Bio Family and Winter Hosting

So we tracked down Belle and Cinderella's biological aunt and uncle and our translator friend took a train down to meet them. The aunt is the sister of the girls biological father who died last winter. We learned the father, mother, aunt, uncle, and cousins names! What a great thing for the girls for us to have this info and photos for their life books. So many adopted kids never have any info on their bio family, so they end up feeling empty and disconnected. Aunt and Uncle by their car, coming home from the hospitalThe aunt is definately the leader of the family LOL (glad to see the girls come from such a strong line of women!)and she said that she wished to care for the girls, but due to her illness she is unable to. A German family that has hosted Cinderella 2-3 times also wished to adopt the girls, but they are too old to adopt according to German law. The German couple has met and befriended the aunt and they all worked together to come up with a plan to help the girls once they aged out of the orphanage....of course that plan was based on the assumption that no one would ever adopt the girls. Of course now that we have made contact and told the aunt our intentions, their plan is no longer reasonable. The aunt has not opposed the adoption, but says she must contact the German couple to discuss it since she is an honorable woman and had already made plans with them. Fine with me - I think they all want what is best for the girls, and what is best for the girls is to have a home sooner rather than later (8 years later if they waited until they aged out)We also hope to have Cinderella here in the states for a winter hosting program. We are still working on the details with the host group but we think it would help the aunt and the girls know we are good people and that the girls would have a good home here. We are also tracking the boxes we shipped to SnowWhite and Belle. I know they were put on the ship a week or so ago, and that they should make it to the girls before December. We are also still working on the paperwork for SnowWhite - it is so unfair to her to be stuck in that system for as long as she has and not be registered for adoption. I will finish the trip report hopefully today - we only have Cinderella's part and our last few days in Kyiv to finish.

Security

I added all of our photos to a password protected album, so our family can easily link to and view the photos. If anyone wants to view our photos of Ukraine, the orphanages etc, please email me at mhemmen621@hotmail.com and I will send you the password. Also, someone on the FRUA discussion boards had the idea of giving "our" kids nicknames in our journals instead of using their real names- at least until the adoptions are complete and the kids are legally ours. I thought that sounded fun so I've picked Disney Princess names for the girls! SnowWhite, Cinderella, and Belle.

Photos

Sadly to protect our adoption I have had to remove all photos of the girls. Its sad - there are enough issues with Ukrainian adoption from the Ukrainian authorities WITHOUT having to worry about being backstabbed by a fellow adoptive parent. I mean, there are close to 100,000 kids in Ukrainian orphanages alone (though not all are registered for adoption; maybe a third are) so why do we adoptive parents feel the need to compete with each other over a handful of kids?!?! In my opinion - the corrupt hosting programs are the problem. Some hosting programs use this same handful of kids (not all hosting programs, but a few) for multiple families. Also adoptive parents want to have a photo of a kid - the whole idea of traveling "blind" is bad, but unfortunately its Ukrainian law. A law they need to chance in my opinion. I think referrals need to be known BEFORE the family travels. Why waste all that time in country looking for the right kid? This is not the kind of decision that should be made under that kind of pressure or under those time constraints! Families should be shown the anketa's of kids prior to travling, have time to think about it, and then accept a referral BEFORE getting on a plane. This would make everyone happier and make this whole process easier on everyone.

Paranoia

ok, I'm a paranoid person by nature, but I was trying NOT to lock any of my posts or be too vague since my family checks this blog and they definately AREN'T registered users....So I "sanitized" a few of my posts, and locked a few. I pulled out all names of the girls, translators, details of locations...Someone on FRUA asked about the "dark haired girl" in my blog and did I have any info on her....she may have meant on of the many kids in the other photos - but me being paranoid was like "you mean MY daughter? of course I have info on her...." anyways...I just don't want to jeopardize our adoption of her. She's not registered anyways....and once she is, she's ours so PLLBBBTTTT!!!! We've been working on her paperwork for a year now. We have a dossier requesting her (and our other two girls)- they will be submitted once the SDA says we can submit them. I know this has been a BIG controversy on the FRUA boards - telling these known kids that you are adopting them - pros and cons etc. SW asked me if I was going to be her Mama. Since that day, I've worked on doing just that - becoming her Mama. I've made sure that all the girls know that this is not a black and white process, that things could happen to make it take a long time, and it may not happen at all. BUT, I did tell them that they have a choice in all this. If they want to be part of our family, then they can say so - they can refuse other families (though it is not likely that our girls will ever be picked by potential families as they are older, except SW who is still youngish), they can tell their director what they want etc. Its THEIR life!!! I know they are just kids, but most of these kids have seen more intheir little lives than most of us have seen in our long lives...and they should be allowed to have a say, FOR ONCE, about their fate - in an age appropriate manner of course. will post more news later :)

