Time to celebrate our anniversary by just staying home and relaxing. As promised, the Internet dudes arrive at 9:45 am to install Internet access in our little flat here in Kirovograd so that we can post our blog and communicate with the outside world! It really is quite cool how they take care of us here. When we moved into this flat on Friday we mentioned there wasn't Internet. On Sunday morning the owner and these two dudes installed it for us. Great country, Ukraine!
After all the excitement of the past two days, we truly are interested in just taking it easy. Natasha will be leaving us today to meet another family in eastern Ukraine. She tells us that we will meet with Natasha the lawyer later this afternoon to pay our fees, sign legal forms and discuss what happens next. Until then, we relax and enjoy the free time. Yeah, we have Internet! I spend a few hours on-line catching up with people and we spend the morning posting our blog, Emma reads, and I check my baseball scores. A very relaxing morning.
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About 2pm our lawyer invites us across the road to her office where the stack of "Ben Franklins" are handed over. She tells us that everything will be fine, she promises to take care of everything for us - money back guarantee she says! "Yes, this is a slightly different situation, all adoptions have little quirks like yours; but believe me, it will be okay - I promise!!!"
Tomorrow we will meet the orphanage director (she was on vacation last week), to get final acceptance before we start paper work to the courts. Then we should plan on visiting the kids twice a day all week long; once in the morning for two hours and then once in the afternoon for one hour. The director will give us our official visitation papers with the exact times for the week. We hope to be able to see Vanya next weekend when he returns to his orphanage on Saturday, which is only an hour from here. We would love to get all three boys together this weekend before we go, but it might be a bit too complicated to coordinate with the two orphanages.
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We leave the lawyers office feeling pretty good about everything, so we take Natasha out for a nice lunch before she has to catch her train at 6:30 pm. We find a fancy little restaurant in town called Primo Violino (very posh!!!) where we all eat Chicken Kiev and have a few Coronas to celebrate a very successful week! Natasha has been wonderful and very helpful; we tell her thank you for everything she has done, and that she has been a very calming presence for us, and we really appreciate her taking care of us and supporting us these last few days.
After our late lunch, we walk back to our flat, pick up a few groceries and settle in for a nice comfortable Sunday evening. At 6pm Natasha's ride (Gregori), comes to take her to the train station. She tells us that we will have a new translator for the week named Katja and that crazy Gregori will drive us back and forth to the orphanage each day. We say goodbye to Natasha and wish her good luck on her long journey. These women really work hard with these adoptions, but I am sure it is a very rewarding career finding families for all of these wonderful children.
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Emma makes her famous toasted cheese and ham sandwiches and I open a nice bottle of wine to celebrate our one year anniversary and a fantastic week in the Ukraine! What a way to celebrate our first official year as husband and wife, and what an interesting place to do it!!! It has almost been a little vacation for us here in the Ukraine! So much to offer, and so much to do! I just wish I could understand the language! ;^)
Good Night Kirovograd...
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