Our Little Russian

• What is your favorite free time activity?

Well when it’s a lot of free time, traveling. But just the usual amount on a day off, it depends what I’m in the mood to do. I love catching up on my “crime tv” shows, reading, surfing (the internet that is!). These days I’m trying to use this time to organize and the clean the house before our little one arrives.

• What is your favorite non-adoption book?

That’s tough, again it depends on what mood I’m in! I love a lot of the classics, Jane Eyre is great, Crime and Punishment. I also love fantasy type novels for a good light read such as ones by Jasper Fforde. I also really enjoyed The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Sorry I can’t give a definite answer, it really depends on my mood at the time.

• Are you fully immersed in the Russia adoption community yet?

No. I’ve had a very hard time feeling like I am part of that community, mostly I’m sure due to my own difficulties attaching to the Russia program at first. But these days it is improving, thanks to my agency! My agency created a yahoo group recently and it has been great. I’m starting to feel like I am part of my agency’s community, even if not the Russian adoption community at large. I think it may help if you find 1 or 2 people, (maybe via their blogs) that you can contact and develop a friendship with, I find it very difficult to just dive in the yahoo groups, there are so many people you can feel lost.

• What do you do to unwind from the adoption stress?

There’s something one can do for that? I guess I try to distract myself with something else, like the Olympics! Or Margarita’s always help too. I think I really just try to put it out of my mind by watching a movie or something, but it is hard to not stress when something so important depends on it!

• What -if any- timeline do you have for the Russian adoption?

Right now we are looking at October or November for our first trip. Our dossier will be going over to Moscow at the end of this month. Then the second trip should take place about 4-6 weeks after the first one. I plan on discussing the process in Russia in more detail in a future post, it’s complicated!

• What do you and Cliff do for a living?

Well I’m going to be general here because I don’t want to publish too much identifying information. But I am a Retail Manager and Cliff is a System Engineer in Information Technology.

• How did you decide who would move when you got married?

Good question! I think I volunteered! Mainly it came down to the fact that Cliff had a career and home (he is a little older than I am!) and I was working as a Nanny and could easily do that anywhere. Plus I like an adventure!

• Did you have to switch agencies because your old one didn’t work in Russia?

Yes. Our Vietnam agency didn’t have any other programs that were active and suitable for us, they also don’t have a Russian program so we had to find another agency.

• Did you also have a bad first agency experience?

Besides the fact that their program in Vietnam ended up being unorganized and unsuccessful? No they are a reputable agency and we still have a contract with them. We hope that we will be able to change to another of their programs at some point in the future, right now they don’t have any suitable ones. We’re holding out hope that they will start a new program we can change to for our next adoption.

Ok I think that’s it! If I missed one let me know, I tried to get them all. Hopefully you now feel like you know us a little better. Thanks for all the questions!

I was so very excited today, when I got home from work there was a package on the front door step. Inside was my brand new Flip Mino! So far I am in love. This video camera is awesome, it is so light and tiny and easy to use. Amazon has the white one on sale for 22% off so I jumped at the chance to buy this handy little camera.

We own an actual video camera but the thought of lugging that thing to Moscow and back was not a pleasant idea. So when a family from our agency (thanks Tamara!) recommended this I checked it out. I LOVE it! The have 3 different models but I like the Mino best because it has an internal battery that charges while it’s plugged into your computer of an outlet, the others use AA batteries and I hated the idea of constantly having to replace batteries.

I’m posting a test video below of our nursery, the quality isn’t the best once I uploaded it to YouTube but on my laptop it looked a lot better. So I will have to figure out out to improve the quality.

Some other great news, a family with our agency got “the call” today! Amy will hopefully be traveling soon to meet her daughter in Moscow. My agency thinks there is a good chance we will get “the call” in October. I’m going to try to think November so if it happens before then I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but if it takes until November I won’t be too disappointed. We’ll see how that works for me!

I hope to finish the answers to your questions tonight, but in the meantime here is my test video with my new Flip Mino!

• Do you miss Australia?

Absolutely. As I said in the previous post, I was born and raised there and all my family still live there. Nothing against America, but Australia is my home and it’s a great country. While Australians and Americans have a lot of similarities, they also have a lot of differences. Australia is a very laid back, friendly place. It’s just different, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we never had to fight for our country (heck they were sending all the prisoners there and they made the most of it!) so war just isn’t in our history and I think this really does affect the outlook of the country. Anyway! I’ve gone off topic, but the differences (and my family) is why I do miss Australia.

