Pasha- The Guy Who Gets Things Done

Whenever you do business in another country, you need a guy who gets things done. This is the guy who knows people in town, who knows where to go and what to do, and who makes miracles happen. It's their job to do this, and we pay them well. We know a guy like this in East Asia, we've heard of guys like this in other countries, and in Svalyava, we have Pasha.

Pasha's wife works in the orphanage, which is how we were connected to him. He was sent to pick us up at the train station during our first visit, and he invited us to stay with his family (for a price, of course). While we were there, Pasha was not only our driver, he was also the guy who told us where to find the right offices and who to talk to in those offices. If Pasha called ahead, we were always greeted with a smile. While we were gone, Pasha was the guy running around getting paperwork in the right hands, picking documents up from the train for us, and overall making things run as smoothly as possible.

You can't walk from the Pasha's car to a building without him stopping to greet a few people. Pasha is a man who knows people. During the one hour recess of our court hearing, Pasha was right there, making sure we knew how to get things worked out.

While we stayed with Pasha and his family, his wife made us breakfast and dinner each day. We listened to their stories of the Soviet days and the post-Soviet days. Pasha told us about his years as a logger in Siberia. They showed us their photo album of all the other families (mostly Italian) who had stayed with them while adopting from Svalyava. They told us stories of the Orthodox Jewish family from Israel who brought all their own food and cooking utensils. They told us about the family who thought Ukrainians were starving, so they brought suitcases full of food for Pasha and his wife. They made sure we knew that working around a simple egg-allergy was no big deal.

So here's to Pasha- one of the many "angels of our adoption" (as Rob cheesily calls them)- the people who, in their own way, are making sure Cosi finds her way to our home.