A Few More Blogs

I added a couple more blogs to my list of Blogs Worth Viewing. It is moving to read of the work these folks are doing for the less fortunate in Kyrgyzstan. John Wright is an amazing man. I hope I am fortunate enough to meet him one day. See his work on actofkindness.

Pictures from Ukraine

I thought I would take a few minutes to add pictures of our trip to Ukraine. I still communicate with a family or two that go over to adopt. Thankfully families are still finding their children, but I know of too many that did not.






This is a picture of me and Aiden hanging out in the livingroom. I had to clothes-pin his pants since they were too big for him.





This is the standard adoption photograph most families take after their appt. We were still optimistic at this point.



How cool is a snowstorm for a four year old boy from Florida?




Our favorite place in Kyiv, and not listed in any travel guide. Pocrofsky Church. I hope I spelled that correctly. It is a functioning church and monestary. The nuns living there are delightful. The courtyard is a sanctuary within a large city. We walked it daily to get to the St. Michael's area. the nuns sweep the snow away from the doorways with Ukrainian style brooms. These brooms are everywhere, and we purchased two at an open air market to bring home with us.



We took about 1000 pictures. Many are off the beaten path. I wish we had taken 1000 more. Kyiv is a fascinating city.

Now We Wait (Again)

Ho Hum, we have been here before. Our dossier is in the mail to our agency. Now we wait (again). We will keep updating the documents (some expire after 3 months) but we don't really know what is next. For a control freak like me that isn't an easy pill to swallow.

I'm not much of a blog reader. There are a lot of good blogs and this Mom doesn't have a lot of free time. I did find one that I found worth viewing. It isn't about adoption. It is filled with pictures of Kyrgyzstan and brief thoughts regarding those pictures. Please take a moment to look at it. I don't think I will add any adoption blogs to the blog list. The are worth viewing of course, but there are plenty of adoption blogs that contain other adoption blogs and I don't need to repeat what is already done.

I hope to add some pictures to this blog soon.

Rita

Paperwork Almost Together

Boring time. We have the updated I171H. We will have everything in a few days except the medical forms unless the doctors don't take their time about it. Maybe they won't. We are just about there.

Instead of waiting to get our dossier together until closer to referral time we were now told to put it together and the families that have them together the soonest are the ones that get their referrals first. Maybe that is good and makes it all happen faster for us. Maybe it puts us farther behind than before. I'm sure we won't know and I won't think about it.

I don't know what more to write. We will be adopting from the Bishkek orphanage. There are only two orphanages where our adoptions happen, at least at this point. Tokmok is the other city. Bishkek is the capital of the country.

I hope I get to travel around the country a bit. I cannot imagine going half way around the world to such a facinating place and not taking it in. How better to let your adopted child know about their homeland than to tell them about your experiences traveling in their native country? I want to stay in a yurt. I want to travel in the countryside.

Someone asked about the process. It doesn't seem that clear to us. It seems the dossier goes to the Krgyz Embassy for review and then back to the agency/foundation to be held until referral time. There is a translation period too, although it doesn't seem to happen right away. Our agency told us to hold off getting our dossier state certified, but that doesn't mean it won't be certified at time point. Timeframes seem to have changed too. In March it was four to six months and one year on the far end. Now agencies are saying two years (and not saying whether that is realistic or on the far end). Many of the original agencies working in this country are no longer accepting applications because it is a small country and adoptions seem to be happening out of just two orphanages. I know of one agency that is telling people there is a one trip option. Most other agencies are saying two trips. The first trip seems to be of varying lengths. I don't know why it is so different for different agencies. I don't know if it has to do exclusively with the different regions or if each agency just has different experiences.

I suppose the one thing you can bank on is that international adoption is always a changing thing, but then so is life.