We took the overnight train last night (Sunday) from Kiev and arrived at Donetsk early Monday morning. Larry and I (Mary) and the boys shared a sleeper car for 4. If you have allergies (feather pillows and bed mats) or problems with others smoking then prepare yourself for an exhausting trip on the train.
.. more later today .. (or so I thought - we had unexpected internet connection problems)
The visit to see this 8 yr old girl went well. It turns out there are no guardian problems as we were first told. The school is about a 90 minute drive from Donetsk in what appears to be a pretty poor region but the school is relatively clean and well-maintained, considering the age of the buildings. The children appear to be well-cared for. Our facilitator brought along a psychologist to test the girl's development and she did quite well. She did better than I (Larry) would have considering she was brought in before 6 strange adults and asked questions and performed tasks for about an hour. After the 'test' she wanted to show us her room and proceeded to give us a tour of a large portion of the school. She has only been in this school for about a month. She is just starting to learn her letters and numbers. She was not receiving any formal schooling at the orphanage she lived at prior to this boarding school.
We have decided to proceed with the adoption process. She seems very smart and energetic and we're quite taken with her, probably more than we should be at this point since a lot can yet go wrong. We returned to Kiev on the overnight train Monday night to start the process. We will be moving all of our 'overpacked' stuff out to the region to stay closer to this wonderful little girl. We spent 2 hours today in a government notary office getting the forms notarized to officially notify the SDA and the region that we intend to adopt her. I have no idea why it took so long. There seemed to be a lot of activity and I was expecting a stack of papers to be signed but there were just the two forms. We leave tomorrow on the overnight train to Donetsk to stay in the region until the court date.
Hopefully, the process will be smooth. The school director, social worker, and local inspector seem to be very cooperative and supportive. They really seem to want what is best for her.
This is taking longer than we had hoped and I'm now requesting more vacation time. Fortunately, I have a couple more weeks but after that I'm going to have to figure out what to do. My job allows me to work remotely so it's possible if I have a decent connection I can actually work from Ukraine. We'll see ....
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5 comments:
Hi Larry and Mary! Checking in on you to see how you are doing. It's a long train ride to Donest'k - made it twice myself. Email if you need something!
How wonderful that things are going better than you expected! We'll be praying for a smooth time.
June
Greetings from Fletcher. I've been following along with your adventures and have my fingers crossed that all will go well. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you at this end. Ellen
PS Larry make sure Mary's getting her daily dose of chocolate.
Hi Larry..we exchanged emails before you left..we adopted (8 year old )from Doneskt (topolock) last summer... I remember that difficult train ride..fun when you stay up all night..our daughter was in a special needs orphanage and is perfectly fine! Best of luck!You can email me offline if you are in the same orphanage..Dazzels555@yahoo.com
www.citylife.donetsk.ua - Donetsk city guide. All the information about visiting Donetsk.
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