SDA day

I am typing this for the second time, thanks to Matt who navigated away from the page before I saved it!

We have added more pictures from today and yesterdays sight seeing in Kiev.

Thank you all for reading our blog and posting your comments. It is very good to hear of all those back home praying for us every step of the way. Wendy thanks for the tips on water selection, we did buy some salty, fizzy stuff one day that tasted like sea water. I will look for the lighter blue caps. I think you are right Lisa, the rest of you waiting families are going to fly thru the process with no issues, learning what not to do by our mistakes.

We arrived at our appointment with lots of time to spare so Valentin suggested we go into St. Andrews for a while. We walked in on a wedding in progress. It was beautiful. Lots of singing by the priests and a women's choir. I was scolded by an old women that worked there for taking pictures, but she never noticed Matt video taping. Valentin was very knowledgeable and shared lots of Ukraine's history with us.

The appointment was uneventful, we were shown Anya's photo and file right away. We were asked about when we met her, and when we began the paperwork to adopt her. Then I was asked my age. Somethings are universal, you know I get asked for my hall pass in my girls schools, so why should it be any different in Ukraine. Ukrainian law says adopting parents must be a least 15 years older than the child to be adopted.

Anya' s known history was much what we were previously told. She is healthy except for heart murmur and curvature of her spine, nothing to worry about.

Valentin asked the lady about a second child for us. She agreed to allow us another girl between the ages of 10-16 from Anya's orphanage without another dossier. She spent about 35 minutes looking thru files from the region and found none to show us. So she told Valentin that when we arrive to ask Ludmilla to introduce us to children that meet our criteria, and if we decide to move forward they would send the referral paperwork down to us. This is fine with us, because we will not have to choose from photograph alone.

We will pick up Anya's referral tomorrow at 5:30 then travel to meet our translator Nadiya at train station. We board train for Donetsk about 7pm. Not sure how easily we will find Internet in Mariupol so may be a few days before we can update. We will however make sure to get Anya's reaction to our arrival on film. We are very excited to see her.

Love to you all!

Aimee