After we left the documents with the mini-bus driver on Thursday night, we felt very relieved. It was a big step forward.
Friday morning, we went directly to the court to try to meet with the judge. He invited us into his office just off the courtroom (looks a lot like any courtroom actually, with a cage off to the side for dangerous prisoners I guess). There were actually two judges there, and the older one who looked like an understanding sort and who had a soft voice told us that the other judge, younger, with little emotion on his face, would be handling our case.
He also explained that today was the national holiday for court workers, and they would all be going to Zhitomer for the day. They would not be able to discuss the case with us until Monday. But we should leave the files with the younger judge to study over the weekend. So we wouldn’t be able to give the SDA (state adoption agency) a court date, which means that they wouldn’t be able to expedite their review of our files in Kiev. Another delay.
Then we got a call from Oksanna, the wife and partner of our agent here (not to be confused with Oksanna the regional administrator for the state adoption agency), saying that they had taken our papers to the SDA for review but they had been rejected. It seems that Oksanna the regional administrator had submitted her conclusions on the case on the wrong paper. Also, she had failed to have the two pages of the document stitched, which is what they do with official documents here. That’s right. They take a needle and thread and sew the pages together. Then they put a special piece of tape over the knot and stamp the tape. They also told us we should get the Vishevitsche school to put their documents on school letterhead instead of blank paper. Ordinarily they wouldn’t reject for that reason, but as long as the conclusion had to be done over, we might as well do this too.
So Friday became a mini version of Thursday. Running from office to office, and out to Vishevitsche, trying to rally everyone to do the work again. Back to the Notary for copies, etc. Back to the bus station in Zhitomer to prepare another pouch for Kiev.
We did get some quality time in with the kids though. Nastia is very interested in her English lessons. We’re working on letters, vocabulary, colors and numbers with her. Sasha is a mechanical whiz.