On Wednesday, July 28, Leslie, our adoption coordinator, phoned us at work via a conference call. We had been told that we would know a match had occurred when our coordinator places a conference call to both spouses. We did not receive a match, however we were told that we had been give the opportunity to travel blind to our region: Volgograd, Russia.
Traveling blind entails traveling without a specific match to a child. This means that when one arrives in the region a match is made at the Ministry of Education where the prospective parents then travel to the orphanage and decide if the child is the right one for their family. The benefit of doing it this way is that there is very little time between match and visitation. You actually see the child very quickly. The down side is that one is not guaranteed a child. And the worst case is not finding a child.
Two days later, (Friday) we decided, after some thought and prayer, we would travel blind; at this point we believed that more than likely this decision would not matter. We heard through several sources that recent law changes in the Duma would make it impossible to adopt in Russia without working through an accredited agency. The umbrella agency our agency works through was previously accredited and is in "good" standing to become re-accredited. However, has yet to be re-accredited.
Two cases in the US, (one in Illinois the other in North Carolina), involving the death of an adopted child by their parent resulted in a delay in issuing accreditations by the Moscow prosecutor. The prosecutor, facing political pressure delayed issuing accreditations to the second group of agencies working in Russia.
We were told that traveling blind would most likely not happen. However Leslie told us she would be looking into the issue further and determine what "really" was going on.
On Monday, July 25, we heard word that the region we were working in was "unaffected" by the law changes and we could travel as an independent on our first trip. So here we go again. On Thursday, July 28 we had a conference call with Leslie and the Eastern Europe coordinator, Debbie. The purpose was to understand the risk in blind travel. We asked if traveling would occur soon so we would know if our yearly trip to a North Carolina beach would need to be cancelled. We were told to go ahead and travel because Leslie would be on vacation and the soonest we would hear on travel dates would be after she returned (August 8th).
We made plans to travel and arrived at the beach on August 2, at about four in the morning. Usually it takes one or two days to completely relax and be absorbed by the sunshine, ocean air, and lazy atmosphere.
Two days later, August 4, Beth was awakened (granted it was 10 am) by a phone call from Debbie who indicated that we would need to travel to Moscow on the 16th of August. The only catch was that the individual who would walk our Visa application through the Russian embassy was leaving on vacation on the 6th and would require our application the next day if we were to receive it before our intended travel dates.
We called our travel agent, Cathy, and asked her to make reservations for the trip.
Have you ever tried to find a computer with internet access, a place to obtain passport style photos, money orders, and a Fedex drop location in an area designed for relaxing and escaping such devices? The first problem was our application and our passports were waiting at home for our return. We coordinated with the facilitator in Maryland that two packages would be arriving: one containing our passports, the other containing the money orders, passport photos, and visa applications.
Our friends, Mike and Kate, were house/dog sitting for us and graciously agreed to send the passports to the facilitator. Kate sent the completed applications, still saved on our computer, to our email address. We found the Brunswick Business Center down the road about 5 miles from where we stay. We attempted to download the completed applications. The business center did not allow Hotmail attachments to be downloaded.
We downloaded the original application from the Russian embassy site. Over the next hour, Mike relayed over the phone the information in the completed application. We complete the application and printed it. We needed to pay the business center in cash, cash we did not have. So we found our bank's ATM, (so as to avoid those fees), returned to the center, and paid.
About a block down the street, we found a Walgreens that provides passport photos. We had our visa photos taken and then we needed to find a branch of our bank in the area. We drove 20 minutes to the location where the bank was and then another 20 minutes to the new location. There we negotiated a free Fedex envelope with the receptionist (they are always free), waited in the teller line (for a while), and walked out with three money orders for the two visas and facilitator.
We put the items in the envelope and drove 30 minutes to a town in South Carolina where the Fedex ship center was located. We dropped off the envelope and headed home to shower and get ready for a trip to Wilmington for dinner. We called Cathy back to confirm the trip reservations.
Back at the ranch John had a mild panic attack because he forgot a from that was required for all males entering Russia. With a quick call to Debbie (remember Leslie is on vacation), we determined that the form was no longer needed and we could resume our vacation.
We left the beech on Saturday, August 6th, at 8 am and boarded a plane for home 10 hours later. Three days early.
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