April 29, 2008

Lots of Paperwork

Today we had to leave early to the orphanage to see Victor and Kristina and get paperwork.  Because we had to be at the orphanage early we were not able to see Alyona as she had to attend school.  Victor and Kristina were very happy to see us today.  They are becoming used to us and very comfortable.  They seemed to be super charged today and Kristina was putting the charm on very heavy.  Of course Nick was eating it up.  The department of guardian worker for this orphanage visited with us today also.  It is one of the requirements to finalize the adoption.  We measured Victor and Kristina to determine what size they wear.  Apparently the clothes are not in standard sizes so it is hard to know what size they wear.  When Nick was done measuring Kristina she said “Now I can have beautiful clothes.”  She is really quite the little princess.  We had a great visit and it ended much too soon, as always.

When Mariya picked us up this morning she said we needed to check US laws and see if they allow an adoption of a 16 year old.  She said Kaz law is 18 but they do not know about US.  Mariya had talked with our adoption agency the night before and was advised to contact the US Embassy in Almaty, Kaz.  Mariya told us this has never come up before because no one has ever adopted anyone 16 or older from their orphanage and that is why everyone (orphanage, dept of education, dept of guardianship) have been very excited about this adoption.  After many phone calls and much worrying the Embassy said they would allow the adoption.  Now we just need to get the home study and immigration paperwork amended.  We had already started that process, but being 9000 miles away makes everything a lot harder.

Although we had already sent the paperwork to start this process, we wanted to fax a copy also to expedite.  To send a fax we had to go to the phone company and pay to send the fax.  The room has phone booths along two of the walls and people come in and pay the worker to use the phone, like a pay phone but you don’t put the money in the machine.  They have this because many people do not have phones.  When they are done talking they go back up and get their change.  These people do not have to wait in line, they just go to the front and get taken care of first.  Anyway, about $2.00 and a half hour later our fax was sent.

We also wanted to go to the bank to get some more US $.  The first bank we went to said they could do it but after trying to process it said they could not take our card.  We thought that was strange but decided to try another bank.  This bank told us the card was denied.  A few days ago my brother said the bank called our house in Florida and said there had been unusual activity on our card and they may put a freeze on it.  My brother, Steve (thanks!), called to let them know what was going on so they did not freeze it.  Well, apparently that did not work and all our accounts were frozen.  We tried to get online for several hours (the dial up connection is very temperamental) to resolve this.  That did not work.  I saw a collect calling number on my card and tried that (after I googled the Internet on how to make an international call from Kaz to US) and reached a live person very quickly.  Long story short, they asked some security questions and took the freeze off our account.  Hopefully we will be able to get money tomorrow.

Then we went shopping to get clothes for Victor and Kristina as we still had enough Tenge left to pay for the clothes.  We were very successful with Kristina and walked out with several outfits, a dress, jacket, socks and barrettes for her hair.  Shopping for a girl is a very new experience for me, and one I think I will have no problem getting used to.  We did not find as much for Victor but were able to get at least one complete outfit.  When the store owner heard us mention that Victor really likes Spiderman she pulled out the Spiderman under pants.  So of course we had to get a few of those!  We will still need to get shoes and a few other items but made a lot of progress today.  We will bring the clothes for them to try on Thursday and can’t wait for the little princess to give us a fashion show.

The Hrenko Family

Adoption Journey to Kazakhstan

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Victor

Kristina in Mariya's Hat

Kristina and Victor

Nick and the Little Princess