Greetings From America!

(Photos to come soon) So sorry for the big delay. The last week or so has been a little crazy. We are home — hooray! Minus a daughter – boo. There is a mandatory ten-day waiting period allowing individuals to step forward and protest the adoption, so we said a tender good-bye at the seaside where she was playing with the other orphanage children and got in our car and drove away. We were sad to leave Anastasia, but the excitement of coming back home to AMERICA! tempered our sadness. She seemed sad at our departure but happy at the thought of Dad returning with Camille after the 10 day waiting period. She ran back anxiously to the other children. I think she will be fine.

We arrived home Wednesday night at about 6:00 pm. There aren’t words to describe how wonderful my own bed and shower are! My home looked beautiful, my neighborhood looked beautiful and the mountains looked beautiful, but nothing looked as beautiful as my children. It was sooooo good to see Roman and Nadia at the airport. I couldn’t look at them enough. Camille was working and we caught up with her at home later and Christian is at EFY having the time of his life. He’ll be home Saturday, but I may have to sneak on campus just to give him a quick hug and a kiss.

Tuesday after we said good-bye, we drove the two hours to Simferopol to do some notarizing for Calvin’s return trip in a couple weeks, ate some lunch with Natasha our facilitator and our driver Albert and his wife Oksana (who is also a facilitator). We waited several hours in a sweaty airport terminal for our delayed flight to Kiev.

While I was going through the metal detector I of course, set it off. This is typical for me because I had an artificial knee made of titanium put in three years ago. I don’t think there are many titanium knees in Ukraine because it completely flummoxed the guard. He asked me if I had a paper for my titanium knee and when I said no, he asked if I had a Dr.’s note giving me permission to travel with a titanium knee. I again said no, and then he asked how we expected them to know it was a titanium knee. At this point, I got even sweatier (if it were possible) because I began to fear what I might have to do to prove I had a titanium knee! I suggested he wand the knee, which he did and it seemed to satisfy him, but he let me know by the disdainful final look he gave me that I had a lot of nerve travelling with a metal knee. Maybe I can leave it home next timeJ

The plane ride to Kiev was made more interesting and fun by two cute little girls occupying the seats in front of us. One little girl reached her hand over the top of her chair. I slipped a stick of gum into her fingers. It quickly disappeared and then the hand reappeared. I put an American dime into it, followed by a penny a nickel and a quarter. We then passed notes and pictures back and forth. At the end of the flight two cute little faces popped over the top of the seats. We smiled at each other and said good-bye. Natasha recognized the mother with the two girls as a famous international affairs anchorwoman in Kiev. It was refreshing to let my guard down and interact naturally with children. Natasha has warned us to not show too much interest in the children because she doesn’t want people thinking we’re scoping them out. This has been a little difficult for me because they are all so darn cute.

Court on Monday was a little stressful. They had had no American adoptions out of this city for years and nobody knew what to expect. There was a businesslike middle aged woman judge who had a kind face and two respected business people representing the people of Ukraine, a prosecuting attorney, the head of child affairs for Feodosia and the Director of the orphanage. We were nervous and grateful for the air conditioner. We were to stand every time we were addressed and introduced business, our education and ourselves and present formally what we desired of the court. Calvin had practiced saying Anastasia’s name correctly

(Ah-nahs-tah-see-yah Carp-oh-vah) so he would sound okay. They were free to question us but fortunately they asked fewer questions than we thought they would. The prosecutor started asking why we were adopting girls who were so old, in other words, she was implying that we might be doing unseemly things with these girls (Anastasia and Nadia). After pursuing this for a while, the judge got impatient with her questions and stopped her. It’s sickening to have people think these types of things of you, but I guess it’s a sad part of the process.

We were so happy when the judge declared her our daughter. It was such a relief and a really wonderful feeling to know that we belonged to each other. Natasha was visibly relieved, not knowing what to expect before hand and Tamara, the orphanage director was sweet and wonderful and congratulatory. It was really a wonderful day. We went out to eat some lunch, as we were all starving. Tamara, who is still not feeling really great, excused herself and went home. Anastasia did a great job in court and was very cute. They really didn’t ask her too many questions. In Sumy, they asked Nadia and Roman if they felt they could follow rules and live in a family and listen to their parents. I thought this was really a great thing for them to hear coming from a serious and very solemn judge, this judge never asked Anastasia anything like this. I really had a hard time not turning around to Natasha and giving her knuckles because of the incredible job she did translating. The judge spoke remarkably fast and Natasha kept right up with her. She’s good!

The reason why we haven’t blogged for so long was because we changed apartments. The location wasn’t really great because it was so far from the center of the city and it was 5 flights (no elevator) up. My knees were really feeling it after a while. The shower didn’t work, the bed was hard to the point that Calvin finally found two huge stuffed dogs in the house and tried laying them end to end and sleeping on them. Ironically, he got bit by fleas so apparently the stuffed dogs were infested. It was fodder for a million jokes, but it was enough and we finally yelled “uncle” and went to an apt that Vera had found for us.

Unfortunately after we hauled all the stuff up to the apt (no small task with all the stairs and the heat) the landlady said she thought we were staying 7 days instead of 5 and that she didn’t want us to stay there if we couldn’t stay the full 7 days. This was a little too much for my typically calm and gentle husband and he blew a gasket. Let me just say that it’s good she couldn’t understand English, but I think his body language made it clear how he felt about her. He knew she was just fishing for more money (which Vera confirmed later on) and he finally got fed up of being taken to the cleaners because we’re Americans. We have gotten to the point where we have to stay back until a cab price is negotiated because if they know who we are the price goes up 20-40%.

So, we literally ended up back on the curb with our luggage around us…..homeless. Natasha called our van driver er… Mulva back and he gave us the sound advice to make sure we’re actually staying next time, before we carry all the luggage up J. We ended up spending the rest of the day searching around town for an apt that would work for us. By 10:30 my knees hurt, I was tired, hot and frustrated and I’m ashamed to say I finally broke down a little. We found a hotel and spent the night there in a comfortable flea-free environment. After a restful night and a good shower we were prepared for whatever the day would bring. We found out that sweet little Anastasia called bright and early to find out how we were. She was really concerned for us.

Vera came through and found us a really nice apt in a great location which was only on the second floor. Calvin settled in, nursed his fleabites and began a serious rivalry with Natasha to see who could pound down the most watermelon. I think she may have won. We had no computer access anywhere nearby so we were unable to blog or respond much to emails. Our phone access was even kind of sketchy. We apologize and thank everyone for their kind concern for us and wonderful comments. You don’t know how they keep you going when things are a little less than ideal.

Those few days after we found our new apt were filled with an excursion to the beach where we enjoyed the beautiful warm water, marveled at the sand which actually turned out to be not sand at all but billions of tiny sea shells. We bought the children all a pastry dessert from a lady who peddled them at the beach and enjoyed playing in the water with Anastasia and the other beautiful children. Calvin also took Anastasia to Avatar and some street dancing movie. She loved it! She is very affectionate with the other children, particularly the little ones. This orphanage is truly like a little family. We returned to the orphanage a few times to play ping-pong and to get to know the other children better.

Calvin just found out that he will be returning in just a few days to Ukraine. This week in America is very busy and full as we bring Calvin’s 90 year old father home from the Rehabilitative Center and get him settled, catch up at work, celebrate our daughter Camille’s birthday and take care of a flood we had in the basement. We have given up hope of ever turning a hand to our poor neglected garden, but there will be other years for that. After returning from Ukraine and seeing our beautiful daughter, we have become convinced again that some growing things will wait - and others will not.