Ekaterinburg

Our dossier has been forwarded from Moscow to our facilitator in Yekaterinburg, where it will be translated into Russian. It is scheduled to be submitted to the Ministry of Education on October 9th. Once the MOE has reviewed it, they will extend an invitation to us to travel to the region for a referral. Our agency has told us we will probably travel during the second half of October. The trip will be approximately 6 days.

The kids will not be traveling with us. Kevin's parents have offered to come stay with them while we are away. However, about a year ago, they told us they had scheduled a Hawaiian cruise vacation for the last two weeks in October of this year. We were all very excited for them, and still are. When we signed up for the adoption process in January and got the ball rolling I remember thinking, "I bet we'll be traveling to Russia right when Kevin's parents are on their cruise." What d'ya know! I'm not at all disappointed, though. I've been clinging to the hope that Murphy's Law would kick in and that we would be traveling sooner and not later. Thankfully Kevin's sister lives very close and has offered to help us with the kids. I think it will work out.

I learned how to handwrite Cyrillic tonight in my class. Now I may be able to read written names. Maybe. My instructor helped me pronounce Екатеринбург, but it's not very easy in Russian. The stress is on the last syllable, and certainly not on the second as it is pronounced in English. I'm going to have her pronounce some of the Russian Child Talk phrases to me so I can say them right.

Today I made my first pass at the bank for money. I arrived just before lunchtime, and hogged one of the two tellers for the better part of half an hour. She counted out $6000 worth of bills for me, and over half of them still had some sort of faded crease mark in the middle. So now I have $3000 worth of used bills that I need to trade in for newer looking bills. How new do these bills have to be? Our agency has stated, "Your cash must be in good, clean condition, have no visible markings, be crisp, and printed no earlier than 1996." But I remember Rhonda commenting on having a perfectly good bill refused, and now I'm concerned. Should I be asking them to order brand new bills?

I also made a pass through our safe deposit box to store all that "perfect" cash and to hunt for the Deed of Trust for our property. I believe we don't have one! Hmmmm. Were we supposed to get one when we bought the house? I can't find it anywhere here at home either. I hope this is something I can get a copy of from the County Recorder's office.

I think I need a Valium. Every morning I wake up feeling pretty good, optimistic about the day, you know. Then as the day passes, I find myself running out of energy and patience and calmness. My stomach starts twittering, and I can feel the anxiety working it's nasty magic on my whole body. Why! All I need to be concerned about right now is packing my bag and buying a teddy bear! I wish I had a personal adoption coordinator that everyday would tell me exactly what I had to do for that day, and nothing more. Then it would be impossible to worry about everything in the future. I can't turn off my restless mind. (Obviously, here I am blogging about all this when I should be soaking in the hot tub or curled up on the couch watching the boob-tube.) Well, at any rate, I feel better venting about it. Now off to bed.