Home for the Holidays

Hi All,

I am sorry if I have not been good about writing in the blog but our life has been upside down for the past couple of weeks. 

Our last few days  in Melitopal were wild. We went and met with Albinas  sister and after alot of crying she agreed to allow us to adopt her sister and refuse to be adopted herself. We bought he a cell phone so we could skype with her and although it required 2 full days of travel and expense we were successful. ( I will detail the process in my book:)

Nadia,Vitaly and Albina (Julia)

More paperwork, lots of trips to the orphanage and finally we boarded the train for kiev and our flight home. The girls traveled separately with Vitaly the following day. I waited in NY and spent the night with friends to take the girls to Cleveland. Wow - 42 hr trip for the girls as we were delayed for many hours due to the snow storm. We arrived home at 5am on the 22nd.

Grace, Nadia, and Julia

We have been careful not to give the girls too much, and they have been adjusting to the american (we have everything) lifestyle.

Christmas as a joy for us just watching the girls interact with Grace ( she is very happy to have sisters!). We gave Albina a bike. It is all she wanted since we met her in September. She has been riding back and forth in the driveway ever since.

We also bought the Rosetta stone English program and every morning they each spend 1/2 hr learning english... i highly recommend this.

At this point we plan to take the girls back to Ukraine Jan 7th and finish the adoption which will take at least another 3 weeks. We received an email this morning from our facilitaor which I will share with you later but the jist was that another couple got thier daughter to Kiev and she said she did not want to be adopted because she heard that children were being taken and killed in America....It's Ukraine... more to Come

MR

  

Ukraine Adoption Melitopal December 15th, 2008

Hi Everybody,

Its been a  few days since I have updated the blog and I am sure you check it everyday to see whats going on :) Ha Ha... We are in Melitopal now and at our little hotel as before. I have been taking copious notes on my little Iphone recorder for the book I hope to write and the funny thing is that when its smooth sailing ( for Tom and India) there is not alot to write about. 

We met the girls at the orphangae and they ran up and hugged us and would not let go. We then started the task of getting the state paper work done, which included meeting with Nadya's 16 yr old brother and her grandmother, who both told the Director that they refused to let Nadya be adopted. In Ukraine there are many laws governing siblings, permissions , etc. Depending on who you pay and at what time the outcome can be very different. 

On Saturday we headed out to meet Nadya's grandmother and her brother who now lives with her.  We had no address and only knew the village name. The village was very big , maybe 10,000 residents, but Vitaly and Sasha, stopped frequently and asked people once even disappearing into an old broken down apartment building that smelled so bad we refused to go in. Eventually we found the aunt, who took us to the grandmothers home, a one room house built into a barn  with a wash basin and 2 beds.  Nadya, by the way, said she didn't know the aunt, but she did lead us directly to the grandmother.

She was not happy to see us but hugged Nadya closely. Her brother did not look mentally handicapped (supposedly, he had been in an orphanage for mentally handicapped children) and was a good looking young man (Nikolia) , probably 6'3" and reminded us of a tall Brad Pitt. He was frowning as well. Nikolia took Nadya outside to the bathroom and we (Vitaly) talked to the grandmother who was about 70 and Paula and I sat helpless in the conversation not understanding a word. Only seeing the grandmother cry did we understand that she was a caring person and not out for money which they obviously needed.

After about 15 minutes of continuous talking Vitaly turned to us and said " She thinks it is a good thing you do for Nadya" We were very releived... Nikolia came back into the room with Nadya and she sat in his lap laughing, and then  we asked him if it would be OK to give his sister a good home. He said " Nadya, if this is what you really want I will not stand in your way" You could tell that they were very close, and Nadya just smiled. 

For the next hour we talked with the grandmother and she told us the sad story of how Nadya ended up in the orphange, shared old pictures of her and her family with us , and went through all of her belongings (which were very few) and gave clothes and costume jewelry  to Nadya. We spoke about how we would make sure they never lost touch with Nadya and left feeling as though we had done what was right , and they also - for Nadya.  Everybody was sad, but smiling.

Today - we go to Zaparyshia to meet the local inspector and Albina's sister who is in college to get a consent from her. It is about a 2 hour drive and could be a tough day politically because of the sibling laws and our lack of knowledge of the local authorities.

Stay tuned

Michael and Paula 

A little more good news from Ukraine - December 9th,2008

Paula and arrived in Kiev the day before yesterday to a snow storm. It was quite beautiful and reminded us of Cleveland:) Stayed in an apartment very close to Independence Square right down the street from McDonalds ( great expresso!)

Yesterday we met with the SDA and we feel that step 2 of 10 was successful. We met Dima who Paula said was the best looking guy she has seen in Ukraine ( except for me - she did not say that part). The women in the SDA office shuffled us right into our meeting, pulled out the pictures of Albina and Nadya, and asked us why were there, and why these 2 girls. For those of you who know, it is against the law to meet any children without hosting them so this was awkward but not unexpected. 

I said " we have friends that have adopted from this orphanage and told us about them" She then says "have you met the girls"  - This was a loaded question because if I answered "no" she might know about our previous attempts to adopt the girls. Anyway you get the picture. So I said " We met them briefly at the orphanage". Dima smiled, she smiled... no more questions.

She looked at her computer and told us " they have siblings. a brother in a mentally handicapped orphanage and a sister in college. We will give you referrals for all 4!" 

Now the next step is to convince the siblings to write refusal letters so we can get the 2 girls.

On and On it goes until God decides if we are to have them or not. 

At any rate - yesterday was a good day... they gave us referrals for the girls, we met Dima, and I had some Nemof pepper vodka...

More to come  - Michael and Paula

Good news - at least a little from Ukraine

Paula and I leave in a couple of days to start the process again and yesterday we received news that the Director was able to finally get the passports for the girls to visit here over the holidays. We still have a long road before they can have a new home but this was a bright spot for us. Originally we were told that it could probably happen in 10 days  - that was 6 weeks ago....so it is a good day. 

For those of you who are interested I have started writing a book about this experience and a survival guide that will be done in the spring I hope:)MR

Ukraine Adoption Attempt #2

It has been a few weeks since my last entry but just wanted to let you know that we are headed back to Ukraine this coming Sunday to try again!... Yes , I know what you are thinking.We cannot get enough and  have too much money to spend but the reality is we really want to help these children and are not about to give up without a fight!  So stay tuned for the next couple of weeks as it should be another adventure.