Signed, sealed, delivered

Our dossier has been delivered to our facilitator! This whole "sending of the dossier" thing is quite interesting. We shipped ours FedEx, which is who we used last time. We were told it would arrive by April 16. They got it there a week and a half early, so it only took 6 days (shipped from St Louis on Friday, arrived on Donetsk on Thursday). :) Kostya had said that if we mailed it by last Saturday he would have it by this Saturday, and he was certainly correct!

It's funny to track it online. According to the FedEx website, our dossier made it to Kyiv**, cleared processing (read: customs), and then traveled around Kyiv and was processed four more times. At 10:55am this morning it was cleared for international delivery (in Kyiv) and at 11:00am was delivered (in Donetsk). Donetsk and Kyiv are not close. :) Apparently FedEx does not have a way to update their systems once the document is in Ukraine--they can only list it as in Kyiv and either in processing or in transit until it is delivered. The first time we sent our dossier this freaked me out. I thought our dossier was stuck in customs and I had no idea how to save it. :) :) Kostya reassured me that this is just how FedEx lists their in-transit packages until they arrive at their destination.

I still don't have any idea when our dossier will be submitted, although it won't be until at least the end of this month, most likely later. Ukraine is in a bit of chaos, although we know that they are still giving out appointment dates. Currently it looks like the people who submitted at the end of February are receiving June appointment dates, so we don't anticipate traveling until August (very earliest, highly unlikely) to October. The nice thing is that traveling at that time would cut our airfare prices significantly. I would love to see Ukraine in autumn.

**I should probably mention that "Kiev" and "Kyiv" are the same place. "Kyiv" is actually a more appropriate English spelling, and the US government decided last year to use "Kyiv" instead of "Kiev" as the official spelling.