Marina and I purchased a house in a suburb of San Bernardino, CA last year.  It has been quite a learning experience for us, as it is our first house.  Everything that could go wrong, did.  Luckily, our husband and wife agent team was very experienced, and they were able to keep the situation under control.  Still, we had some very sleepless nights and I'm surprised I didn't get an ulcer from it.

Our first house is a "fixer upper" and we have been very busy working to make it nice.  We've had to grind down the walls, spackle, sand, primer, paint, remodel, lay down new carpeting, put in a new roof, replace the fence, clean from top to bottom, replace doors and windows, treat two termite infestations, run new electrical wiring and replace outlets and switches, cut and install molding, repair drywall, haul out a junk pile that's been in the back yard for more than 2 years, and the list goes on and on.  Slowly, our home is beginning to resemble a decent place to live.  Our new neighbors are ecstatic about the renovation of the "eyesore at the end of the street".  I'm sure it helps the property values...

Marina is spending a few months in Ukraine right now.  She's helping her mother and grandmother out both financially and physically, as they both need to visit the hospital for various work.  She is helping out with some apartment upgrades for both of them as well.  Grandma now has an old laptop, an internet connection, an ICQ account and email, so Marina can keep in touch with her, once she comes back to America.  Hooking up the internet was an ordeal, as I had to manually splice in the telephone wires to make the connection.  I found that pigtail splices caused more interference, so I did inline splices instead.

After abandoning her for 7 years, Marina's father called from out of the blue to see if he could visit her.  Turns out he wanted a copy of her local Ukrainian passport to help him with getting an apartment for him and his new family.  Marina's mother did some checking with her company's lawyer and found that if she provided the copies, her father would be able to recreate her local passport and then start business ventures in her name, making her legally responisble for all debts incurred by the business.  Needless to say, dad didn't get any copies.  She did give him copies of documents showing her the legal owner of her mother's apartment, which will at least let him proceed with his apartment request.

Now that dad knows that Marina is married to an American, he's decided to pay all the back child support he owes to her mother.  While he says he's doing it to "bury the hatchet", there's an ulterior motive.  Buy paying the back child support, he can later make a claim against his daughter to support him in his retirement.  I have long been pressing Marina and her mother to send the father a document that would release him from his past financial commitments, as long as he gave up claims to Marina's future commitments.  Of course, that's a moot point now, as dad know's that Marina is married to an American.  He'll never sign it now.

Marina still has not accepted America as her new home, but I think that will change.  While she is in Ukraine, she feels as if she doesn't quite belong there anymore.  Her thought processes are now in American, and she has a hard time remembering how to speak sometimes, as she still thinks in English.  This alienation to her old country should encourage her to accept her new one, once she returns back home.  While I was initially worried about whether she would come back or not (it's a 5 month vacation), I feel more confident that she will be more than ready to come home when her time's up.  Her English so far has held up amazingly well, despite only speaking in English 30 minutes 3 times a week.

Hope you find this interesting...

Someone (above) asked what happens when a Ukrainian girl meets Taco Bell, forget that, smarter to put a channel block on the TLC station and all HSN type shows early-on (but you can still tape and watch Junkyard Wars).

Ha, I just recalled one segment where Bob Vila was showing a landscaper around, and was noting how they would need to get rid of this overgrown vine while grabbing hold and pulling at it.  The landscaper says something like "...that's right Bob, we'll definitely be getting rid of that Poison Ivy."  I just had to laugh at old Bob.

Vaughn

Thnx , bro !

; - )

don