We Have a Court Date!

Day 11 – Wednesday, 23 December

Wake up. Drink Coffee. Feel panicked about lack of blog posts. Write most of Monday’s blog. Answer phone. Take fastest shower ever. Run down to car.

While our translator continues to run all over town working on documentation for us, we were allowed a very long visit at the orphanage today. We arrived a bit before 11:00, and Lena came down grinning. As we hugged, her friend Christina stepped into the room and greeted us. Christina was adopted by an American family a few years ago, and has come back to Ukraine for an extended visit with her grandmother. She hung out with us today and helped translate.

I brought some extra clothes with me today for Lena to try on, so we can get a feel for sizes. She has grown a bit since last time we saw her, and is a very normal, healthy 14-year old!

Once the fashion show was complete, we asked Lena about the folded paper bird that she had given us on Monday, and the other sculptures that the girls had made. We suggested that sometime she could show us how they were made; she quickly ran into the adjacent room, grabbed a crane-looking bird, and started deconstructing it!

Us: “Lena, what are you doing!?!?! Put that back together!”
Her: “I don’t think I know how. But it’s OK, it’s not mine.”

She is a very determined girl, though. She claimed the ability to reassemble a new bird in under 20 minutes. She took the entire thing apart, separated the paper pieces by color, and then proceeded to build a new one while Dad timed her. She did produce something in that time, although it wasn’t *quite* like the original. And it was missing a head. But she called it complete, and claimed success. Who are we to argue with art? Perhaps it should be named Ichabod?

We passed a good part of the afternoon chatting and playing. Lena took our camera and snapped many photos of her friends. Lena made up new rules for Uno (to her advantage, of course), like if two cards add up to the number that’s showing, you can play them both. Or like if a number is showing and you have two more of them, you can play them both. Uh…no. Masha was getting excited to have a fourth in the family so we could play more games together, but I suspect that maybe we’ll be spending more time refereeing then playing!

After several fun-filled hours, our translator appeared again, and told us today’s visit was coming to an end. We visited for a few minutes with the Director of the orphanage, gave her the gifts that we brought (a framed photo of the four of us, plus a small photo album filled with photos of Masha and the family), and showed her the video that Masha made for her.

The Director talked to us about the importance of families for children and reminded us that children need rules and consistent enforcement of boundaries. She also told us to encourage the girls in the areas where they showed talent and that it was very important that they keep their native language as they learn English. This was a bit of a guilt-trip for us, as Masha has clearly forgotten her Russian, although we all hope that she’ll remember it when Lena gets home. But Lena has already told us that she wants to keep her Russian, and being a little older, I suspect it will be a little easier for her than it was for Masha.

Our meeting complete, we left the Center around 3, stopped to exchange some money, and then our translator dropped us off at the grocery store while she ran to check on one of our documents. Even though we only had eight items on our grocery list, we piled back into the car a half-hour later with a full cartload of groceries.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, our translator handed us a document and joyfully informed us that we will have our court hearing next Tuesday at noon! This is great news, as it’s perfect timing to make our return flight home on the 31st (with no change fees or thousands of dollars in additional fares), and it allows us now to plan and book flights for me to return after the mandatory two-week appeal period to bring Lena home.

We still have a few documents that need to be completed before the court hearing, but we’re on track, and our translator is not worried. One more stop for a followup before close of business, and then we head home to start dinner.

Since I found fresh ginger at the grocery, tonight I made one of our favorite dinners from home…Clay Pot Ginger Chicken. Even though it’s not real Clay Pot (and not nearly as good as at Bamboo in Malvern), it’s a taste of home. We invited the other couple over (they are staying just a couple doors down in the same apartment building, so it’s easy to visit), and they arrived just as I was finishing cleaning and cutting the chicken.

Beer and vodka began to flow, and we chatted as I made not nearly enough rice, then made way too much more rice but burned the bottom (ohhh, how I miss my rice steamer!). We all realized that tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and over dinner, we compared American and Ukrainian holiday traditions for Christmas and New Year’s. We explained our Christmas traditions to our translator, and she described their New Year’s traditions.

After a wonderful evening with our new friends, they bid us good night. We called home, talked to Mash, and then went to bed.