• What made you want to adopt a girl?

Well we thought about children a lot over the years, we’ve had a lot of time to think about it since we started trying to get pregnant about a year after we got married (we’ve been married over 8 years now). Since we were given a choice with adoption, we decided to make one. We weren’t (still aren’t) sure if this would be the only child we would ever have. Not that we don’t want more (we do), just things are uncertain when you can’t have a biological child. So we thought about it, and if we were only ever able to have the one child we decided we’d want a girl. To be honest I really don’t have a huge preference, but Cliff has always imagined himself with a daughter. Since I didn’t mind either way and Cliff had always visualized having a little girl who he could be “daddy” too, we chose to request a girl. I hope one day we’ll have a son also. I know a lot of people have issues with “choosing” the sex of your adopted child, but my feeling is, if the country is giving you the choice then what’s the problem? I don’t believe choosing the sex causes corruption, even if you weren’t allowed to choose the sex with Vietnam there still would have been the corruption due to the demand exceeding the available infants regardless of sex. Again I’m off the topic but I felt like touching on that topic!

• Have you always loved to travel?

Yep! But more so since I met Cliff and started traveling with him. Before he met me he was an international travel virgin! Cliff loves to travel even more than I do.

• Where have you traveled to?

Well Australia obviously, Ireland, England, Hungary, Romania, Cambodia, Thailand, Puebla Mexico, Morocco, Spain, Hong Kong, Guanajuato Mexico, Nicaragua.

• Where else would you like to go?

Everywhere! I think high on my list is Mongolia. Not sure why, it’s felt strongly drawn towards it for some time. But I’ve love to get to South America, more Africa more S.E. Asia and of course we hope our next trip is to Russia!

• Favorite place I’ve visited?

Hmm honestly it changes with every trip! Usually the last place we went is my new favorite place. I know I absolutely want to go back to Cambodia and Morocco. I LOVED both places, I recommend that everyone goes to those two places. My fondest memories are probably from Cambodia, going there really opened our eyes to the world I believe. It really did change us as people, I hope for the better.

Ok I gotta stop! Grant Hackett is swimming the 1500m final. GO HACKETT!

• Coke or Pepsi?

Honestly either. But in general Diet Coke is what you’d find in our fridge. I do try to stick to water most of the time though.

• Is all of your family in Australia or are you the only one here?

I do not have any family in the U.S. All of my family is still in Australia and I miss them very much. Australia is where I was born and raised. I also have some relatives in England and Ireland.

• Was the transition from Vietnam to Russian difficult mentally?

Yes very difficult, it still is at times. When we started researching countries with open programs, we knew we were very interested in S.E. Asia (I have relatives who are Indonesian and we traveled to Cambodia in 2005 and fell in love with the culture and people there). We quickly decided on VN after researching requirements, status of program, health of children etc. It didn’t take long to fall in love with the idea of adopting from there. We read many blogs, reading about families that had already traveled to adopt their children and the experience they had, it sounded perfect to us.

Russia had never been a country we were interested in adopting from before. Nothing against the country, in fact I’ve always wanted to travel there and I love the sound of the Russian language. It just wasn’t a culture we felt strongly drawn towards like the S.E. Asian one. When it became clear that VN wasn’t going to happen for us, we had to look at other options. It was very difficult for us, our hearts had been in VN and we felt so strongly that we had a daughter waiting for us there. And this hasn’t changed, part of our hearts are still with VN.

So to answer the question, yes the transition has been and still is difficult at times. We still have trouble removing ourselves from the connection we feel with Vietnam and developing a connection with Russia. Obviously we hope once we travel and meet our child in Russia that will all change quickly because we will finally have our daughter.

• How did you and Cliff meet?

We met on the internet. We were both in the same chat room one day and started talking. It didn’t take long for a friendship to develop and more soon after. I traveled here and spent a month with him, meeting his family and getting to know him in person. We already knew each other pretty well from all the time we spent talking on the computer. The day I had to leave was the worst day of my life, it was heartbreaking because I didn’t know if I would ever see him again. This was back in the day when you could still see people off at the gate and we stayed together until they called my name for final boarding. It didn’t take long after I returned to Australia for us to decide we wanted to marry and we applied for a Fiance visa for me. 10 months later I was on a plane moving to the U.S.!

