Crazy 2 days

“FIFTEEN hours on a train, very little food, kids with tons of energy, not much time for visas, almost out of money, pray harder, and call in the angles. As I am praying for more resources my brother Lynn calls. It is like he is reading my mind from 5,000 miles away. After I talked to him I felt much better.” Shawn  

Wednesday morning we finished packing and cleaning the apartment. Sasha and Shawn are working buddies now. She even went with him to walk and take out the garbage. The children waited and waited and waited. We played rummy with Pavel to pass the time while Sasha and Maxim played games on the telephones. George met us at 3:00 so we had time to pick up the children’s passports and make it to the train station on time for our train. The children and I waited in the car with Victor and Shawn and George went in to sign for the passports. When he got back to the car he had a very serious face, we all thought it did not go well. When we asked if it went OK Shawn says “no problemo” and Victor asked if there really was a problem. Sometimes the language barrier can really be funny. Everyone had to take turns looking at the passports and then we were on our way. We arrived at the train station with plenty of time to get situated before the train was on it’s way. The children were very excited, giving high fives and running from room to room. Maxim and Sasha were out of control exploring everything, climbing on and off the beds, running and comparing on room to the other, finding light switches… they looked like some kind of leapfrog/ high wire/ trapeze act. They were having a blast!  OK, so it got old really quick. We were ready for them to go to bed by 7:00. We finally got them to settle down and lay in the beds about 9:00 and soon after they were asleep. The train ride was much cooler this time and we all got some sleep. Ray was dozing on and off soon after we left the station. We all woke up feeling pretty good, but not quite ready for the day. When Shawn woke up and looked up at Maxim, Maxim told him to go back to bed.

We walked to find our bus to take us to the hospital for the children’s physical. We waited for quite a while especially since we did not get dinner (just junk food) and no time for breakfast. The kids waited their turn without any complaints. The visit went well. They were measure for height and weight and given a quick physical. Everyone passed and got compliments on how well behaved and how good they looked. The doctor was very impressed. She said God was looking out for us. Poor Ray and Maxim had to get a shot but they did very well.  We had about ½ before the van came to pick us up so we hurried to the café’ for something to eat. We felt much better after lunch, it was very good.

 This is when things started going crazy. We were a little late getting to the US Embassy. No big deal, the guards asked us why we were here and we told them we were Americans and were adopting. They let us in the front of the line to go through security and right in for our appointment. When we got in the Embassy at the adoption department they took our documents and started looking through them. After dividing them out per child she informed us that we did not have enough copies of some of our documents. We told her that was all that we had. Then she wondered when we are leaving for home. We told her Monday. That is when the big problems started. It seems that they are closed on Friday and that we need to have all papers in today and even then we were not sure it could be done. She did not think that it was possible; there was not enough time. We do not have the money to reschedule tickets so we left and asked George for help. We had to be back by 2:00 and it was already 12:30. We had to find out if George had more copies, get them notarized, rent an apartment, find it, drop of luggage, fill out about an inch of paperwork and get back to the US Embassy before 2:30. Just in case you are wondering… we were late. George had no copies, he thought he had made enough. It took forever to get the paperwork completed, Shawn was praying for a miracle because we just spent the last of our money on the visas and we had no idea how to pay for plane tickets if we did not get the visas or pay for the apartment or feed our hungry crew. It was about 2:15 and we were just about to go crazy and give up when the phone rang. This call helped us calm down and refocus. As Shawn prayed for help his brother called. Shawn was pacing the floor wondering who he could call to help us when the phone rang in his hand. Lynn (Shawn’s brother) called to see if we needed help. As Shawn said earlier it was like he was reading Shawn’s mind. We called a taxi to help things move faster but it got stuck in traffic, then lost on the way there. We walked into the Embassy at 2:45 and was again greeted with a warm welcome at the gate, not inside. The lady at the counter was not happy we were late and said she was not sure she could help. She accepted copies of originals because there were two other true copies and made me copies for the immigration at the airport and told us to wait to see if someone will see us. They did and all went well. We got the visas and off we went. It was a very crazy, emotional day. The US Embassy got what normally takes 3 days done for us in 1.

We celebrated by eating a big meal in a nice restaurant, buying ice cream bars and eating them all before bed. After all of the worry, it ended up being a very good day. The next step is home. See everyone in 4 days!