2nd Christmas, back to school, and Warsaw

We had a really nice "2nd Christmas." Will and the kids went to church, while I watched online. They brought home gift bags for our neighbours. Raia went to a Christmas play at another church with her friends, but the rest of us had a nice Christmas dinner at home. In the evening, after Raia rejoined us, we went around to our closest neighbours to carol. Some of them had been waiting and asking long in advance. This year Asya played her flute for them, too. When we got back to our own house, we took treats over to our neighbour here. The mother and children are in Crimea for the holidays, and we miss them terribly. Their father got them on Skype for us, though, and there was a joyous virtual reunion. (They should be home soon. Hurrah!)

The next day we started back to school. That's going well. Only Bogdan got a cold, so he hasn't been able to go back to music school, but it's not slowing him down otherwise. His teacher was cancelling lessons yesterday, too, because she was sick. I'm hoping all will be healthy to start again soon.

And... Warsaw. We already made our travel plans for Krakow, and that's the only flight anyway. However, when we tried to turn in our visa applications online, we found out that there are no appointments at the Krakow embassy this month or next month. We had to do something, so we applied to Warsaw. Now we'll fly to Krakow as planned, spend the night, and then Will and I will take a train on to Warsaw early the next morning, while our kids spend the day with our friends. When I told Bogdan that they would be staying with our friends for a day without us, he wanted to know if these friends speak Russian. (He calls them "the friends that I don't know," because he was too little to remember anything from the last time we were together.) I told him that no, they don't speak Russian... or Ukrainian. They speak English and Polish. He was upset. I reassured him. Then he gave a big sigh and said, "Well, that's better than Chinese."

We will go back to Krakow that same day, and we're really hoping that we'll have our visas with us. Somehow. But Warsaw apparently takes 10 days to process, although that can be expedited to 5. Could they be ready on that Monday? Maybe Will can go back again alone to get them, just before our flight home Tuesday? Or something. We need lots of prayer, for that part and that our documents here will be ready in time; the offices here can be notoriously slow.