Diddles in Ukraine :: 26 Sept 2006

[] Diddles in Ukraine Tuesday | September 26, 2006 26 Sept 2006 Sept 26 th Today is a day of waiting for us here in Kiev . There is a solemn, mourning feeling about us today as the realization that we were unable to bring back two children as was planned. Looking back, there are two things I would change in regards to our attempt in adopting Dimetrio. The first being that the second dossier, that we had prepared in advance, was never delivered to the SDA. It was given to us, to hand carry in with our appointment yesterday. This caused the SDA to be a little on the defensive when we inquired about the adopting of a second child. Second, the SDA had not received a petition that we wanted to adopt a specific child, ie Dimetrio. According to the legislation, no one is to have pre-selection opportunities prior to adoption. When we mentioned we were writing to the child and how we had learned of him, they were shocked and made us feel like we had committed a crime. Our desires were to help, never to hurt. After re-explanation, the SDA appeared to be more understanding. Parents looking to adopt, were to select from SDA’s pre-selected children We did not have the option to look at all children that were eligible for adoption. The direction SDA provided was that we need to put in a request to petition for a child that we have hosted. Currently there was only a petition for Zhenya Malikov, which by the way, the SDA could only provide praises for him. There was no problem with us adopting Zhenya. They gladly assisted us in the facilitation of his adoption. Appears the least painful way to adopt from Ukraine , is to first host the child. We could put in a petition for Dimetrio, but it could take a month for the research to be accomplished. Then we found out that Dimetrio had several older brothers and sisters. The director of the department came into the room. She reiterated the position of the Ukrainian law which was that legislation would not allow a separation of related children If we had known that Dimetrio had a large family of brothers and sisters, maybe our hopes would not have been built up so high. We simply do not have the means to support a huge family. The SDA, although we were only scheduled for 30 minutes, they were courteous, patient and were willing to spend 2 hours with us as we attempted to finalize the selection of our children. The SDA understood to a point, however, they would not break up related family members in an orphanage and we would not want that. We would not want to disrupt a family or go against their law. I personally think it will be difficult to find a family that will adopt a 7 yr old, 11, 14, 15, 16 year old. Knowing this, and knowing that their future will be alcoholism, drugs and pornography is painful, especially where we could help at least one. It is hard to let go. We must wait until 1700L to go to the State Department of Adoption to get the paperwork that will allow us to travel to SUMY to get Zhenya! We are told we will depart in the morning at 0500L. We plan to walk the downtown area at 1300L to keep us busy and keep our minds off the negative results from yesterday’s SDA meeting, and help us concentrate on the positive. At this point, we just want to take Zhenya and return home, but I know we have another 30 days ahead of us. Our apartment is in an older building. The interior of the apartment is newly remodeled. We are on the 4 th floor. Surrounding the apartment, besides other apartments, are a lot of chestnut trees. The chestnut is the state tree of Kiev . We look out the apartment windows and we look into the trees. Birds are chirping as the bounce from limb to limb. We do get the BBC news broadcast in English, which helps us keep up on the headlines of the world. Posted by at 12:23 in | Link | Comments (0) Comments Write a comment Name: Email: Url: Comment: Remember info? Search My Advertisement Categories Archives October - 2006 September - 2006 Syndication RSS Atom Albums Kiev Sumy Ukraine Part 2 Sumy, Ukraine Random Blog