Monday April 16, 2007

Good Morning from Pavlodar

Well our first night on the couch was ok. Amy woke up several times during the night. I took another round of sleeping aid and I slept fine until Amy got up, but we quickly went back to sleep.

Tanya our translator called and said that Svetlana would pick us up about 10:30. She called back and it would be about 11:00, surprise surprise. Anyway they did pick us up at 11:00 and took us to the Ministry of Education. We met Jenny and Grove Burnette from New Mexico. They are adopting a little boy and they were going with us to discuss their court appointment on Tuesday. This was good for us to hear because it let us know some of the process ahead. We all met with the lady from the ministry together. Basically, she wanted to see us in person, record in the book that we were here and issue the approval to go to the baby house. This approval needed to be signed by the Director of the Ministry of Education, who had unfortunately lost his father either the day before or that morning. We would have to wait until she received his signature to take the next step. The next step was to have a meeting at the Guardianship of Care office and receive her approval.

After that the Burnettes along with Lena and Svetlana went to Svetlana’s office to work out the details for their court date. They dropped us off at a very nice Russian café. Now keep in mind on our first trip we never made it to a café for lunch or anything else. Also, we left our Russian translation book at the apartment. The only thing that we were told was that they had good fish and the menu was in English. We went upstairs to the café and found a place that is very similar to Big Foot Lodge back home by Peabody Place. Take out all the heads of animals and birds from Big Foot and put in some floor to ceiling trees that looked very real, some stuffed chickens and some very nice decorative wall designs and you are at our Russian Café. We were seated at a table by the window and were given the menus. We looked the menus over and found a chicken dish that was in a cream sauce with mushrooms, onions and either butter or olive oil served in a clay pot with a flat pastry layed over the top of the pot and baked in the oven. This was a very good lunch and it was so filling we did not have to eat dinner that night. After lunch we came back to the apartment and waited to hear from Svetlana and Lena about our permission to go to the baby house.

Hope to have some news soon. Love,
David and Amy