Passport office, take 2

I could make this long or short. The short version is it took 7 hours to get a passport picture, but we got it done! Thank you, Heavenly Father and Niko!

















He did it! He finally fell asleep on me. This was a proud mommy moment.

The long version:
I still felt pretty bad this morning. My throat hurts, my ears hurt, but I was up and ready to go. The flu is over, so that's good. We were told Niko was picking us (me and Sherry White) up at 8am. she called me a little before then to say Niko had a "paper job" for us - that's what he calls them, so cute- and he wanted us to meet him at the orphanage right away. I crumbled. It took everything in me to get up let alone try to walk anywhere. Sherry was genius and suggested a cab... Why didn't I think of that? Oh yeah cuz my brain is mush after sleeping for 36 hours.

So we called Yulia to call us a cab because nobody speaks English, and she said they'd be here in 5-10 minutes. They are usually early, but this guy took forever. We didn't get to the orphanage until 9:30, but in his defense it was raining, we got caught in the middle of the biggest traffic jam I ever saw, and we passed two car accidents. I was glad to be running late and not in one of those!

Anyway our appointment was at 9:00, so we were late. Not a big deal since everyone takes their sweet time around here anyway. We corralled up the kids and headed over for a "20 minute" appointment. HA!

Let me remind you we tried all this on Saturday and she didn't want to do her job. Today she told Niko she needed to see some papers from our dossier...and FLIP if I didn't leave my copy at home today. It wouldn't have mattered because Sherry didn't bring hers at all. And neither of us even thought of that until tonight, lol. So we had to go to the SDA to get our LOO's. I think that took 2 hours. I got to finish souvenir shopping while I waited. Note to others: bring a copy of your dossier with you and carry it at all times!

Then we went to the notary for something else and Niko had to copy the page of our passports with the stamp of when we got in country. Keegan, Micah, and I jumped out and grabbed some McDonald's while we were waiting. My boy ate a whole fish sandwich!!! Big eater. My girls never eat that much.



Then Yulia brought another paper to Niko all cognito in the rain like an undercover agent and finally we were on our way. We got back to the passport office at 2pm.

Let me explain Kiev is split by the Dnipro river. There are many bridges to cross it. We live on the right bank, where the center, embassy, and SDA are. The orphanage, court, and passport offices are on the left bank. In traffic this could take a long time!

Okay so we got back at 2pm. Niko went in again. Please God let this be the last time. He came back out, told us we had to pay more money. What?! It was $300 to rush the passport and we paid that on Saturday. We had to pay another 525 grivna today (about $66) to process it at all. And we are finding this out now? Grr, can't they just tell this poor man everything at once? Are we the first adopting families to come through here? We found out that this office is the hardest to deal with in all the regions and changes requirements all the time. Sherry said it wasn't exactly like this last year.

So we got the kids out, went in and paid the cashier, went to the other side to get the kids scanned, and waited. ANOTHER HOUR! Oh my heck.

Let me insert that our kids all did great! For the torture that lady put them through, they deserve medals of honor. 7 hours waiting, give me a break.

Finally this nice woman comes and tells us to go upstairs. We follow. She spoke English! "Please White on the left and Ray on the right." We go into the camera ladies cubicles, and they set up. I get the rude one who took umpteen bad pictures when Micah wasn't ready, clearly not a real photographer. Finally she got a decent one and asked if it was okay. Really? Do you think I really care? I'm going to use this thing once to get him home! Yes it's fine!

I'm so glad my sweet husband isn't here. He's really more impatient than I am especially with people who don't care, and I think he would've snapped days ago. Please forgive my outright honesty here, but people should be prepared to wait and deal with laziness. It's the culture in the government offices.

I later found out that the system accepted our passports...everything is fine and we should be able to pick them up Friday morning. Yulia was so happy to tell me the passports weren't rejected... Wow I didn't know that was an option. :/

Oh yeah, and the nice woman is the one Niko has been dealing with for two days! Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Tomorrow: 1st embassy appointment at 10am and closing Micah's bank account at 1pm. No kids, thank goodness for them.

Friday: Busting Micah out for good, and God-willing getting the passport in the morning, then going to the medical appointment, then the final exit interview with the embassy. PRAY PEOPLE, PRAY!

*If* Friday goes as planned, we will be able to come home on Saturday. I hesitate to write that because it wasn't a possibility a few days ago, but it is now. Our facilitation team is making it happen, and are saying it will work. They are truly amazing! We are in the best hands. Even if the government employees don't care about these orphans-no-more, our team does. I'm still waiting to book my flight. I love our team but there is a lot out of their control. If God wants me home Saturday, I'll be home.








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