Friday, May 18, 2007

Today is finally the day! We are in Khrystyna’s region and will finally be able to go to the orphanage! When we arrived this morning and got off the train, we thought we’d have a chance to get a little rest. We were quite wrong! When we got to our apartment, we were given an hour to shower and change and get settled in. Our translator didn’t even have that luxury! She hit the ground running and headed off to get documents prepared. When she returned, we headed out to the notary to get our adoption documents notarized. We were supposed to go meet with the social worker from the city and the assistant to the mayor after we finished at the notary, but the social worker and assistant mayor were busy in meetings! We headed to lunch instead! By this point of the day, we were starving. We had brought a small amount of food onto the train with us, but had not eaten since sometime in the middle of the night! Svetlana took us to a wonderful café called Papa Karlos! It had a variety of traditional Ukrainian and Russian dishes as well as what I would call “regular food.” The food was out of this world. I had a mushroom salad, a chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms, and some garlic rolls. Fred ate salad, pork and rice, a breaded chicken breast, and some rolls! We were so excited when Svetlana finally said we could go to the orphanage.

When we arrived at the orphanage, Svetlana told us we could all (Mark, Christine, Fred, and I) wait in the green room. The green room is a room filled with plants. It’s quite homey and has a large aquarium with fish and a frog as well as a large, very loud bird! On our way into the green room, we saw Vika and little Masha, two sisters who were also in Fort Wayne this past summer. One of the sisters was diagnosed with a brain tumor this past fall and not expected to live more than a few weeks. When they took her to a hospital in a different region, they were able to operate successfully and remove the tumor. It was the miracle we all prayed for! It was great to see her looking healthy!

We waited for a while before being invited into Ludmilla’s (the director of the orphanage) office. I felt like I was waiting for a first date. I had butterflies in my stomach and was totally nervous. When we arrived in Ludmilla’s office, we sat down and she immediately pulled out a picture frame/clock that she had on her desk. It is the gift we gave her when she visited us in Fort Wayne in March. It has pictures of all the children from the orphanage who are being adopted by families in Fort Wayne. Ludmilla told us that she had a man who came to the orphanage and saw the picture frame and decided he wanted to adopt Khrystyna. Khrystyna told the man she already had a family and did not want to be adopted by him. He tried bribing her to be part of his family and offered her nice gifts, but she still refused. He ended up adopting another child instead! During our meeting, Ludmilla had the orphanage doctor and orphanage social worker join us so they could give us background info on the kids. Also, she invited some other children to come to her office to get candy. The children she invited were children that she thought would potentially be good siblings for Khrystyna or Masha (the little girl being adopted by Mark and Christine).

***As we have gone through this process, we have heard from a number of people that it is often easier for children to adjust if they have a sibling. We have been praying about this for the last 6 months, however, we knew we wouldn’t be able to make any kind of decision before coming to Ukraine. When the orphanage director visited us in March, we told her we were considering adopting a second child. We told her that we were interested in adopting a little girl who would be a few years younger than Khrystyna. She told us she would look into it. A few weeks ago, we were told that they did not have any little girls in that age range that were available for adoption. We broadened our age range to be from 3 to 8. They still did not come up with any other little girls, however, they suggested a little boy who is almost 5. They didn’t provide any info other than a name and age, so we didn’t feel like we could make much of a decision. We decided to wait til we got here.***

When Ludmilla brought up the subject of second children. She reiterated that she did not have any girls younger than Khrystyna that were currently available for adoption, but that she had a little boy named Stanislav. She also mentioned an older girl named Amina that she thought would make a great sister for Khrystyna. We really hadn’t even considered adopting an older child, however, we agreed to see both of the children. When Amina came into the room to pick up some candy for her group, I was immediately struck by how much she looks like a Thompson. She has dark hair that was pulled back in a ponytail and she definitely looked like she could be Fred’s daughter. Ludmilla explained to her that our families were from America. Amina told her that she knew who we were…we were Khrystyna’s mama and papa. She said that she had seen pictures of us. When Stanislav came in, he was so shy he wouldn’t even look up. He just stared at the ground and would barely even talk to the orphanage director. Neither of us felt much of a connection with him!
After the children left the room, we continued our meeting and were given Khrystyna’s medical info. We didn’t learn much that we hadn’t already been told! After they finished talking about Khrystyna, they gave Mark and Christine background info on Masha. When we were all done getting background info we were FINALLY allowed to see the girls! It was so awesome to see Khrystyna! She looked so beautiful! She was really happy to see us as well! We took a walk around the grounds of the orphanage. There was a cat on the orphanage grounds that had recently had kittens. Khrystyna showed us the kittens. They were sooo tiny. After our walk around the grounds, Khrystyna and Masha were called back inside to go practice dancing. While they were inside, Fred and I seriously discussed the possibility of adopting a second child. We felt that we still needed more info, so Fred and I headed back into Ludmilla’s office. This time, it was just the two of us with Svetlana and Lumilla. We were able to ask more questions about Amina and her background. We were told that her dad had been killed in a war and her mom had later died as well. She had been living in the orphanage for 4 years and was well liked by everyone. Ludmilla said she was extremely smart and was all around quite talented! She suggested that if we were interested in getting to know her better, we should spend time with her and Khrystyna together. She suggested we take them out for a few hours today. Ludmilla told Amina and Khrystyna that we wanted to take Khrystyna and one of her friends out tomorrow and would Amina like to be that friend. They both thought that was really cool! We don’t want Amina to know we are considering adopting her because we don’t want her to get her hopes up.

After Ludmilla talked to Khrystyna and Amina, we were able to head out for ice cream. We took Khrystyna with us in the car and Svetlana went with Mark, Christine, and Masha. We ate absolutely delicious ice cream! It may have been the best ice cream I’ve ever had! While we were there, I noticed that there were children’s books to read and little chalkboards for kids to write on. I grabbed one for Khrystyna and one for Masha. Khrystyna wrote I love you in English. She also wrote Fred and Lisa in English. Someone also taught her how to write Khrystyna in English, however, they didn’t translate it literally, they adapted it to a more “American” spelling. She spelled it Kristina…so it looks like that may be how we spell Kristina. We still need to talk to her about it, but we’ll let her decide! After ice cream, we took the girls back to the orphanage. Svetlana rode in the car with us so we could talk to Khrystyna. We asked her if she would prefer to have a sibling or if she wanted to be by herself. She got this huge grin on her face and said she didn’t care if it was a boy or a girl, but she really wanted a sibling. That definitely did not make the decision any easier! When we arrived back at the orphanage, the children were outside playing and we got a chance to see Amina in her element. A bunch of kids, boys and girls alike, were chasing her around the playground and she was outrunning them all. She’s really quite cute…and she’s athletic! Khrystyna, who is quite the budding photographer, snapped photo after photo of the other kids, the playground and anything else she could, with the digital camera. All to soon, it was time to say goodbye. We hugged Khrystyna and told her we’d be back tomorrow to pick her up. After we left, we headed to the grocery store to pick up a few groceries and then headed back to our apartment. Svetlana is sharing our apartment with us and Mark and Christine have an apartment that is 5-10 minutes away by car. After arriving home, Fred and I uploaded our photos from the day and spent the rest of the evening talking and praying about adopting Amina… We will keep you posted as more unfolds!