Trip Report-Part 4

So we did some laundry - after figuring out the German controls - and hung the clothes out to dry on the porch. They were mostly dry by Saturday morning - there was also a cool "S" shaped pipe in the bathroom that had warm steam running through it - I guess to keep towels warm?- but it also worked for drying clothes. Saturday is a bit blurry, but I know we went shopping, found jackets for Andrew and I, went to dinner and then went back to repack all of our stuff. We were allowed to leave some of our stuff in the Kyiv flat since we were going to be back in 2 days, so we were only going to bring the necessities with us to XXX. We met up with G, took the metro to the train station in the center of the city, bought a Kyiv cake (there are tons of stands selling Kyiv cakes at the train station, so don't worry about getting one ahead of time) and went inside the train station. We were early, so we got some food from the little cafe inside the station, took some photos of the beautiful mosiacs on the ceiling of the station and waited. They called our train and we boarded it with no issues. We had tickets for the general sleeper section of the train - not our own compartment. It wasn't bad though. Very neat actually. They have little compartments without doors with benches and tables - the benches can be used as beds and there are also 2 beds above that fold down. There are rolled up futon-like mattresses on shelves above the beds. The train-lady comesaround with bed sheets, you pay her 6 grivnas and get your sheets, a towel, and a blanket. You put together your own bed and store any of your luggage in a compartment under the benches - so no one can get to your stuff while you are sleeping. The only bad thing was the LOUD announcements at every station they stop at - ALL night. Other than that we slept good and arrived in XXX at 6am Sunday morning. After we got off the train, I wanted to take a photo of the train station sign above the building- it was all lit up and really neat. I guess this was a problem as we got yelled at by some ex-KGB officer LOL. Our driver, Andreiy, was waiting out front for us - it was still dark and this sweet older man was sitting out here ready to go! His car was like many other Ukrainian cars - a solid metal, bright green, Russian made car. The inside was falling apart, but you could tell it was well cared for - mismatched seat covers, pillows etc. Andreiy was by far my favorite "character" from the whole trip. He reminded me SOO much of my Polish grandfather. He spoke NO English, but was really good at hand signals and getting concepts across.Andreiy's carAndreiy and Andrew!We drove 1.5 hours up to XXX village where Cinderella's sister, Belle, lived. We had never met her before, nor did we have any info on her other than the address of her internat. We waited outside the gates while G went in to get permission for us to visit. The director was not there, nor were any of the "decision makers", but eventually the caretakers agreed to let us meet Belle and give her the gifts we brought. We wait in the concrete-floored dirty "lobby" of the internat until they found Belle- it was amazing how much she looked like Cinderella! They brought us to a little room to visit - G explained who we were, about us hoping to adopt Cinderella and how we found her. We had G ask her if she wanted to be adopted too and she said yes and shyly smiled. We then got the WHOLE story about they family and how they ended up in the internats. I won't go into it here for their privacy, but their father died and he was a good man and his sister - their aunt- comes and visits the girls and had spoken about adopting them, but had never followed through on it - probably they want to but can't afford it and don't have room in their flat for two more people. So we left there after thanking the caregivers and hugging B goodbye and started the drive back to XXX. We stopped along the way in a city called Znam'yanka - this is the city where B said they were born and lived and that their aunt and uncle lived here. So we wanted to get some photos for C and for their lifebooks. Its a small city, "famous" for its train station. We also stopped a few times for Andreiy to show us the local agriculture...I guess he used to be a gardener in the Soviet times and worked at a nearby botanical garden that has since been abandoned. He also had a fervent hated of some weed he called "Ambrosia" that ruined the soil for the good plants. He definitly liked to tell stories haha. We also got some good photos of the rolling hills and little villages and the Ukrainian black soil.