In March of last year I shared some big news. I announced that we would be pausing our Airbnb and remodeling our above-the-garage apartment into a space for a Ukrainian refugee family.
Three months after their arrival I shared all the details of how this has changed our finances.
Now that our Ukrainian friends have been with us for over a year (almost 15 months!), it’s time to give you an update on how it’s going. Thank you to those of you who reached out to ask about them. I love your care and concern.
It’s so much easier to talk about people using names, so I will give them names in this post. To maintain privacy, these are not real names.
- Olena -mom, early 40s
- Ivan -son, 17
- Nadiya- daughter, 12
- Alina- daughter, 2
First Impressions
I have very distinct memories of our first night with our Ukrainian friends. They had been on planes and in airports for something like 36 hours and were absolutely exhausted. Just getting through immigration and customs in San Francisco took over 4 hours!
All of our people (little and big alike) were going stir crazy waiting in the airport. The kids rode the escalator hundreds of times while one of us kept an eye on monitor showing the exiting passengers because for the entire four hours we always expected them to be the next people to appear!
When they finally emerged, we smothered them with hugs that I don’t think they were expecting. They were a little frantic because some of their luggage was missing. Losing luggage is never fun, but when you have whittled down your whole family’s possessions to 4 suitcases, it’s even more stressful when half of them are missing. Thankfully we found the missing suitcases locked up in the baggage office because it had taken so long to get through security.
Ever since we made the decision to sponsor a Ukrainian family, I had been studying Ukrainian on Duolingo. While I wasn’t kidding myself to think a 200-day streak meant anything close to fluent, I still expected we would be able to communicate better than we actually could. Plus, if I spoke English slowly and simply enough, then they would be able to understand me, right?
I couldn’t have been more wrong! Besides some school English spoken in a thick accent by Ivan, we couldn’t understand each other at all. As we drove home in the dark in our new-to-us 15-passenger van with almost everyone nodding off, I wondered what we had gotten ourselves into! This was going to be way harder than I had thought!
The good news is that it pretty much got better from there.
Communication
In the beginning all of our communication required the help of Google Translate.
Sitting on the couch together, Olena and I would pass a phone back and forth as I would ask her about their experience fleeing Ukraine and help her make plans for living here.
Having a front row seat to Nadiya’s language acquisition was fascinating. She is a very bright girl with a knack for language. She has an outgoing personality, is not afraid to make mistakes (the biggest hold up for most language learners), and wants to be involved in everything. She spends most days playing with my kids and has quickly become like one of the siblings. Now she talks a mile a minute just like my kids.
School/Employment
Since Olena spoke no English when she arrived, we felt it was more important for her to focus on learning English than jumping right into finding a job. Not having to worry about housing, utilities, food, healthcare, or transportation costs, she could focus all of her attention to learning English.
And she did! She took the bus two hours each way, five days a week to attend an in-person intensive English school. As a diligent student she also spent hours of her free time studying and practicing.
After 11 months focused solely on learning English, Olena found a full-time job as a housekeeper at a hotel. She continues to study English through the school’s online program.
I enrolled the kids in the same schools that my kids attend. Ivan worked with my oldest son for some of his yardwork clients. During the summer my son has been busy with sports and activities, but Ivan has continued to add weed whacking and brush clearing clients.
Driving
Being from a small village in Ukraine, Olena mostly walked or rode bikes or scooters to get around. She had very limited driving experience. Where we live, on the other hand, a car is an absolute necessity.
For the first 10 months, Mike or I would drive Olena to the bus stop (about 7 miles away) every morning and pick her up in the afternoon. Anytime she or the kids needed to go to the store, doctor, or dentist, Mike or I drove them. I drove the kids to school, sports practices, and other activities.
As you can imagine, this was challenging for both us as the drivers (already busy driving of our own 6 kids all over the place) and Olena as an independent adult who didn’t want to impose or be a burden.
Learning to drive and getting her drivers license was a huge step for Olena!
Since she had very limited driving experience, she took some lessons with a driving instructor (who spoke Ukrainian!) in addition to practicing driving with me and Mike. (To make it fun, our oldest daughter was doing driver training at the same time, so we had a lot of student driver experience packed into those months!)
