The Sun Finally breaks through : SDA Appointment Day

Today was the day! As some of you may already be aware, Y was visited last week by an Italian family looking to adopt her.  She kindly told them that she was waiting for her American family and turned down their offer to adopt.  Those poor souls then had to take the overnight train ride back to Kyiv to find another child.  Now mind you I'm not upset in the least that Y turned them down.  Quite the opposite in fact we were both happy and relieved.  However, I can only imagine the other families pain and frustration of traveling overnight via the train only to be forced to return again and repeat the process all over again.  The problem for us and what really worried us was that when a family is given SDA permission to adopt a child that child becomes unavailable.  That meant that we could be walking into the SDA office when the Italian family had not yet returned and released their claim on Y.  If that was the case, then we would have to ask for another appointment and wait until they did return to be able to adopt her.  The fact that the social worker couldn't find Yulia's paperwork didn't help my nerves much either.

As it turns out all of our worrying was for naught Yulia's paperwork was located and we have been approved to start her adoption process!  For such an important event (at least for us) and for all of the work leading up to it, the actual approval process went very quickly.  We answered two questions and signed two pieces of paper and we were done.  We walked out of that office on cloud nine.

Unfortunately one of those branches I mentioned earlier jumped out and bit us.  Shortly after our appointment with the SDA, our coordinator called to inform us that we would not be traveling to Simferopol until Sunday.  The orphanage is going through a big review and we will not be granted approval to see Y until after the review.  Something had to bring us back down to earth didn't it?  So we will make the most of the wait.  We will plan on studying up on our caveman Russian and doing some more exploring of the nearby attractions.  Also on the to do list will be to put together some pictures of us in Kyiv to send to Y.  Hopefully they will get there before we do!

The weather around here has not been exactly cheery.  The photo above was actually an accidental shot that just happened to catch the sun.  Even the bright colors of the church next to the SDA office were dulled by the cloud cover.  The church itself was amazing.  We happened to be there during a

service and were privileged to hear a priest and a woman (nun?) chanting while we were taking in all of the amazing paintings and carvings.  I say chanting but it really sounded like singing.  The experience will be one that I remember for years to come.  Svetlana, the wonderful woman who helped us with the legal side of things also tried to show us some of the sights as we blew through the streets on the way to our appointment.  I was not all that successful at getting pictures using a camera phone but here are a few that came out that will hopefully give you a sense of some of the nicer buildings in the area:

We learned our lesson and picked up a basic point and shoot camera to use for the remainder of the adventure.