Moritz Adoption

Surprise !!! R comes to town...

Wednesday, May 24^th

I actually got up at 7 AM today which felt great. We’re finally getting back on track with the time zone sleeping thing. Dan worked this morning for a few hours from our apartment. I wrote some emails offline. We headed out for our usual mid-morning 4 mile walk. We have a few different routes we take. It has been so fun to explore the city. We have come upon some beautiful areas among the run-down places. We both have a new appreciation for Khabarovsk.

Although we have missed seeing the girls as of yet, we feel like this time has been a gift to us. God knows what He’s doing. We were so run down from getting ready for this trip and our big changes at home that we were very behind on sleep and had little time with one another before we arrived here. The way things have worked out has given us 9 days together with very little responsibility (especially once court was finished!) Once we get the girls we probably will not have this much time away for many, many years. Also, the weather is fantastic and we’re seeing things we never would have seen if we had come back before now. We always believed everything was happening on a certain time line for a reason. Now we’re sure of it.

We ate lunch at the office and then headed out for a few shopping errands. We’re trying to find a disposable camera for Yelena to take to the village to take photos for us. No one seems to have these here. So we will probably buy a cheap film camera and just send it with her. We found one for $15 at the mall. It is worth it to us as these photos will be very important to the girls later in their lives. At the mall we also bought Yelena a birthday card and some chocolate when we found out she turned 33 years old today. J

After our shopping Nastia and the driver took us to a placed called “The Cliff”. It is a boardwalk park area that borders the Amur River. It is stunning. Wow. Who knew it was here?! There is a beach (no swimming, only sunbathing-water is contaminated), lots of street vendors, big trees, park benches, etc… We really enjoyed the view. There were so many sunbathers today…and not all of them wear swim suit tops. I told you there’s always something interesting going on here. We also saw a few beautiful churches and went inside one of them to pray. We will walk to this area tomorrow morning on our daily walk. It’s not too far from our hotel. It will be fun to take a different route.

This afternoon we ran into one of the American couples who has their court date tomorrow (again—they were delayed the first time). We were waiting in our van at the time. I told Dan to open the door so we could talk with them. They are a bit older and have a 5 year old son they hope to adopt (they’re first time parents as is everyone else we’ve met here so far). The man is so angry it is hard to even speak with them. I just wanted to be nice and ask them if they’d had their second court date yet. They said it’s tomorrow. I told them we were thinking of them and hoped for the best and that we certainly understood delays. The man snipped, “Everyone says they understand, but you don’t. No one understands what this feels like. Welcome to hell.” Well, I wasn’t gonna let him get away with thinking we’ve had it easy just because court went well for us. So I told him that we’ve had our own issues and delays along the way and mentioned the birth mom thing. He seemed a little taken aback. Dan said I called his trump and he’d never seen me get like that with someone before. I just can’t handle people’s anger around here. It’s disturbing and depressing. I want to run into some happy Americans. It’s hard to see people hate their child’s birth place.

Natalia sent us home with another pizza for supper. That was nice since it meant we didn’t have to go back to the office for another meal. We watched a movie and ate pizza and ice cream together. Dan just fell asleep (it’s only 7 pm). I hope I can wake him up to post all of our silly photos from today. We are cracking ourselves up all the time. I think we’ve entered the giddy/silly stage of “vacation”.

Ok… now on to the fun news! We got word after supper tonight that R will be arriving tomorrow night! She is coming on a boat which will arrive in Khabarovsk around 8:30 pm tomorrow. Our agency reps will pick her up and then bring her to our room. Of course we hate to think of this little girl having to go on a 9-10 hour boat ride, but we assume the adult traveling with her will take good care of her. We’re not sure why both girls are not being sent together. As of now we have heard L will arrive on Friday afternoon at 1:40 pm at the airport. The girls may have been in different orphanages in the village based on their ages and each orphanage may do things differently. Or they may have decided Lilia was too young for the boat. Who knows. We will just be glad to get them here and start caring for them. I think we may spoil them before we go home! But we also decided we don’t think that’s possible. They deserve such special treatment so they know how loved they are and what special little people they are. We have had our eye on little train rides for kids, carnival places, parks, etc.. That’s the advantage to having had all of this time. We now know where all the good things are for children in this town! Our stroller and hip hammock will soon be getting a workout.

So, tomorrow we will be getting our bigger apartment. We have requested a 3 room apartment (2 bedrooms, a living room, bathroom, and a full kitchen). It will be so nice to have a bit more space. We are really tired of this small 1 room apartment (no living room and only a partial kitchen). But we will also pay $60 more a night for the new room. Oh well, it’ll be worth it. I am going to go down to the desk now and request it a day early. We were originally going to move in there on Friday morning. I can’t wait to unpack and get everything ready for the girls!

Hopefully 24 hours from now we’ll have Regina in our possession. We can’t believe the day is almost here when we will finally lay eyes on our girls again. Yippee!!

posted by Dan @ 5:01 AM