After being here about 10 months, Olena got her drivers license! In preparation for that step into independence, she had been saving for a car. While she didn’t have enough English yet to get a job, she was getting about $1000 a month from the California Welfare to Work program, a limited term assistance program that helps people learn job skills and financial habits while they’re preparing to enter the workforce. With a $4,200 budget we had to look for a while to find an older, smaller car without any apparent major mechanical issues. After about a month we found a car several hours away in another state. We initially bought it in our name so we could put it on our insurance and drive it home. Later, we transferred it to her name and she got her own insurance.
With a license and a car for Olena, all of our lives have change significantly! She can do her own shopping and drives herself everywhere she needs to go. She can take Ivan to his boxing training every day from 6 to 8, which is a huge load off of me!
With a license and a car, comes the cost of insurance, registration, gas, and repairs. Before shopping for a car, Mike made a spreadsheet and walked her through estimates of overall ongoing costs depending on fuel efficiency, expected repairs, insurance, and everything else. Although we usually just talk in English now, we used Google Translate for some of that conversation. It was surprising how much a modest car ends up costing every month, but it helped her make her decisions with her eyes open.
Financial
Olena’s family wants to be financially responsible and independent. When I would take them to the grocery store before they had their benefits, I would offer to pay for their food, but they would never let me. If I ever picked up something for them at the store, they would insist on paying me back.
Now that Olena has been working for a couple of months and Ivan has also had some consistent landscaping work this summer, they say that they would like to start paying rent soon. We haven’t talked about any details yet, but we will probably suggest that first they start paying for their phone bills ($75/month) and make sure they have an emergency fund saved up because that $4,200 car is not going to last forever!
Getting Along
Before the family arrived, we knew very little about the personalities of family. We had talked once with a translator where we asked (and answered) very basic getting-to-know-you questions.
As their arrival drew closer, I imagined all of the potential difficulties that might arise and ran through all of the worst case scenarios in my mind. Fortunately, getting along with Olena has been so smooth. She has an easy-going personality, a good work ethic, and relatable sense of humor. We have had no conflicts or awkward situations at all.
Culture and Community
Our family has a very strong support system in our community, school, and church that welcomed our new friends with open arms.
Until she started working, Olena and Nadiya would attend church with us every Sunday. Now that Olena is working, Nadiya and Alina come with us.
Olena often shares her homemade Ukrainian food with our family. We’ll get a knock on the door in the evening from one of the kids delivering some food that their mom just made. Also, whenever we go to a potluck or other gathering, Olena will send food for the event, even if she isn’t going herself.
The Future
The original Uniting For Ukraine program that our friends went through allows them to be here for 2 years as a humanitarian parolees. Six months before the parole period is completed, they can reapply for another 2 years.
I’m pretty certain that they will be granted another parole period, as their home in Ukraine is in the Russian occupied area and their house there literally has Russian soldiers living in it.
Currently there is not a path to becoming a permanent resident or a citizen, so even though I think they would like to stay in the United States for the long term, there isn’t currently a way to do that.
As for our role, we are so happy to have them here! They are great friends and neighbors and we love them. They are free to live here as long as they choose to. In our rural part of the state, options for renting a place are pretty limited and quite expensive. With their futures and the future of Ukraine still uncertain, we hope they’ll take advantage of the flexibility and affordability of our place for as long as they can. For now, we are just taking things one day at a time.
What other questions do you have?
I think I’ve covered most of the questions you’ve sent, but I’m happy to go into detail or answer any other questions that you might have.
Bless you for caring for them. What an awful situation all Ukrainians found themselves in. Their president is a hero, as are all those fighting for their country’s freedom.
Wishing your Ukrainian family well, and your family too for sharing such friendship and kindness.
Best wishes from UK.
I am so happy to read this? Every time I read one of your posts, I always wonder how they’re getting on. It’s such a blessing to hear they have adjusted and been welcomed. I do wonder what they thought America would be based on what they grew up hearing vs actually being here.
I will have to ask them this specifically. I think they had a better idea of American culture than we have of their culture thanks to television and movies. They have said that the people have been nicer than they expected and families are larger than they expected, but they aren’t getting a random sample of Americans. We are surrounded with nice people and many of them also often have big families! The banking situation has been frustrating for them. In Ukraine they have a national bank, so there is only one option when it comes to banking. I will ask them about some of their other expectations matched up with reality and get back to you!
Such a wonderful upbeat post. I’m wondering about the littlest daughter. Have you been providing day care for her?
Thanks Ann. Yes, I take care of her while the others are at school/work. During the summer, her older siblings have provided care on most days, but with school starting again, I will be taking care of her while the others are at school and her mom is at work.