SDA Appointment

Day 1 of the nitty-gritty...

The day started with our 11:00am appointment at the State Department of Adoptions, or SDA.  Maria is the go-to person there.  She processed our papers last year.  When we met with her today, she asked about Eli and Isaac and wanted to see pictures.  I showed her one with all five kids, from when Sasha was here this summer.  Maria smiled and smiled.  She looked over our dossier and apologized to us.  She was on vacation in early September when Victor submitted our dossier.  We should have gotten our SDA appointment right away since we are reuniting siblings, she said.  Whoever processed our dossier missed that fact and put us at the back of the line.  That explains a lot, but it's hard to hear.  If things had gone as they were supposed to, we'd have Sasha at home already, instead of doing this now, during the holidays.  Sasha wouldn't have had to spend these extra weeks/months here in Ukraine when he so desperately wanted to come home.  But, it is what it is.  Overall the SDA appointment went well, and we will return tomorrow afternoon to pick up the referral.

Today's agenda also included a quick visit to the US Embassy and purchasing train tickets.  With the typical snags, moments of panic, and horrendous traffic, our work day finally concluded around 5:00.

This is our last night in Kiev.  Tomorrow we will take the overnight train to Donetsk, then immediately drive to Amvrosiivka to see Sasha and start processing paperwork there.  It's quite a big leap culturally from America to Kiev.  From my perspective, it's almost as big a leap again from Kiev to the Donetsk region, especially the smaller towns like Amvrosiivka.

We are off to test out a varenike restaurant and process the events of the day.  I will try to blog tomorrow before we leave the apartment, but we will likely not have internet access in Amvrosiivka, so you may not hear from us again until we hit Munich on our way back.