In this picture, the kids are protecting us from the "White Blanket of Death" from earlier in the winter. I am practicing putting in photos in case the opportunity arises while we are in Ukraine.
We had our "travel" meeting on Thursday night. It was mostly travel tips and lessons learned from previous trips. Lots of good information about traveling but not much information about the adoption process. Our expectations are that the details of what is going on will not be explained to us, we will be along for the ride once we arrive in Kyiv.
Speaking of arriving in Kyiv, we have bought our plane tickets, sort of. I talked to the man that is supposed to buy them for us and he was supposed to e-mail us the itinerary but he has not done that yet. I will probably call to check on it today.
I have found myself explaining to a couple of people what we expect the process to be once we arrive in Kyiv, so I thought that I might include that here. Once we arrive in Kyiv on the 11th, we will be greeted by our facilitator at the airport. This person will be our voice on the ground in Ukraine and will stay with us the entire time that we are there. Our appointment is on the 12th. We will go to the SDA (Ukraine Adoption Authority) and from there we will select a child (children) from photos and bio's. In the old system, prospective adoptive parents used to look through books and books of available children, but we have heard that with the new system, they try to pre-select 4 or 5 matches for you based upon your request. We have requested a relatively healthy child/children between the ages of 6 years and 18 months.
After we select the child that we want to go and visit, we must go to the region where that child's orphanage is. This could be relatively close to Kyiv or it could be a 12 hour train ride away. Once we get to the orphanage, get local approval to visit the child, and actually visit the child, we will have to decide if we would like to proceed with the adoption of the child or not. If not, we would have to travel back to Kyiv for another appointment. If so, we would have to wait for a court hearing in the region of the orphanage. We hope that we will be able to get that court date relatively quickly but that is just a hope. After the court date, there is a mandatory 10 day waiting period for the adoption to be finalized. After the court date, one of us could possibly come back home but we are in this thing together so we expect for both of us to stay together. At the conclusion of the 10 day wait period, we get custody of the child, and must get new birth certificates, etc. in the home region before traveling back to Kyiv and the US Embassy to complete a medical physical as well as complete the immigration paperwork process. Once that is complete (or once the end is in sight for it to be complete,) we will make our arrangements to come back home. There are Ukrainian holidays on May 1, 2 and 9 where the local government offices as well as the US Embassy will be closed. We are praying that those holidays will give the folks that we deal with a sense of urgency to get us completed instead of an excuse for us to have to stay longer than is required. Then the best part, we get to come home to a bigger family.
We are hoping to be back home some time the week after the Derby. Katie has a Angel's Wings recital on May 12 that we will be very disappointed about missing.
Caleb is awake now and he is giving me suggestions on how to wrap this post up so that we can get on with our day. His suggestions include "We are happy to be adopting" and "Goodbye".
How can I argue with wither of those? Little does he know, we have several tasks that we have to complete today in support of this process so it will not be an all fun and games Saturday. So with that, we are happy to be adopting and goodbye for now.
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