Gorodnya - Day 1

Our morning started off at Winnie’s Place with an omelets and French Fries for breakfast. Yes, it is a whole new twist on the Atkin’s Diet here. First stop was to the Regional Inspector’s Office to pick-up the paperwork that introduces us to the Orphanage, along with all the paperwork which was picked up the prior night from Ukraine’s State Department of Adoption (SDA). We had our first meeting with the Orphanage’s Director, more meetings and paperwork with the Advocator (legal interface to the Court). Then we “officially” got to meet Mariya and Michael! It was a great sense of moving forward in the entire process. We wished that Duncan could have been here, but the trip would have been far too long and too hard. Besides…isn’t school more fun anyway?

We were able to spend some time with Mari and Michael, but they needed to get to class. We too needed to join our Facilitator back on the paperwork trail. Another visit to the Regional Inspector and then a trip to the Notary (in Ukraine, this is an attorney they handles the paperwork side of the process – not just signature verification) to get our official paperwork which will be submitted back to the SDA. Paperwork is turned into the SDA on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It normally takes three days to turn-around the paperwork which then allows us to go to court. All-in-all, things have moved much faster than initially expected on many fronts. We are hoping to get our day in Court maybe late next week. There are still many variables in the process though.

We have opted to stay at Winnie’s place rather than moving to a much larger apartment. Heat is officially turned on for the country on October 15th and this local place has electric heat which when it is cold outside…toasty. In addition, we have a 24hour kitchen downstairs with many unknown items on the menu to choose from. Given that I don’t speak or read Ukrainian it is always a real treat to see what the heck we ordered. Actually, Twyla is a help with this given some of her prior language background.

Our facilitator and driver leaves us in the morning to depart back to Kyiv and the mothership. We will be able to see the kids in the PM, mostly after school. Twyla took many photos today, actually she averages about 120…130 per day, so be lucky that this is just a few of the shots taken in a day.

It has been a very full and stressful schedule. Stressful in that you are never really sure of what might jump out to hamper this process. Thank you all for your love, your thoughts, prayers and support during this truly life changing part of all of our lives. We went back at the end of today to say good-bye to Mari and Michael it did indeed feel like we were so much further down the road from just a few days ago. Ukraine is a very beautiful country, a very proud country which we many emotions about. We love the United States, but we must confess, it is good to get out and see the rest of the real world…especially in this election year.