• Favorite past time?

Hmm that is hard actually, and I thought that would be the easy question when I first read it! Really I just love hanging out with Cliff doing nothing! But I think I would have to say travel. Traveling around the world with all my free time.

• How many questions can we ask?

As many as you like!

Ok I’ll answer some more in a new post. If you need any further explanation of my answers, just say so.

At Laura’s request, I’m going to do a Question and Answer post. I know a few people have done these recently and I’m more than happy to do one.

This is how it works, you ask the questions and I answer them. They can be about anything you would like to know about us, our lives, our adoption etc. Feel free to ask anything you want, if I don’t want to answer it I’ll just tell you! I’m a pretty blunt person. But I am sure I’d answer anything you want to know, if it’s very personal I”ll just password protect the post so I can control who’s reading it.

Honestly I’m very boring, so I think you may all be disappointed with the answers! And if you want to address a question specifically to Cliff go ahead, I’m sure he’d be happy to answer. I guess this is just a way for you to get to know us better. So ask away!

Yep we received it back today, all Apostilled by the SOS. It is now sitting in a FedEx drop box waiting to be picked up and delivered to our agency tomorrow! Hopefully it will get mailed to Moscow next week and we’ll be translated and registered (again) by the end of the month.

I was rather pleased with us for getting it on it’s way so I stopped by Old Navy and bought a bunch of baby clothes that were on clearance. I can not believe how tiny the 18-24mth sizes are! I kept looking at them thinking “there’s no way a 2 year old would fit in these!”. But they were summer clothes so I got them anyway. I think perhaps Cliff will get dragged out to the new Babies R Us this weekend for some more shopping. Have to celebrate getting our dossier on it’s way!

After that little bit of shopping, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some noodles to have with the beef stroganoff for dinner and I was able to get the new People magazine with Brad, Angie and the kids! They have some beautiful photos inside of the entire family together. And I must say Angelina looked incredibly normal! She was in this cotton maternity nightgown and you could tell her hair wasn’t styled at all, just hanging down straight. She looked so natural and very beautiful, and the kids all looked so sweet holding those tiny new babies.

So all in all it was a GOOD day.

First a huge congrats to Dana and her family who just received a referral for a baby girl from South Korea!

A family with our agency just met their baby girl today in Moscow! She will turn 1 year old on Thursday and they hope to sign their petition to adopt her on that day. Hopefully they won’t have a long wait to return for their court date and to bring their daughter home.

Two families with our agency are currently waiting out their 10 day wait (mandatory wait after court date before they can take custody of their children). Both chose to return to the US during this wait but they should be traveling back soon to pick up their daughters!

I seem to recall that someone had asked whether Moscow was a 2 trip or a 3 trip region. Assuming everything goes smoothly at your court hearing you have the choice to either stay in country during your 10 day wait or you can return to the US and then fly back after your 10 day wait. Cliff and I will be choosing to stay in Moscow during our 10 day wait, we will be able to visit our daughter in the orphanage during the wait and we feel this will be very beneficial in bonding with our daughter and getting her use to us before we take her out of the only home she has known. We hope this will make it a little less traumatic for her when we take her from the orphanage. Plus we want to take advantage of that time to enjoy the country of her birth.

To answer a question Laura had last week, I’ve been living in the States since Christmas 1999. I arrived on Christmas Eve. I came here on a Fiancé visa and Cliff and I married in March 2000. So I guess that will be 9 years this Christmas!

Also I know Laurie had mentioned that Cliff should submit his photo to travel mags, or a photo contest. Well in fact, he is going to have a published photo in the new Lonely Planet Europe book that comes out next month! I am so very proud of him, it’s not that photo (obviously, that was Morocco not Europe!), it is one he took in Romania. My husband will soon be a published photographer!

I know I have a lot of readers that aren’t familiar with Russian adoption. If any of you have any questions you’d like to ask please feel free and I’ll do my best to answer them.

It’s true, we rock!

One week since we were sent our list of Dossier documents for Moscow and we have everything in our hands, including an Addendum to our home study!

I’ll get everything County certified tomorrow, FedEx to the SOS and then in my agency’s hands by the end of the week.

