to add 7 hours.  The building we are in has radiant heat (I’m not sure who controls the temp – it’s very warm though!) and it’s quite noisy and VERY DRY. So that, coupled with a VERY FIRM bed, made it hard for us to get the rest we are so desperate for L. Maybe tonight…

Our SDA appointment is tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5^th @ 10:00am. We will request a referral to go to the orphanage to meet our son. We’ll probably also get to find out a little more about our daughter too but we will have to come back to Kiev to actually get a referral to go to her orphanage. Referrals aren’t ready to be picked up until the end of the following day. So Wednesday afternoon we’ll pick up or referral and get on the overnight train to his orphanage to meet him on Thursday!