Go ahead…. tell me how awesome I am. I think perhaps I should start one of those Dossier services for adoptive families, I can get paperwork completed in record time.

The Civics Test! Could you become an American? How many can you get right without cheating!

1. How many stripes are on the flag?

2. How many states are there in the Union?

3. What makes up Congress?

4. For how long do we elect each Senator?

5. What are the duties of the Supreme Court?

6. Who is the current Governor of the state you live in?

7. What were the 13 original states of the United States called before they were states?

8. Name one right or freedeom granted to us by the Bill of Rights?

9. What are the first 10 amendments to the Constituation called?

10. What is the introduction to the Constitution called?

I did pass! In fact I got 10/10 right. I did panic for a moment when she started to ask question 7, I thought she was going to ask “What were the 13 original states?”. I knew there was no way I would get that question correct! She approved me for citizenship and told me I would be sent a letter in the next month or two letting me know when my Citizenship Ceremony will be. That is when I take the Oath of Allegiance and offically become a citizen of the United States of America. I am going to make sure a take a lot of people with me for that one! I don’t want to be the only person all by myself. Fingers crossed everything works out timing wise with the adoption, since I have to hand over my green card at the ceremony and I won’t be able to travel after than until my U.S. passport arrives!

Thanks to everyone for their Congrats and support! I will let you know when I offically become a “yank”.

Sorry I’m so slow at posting this. I’m not an avid writer so sometimes I have to force myself to write about things.

It would seem that the last Wednesday of the month must be the day our local USCIS office does all their citizenship ceremonies, because it was PACKED. The car in front of me got the last parking spot, luckily I had 20 mins until my appointment time so I was able to hang out and wait for someone to leave.

I’d forgotten my cell phone which worked out well because they don’t allow you to bring them inside and I’m sure it would have melted in the car with the ridiculous heat we’ve been having. Once I entered I could see that the entire waiting area was full of people. There was a man standing at the front talking to everyone, I didn’t really hear what was said but it sounded like he was giving them directions. I had been directed to a room off the main waiting area so I headed there to drop off my appointment letter and wait.

What I found most interesting was the incredible amount of diversity in the room. Obviously I knew there would be a lot of different nationalities but I was still surprised by the variety. There were people from India, China, Middle East, Eastern Europe (I’m guessing this one), South and Central America. Oh yeah, and Australia. When I first sat down, I took a seat in the back so I could observe everyone, I thought I was going to have a very long wait since there were so many people there. But it turned out that most of the people in the room were family members of the ones waiting for interviews. I suddenly felt very lonely! If I had had my cell phone I am pretty sure I would have called a friend to come keep me company! (Cliff was at work or I would have called him).

Shortly after they closed the door from our room into the main waiting area and they started the citizenship ceremony for the group out there. I could hear them all saying the oath of allegiance and then a man started singing the National Anthem. I wasn’t expecting that in our local USCIS office! To be perfectly honest he wasn’t a very good singer, they should have gotten the dude from our local Macaroni Grill restaurant that sings to the customers! I’m pretty sure he is a trained Opera singer.

I had about an hour wait before I got called in, but I quite enjoyed my time because I got to watch people go through the door to be interviewed and come back out to share their joy with their waiting family. One in particular was very touching. I believe the man was from India or perhaps Bangladesh, he was there with his 3 young daughters and seemed to have been waiting a while. He finally was called in. When he came out his daughters stood up and looked at him, a giant smile spread across his face and you could see the joy and relief. His daughters all hugged him and you could tell that smile wouldn’t be wiped off his face for the rest of the day. It was beautiful to see how much this meant to him and his family.

My interview and test was rather uneventful. I did get the nicest Officer though! I had noticed the different ones come out and call in the next person, and this particular one always took the time to smile, introduce herself and shake their hand. I was pleased to get her as my Officer. We went to her office and she had to swear me in. The interview itself was really nothing, basically she read out the questions on my application that I had submitted and I had to answer them the same one I did on the form! We had to add in my trips out of the country (Australia & Nicaragua) and that was it for the interview part.

Now the reading and writing test, that was hard! She handed me a piece of paper and told me to read the sentence on it…… “I can read this”. Phew that was tough. Now I had to pass the writing test, she told me to write the sentence she read to me…… “The boy threw the ball.” Hey I got that right too! So I jest, the reading and writing were nothing, but the Civics test was still to come…………..