No Good News. Just More Waiting...

Well,
The MOE has not changed their mind on waiting to issue our appointment until the other family was taken care of. Unfortunately, the other family declined to visit the referral they were issued on Tuesday. Next Tuesday is a holiday in Russia so the next opportunity to have an appointment scheduled would be on the 11th of November. It is looking like our 30 day visas will expire before we get the chance to travel.

More news from the agency. It looks like Russia will be doing away with blind referrals soon. That means that more medical information will be available upfront before visiting your referral.

Travel Dates Unknown

We hit a roadblock yesterday when we heard back from our agency that our apointment scheduled for October 28th had been cancelled. So I had to get all our reservations cancelled for now. We were all set to leave on Saturday. We are obviously upset over this development.

Why did this happen... Well, from what we understand another one of our agencies families declined a referral two weeks ago and did not get another one. The MOE (Russian Dept. of Adoption) expected to see this family yesterday for another referral. The family was already back in the US. The MOE was not happy that this family declined the first referral because they believed it was a good referral. In fact, the same referral was taken immediately by a Spanish family. I don't have any more details but it is like the MOE is mad at or punishing our agency and all of their families. We just hope that sitting on it a week will calm everyone's demeanor and we will get another travel date on Tuesday (they only issue appointments on Tuesdays).

So, as we wait--our referral sits in an orphanage deprived of love. Who really suffers? I know a lot of adoptive families feel the same way. It seems to always take more time than we think it should.

Someone had asked the age of our referral. She is 2 1/2.

Getting Ready to Travel....
It is amazing how much one can get done when there is an approaching deadline. I had posted a list a post or two back and I am happy to report that I have cleaned out some closets and sorted through a lot of things. I am having garage sale next weekend. It is pretty late in the season but I don't want to have all the stuff around the house all winter (especially since our family is going to grow before then).

I have to say, packing for a week travel to Russia is much different than packing for a month or longer travel to Ukraine. I think we can make due without things for a week.

For those of you who don't know, with Russia you go over and meet/accept your referral formally. Then you come back home, prepare more paperwork and wait to hear when your court date is scheduled. Then, you travel back to Russia (in our case Moscow City) and hold court. There is a 10 day mandatory wait after court (just like Ukraine). After that you get passports and visas for the child and come home.

Another interesting fact is that Connor is from Kharkiv Ukraine which is 25 miles from Russia's border. I haven't been able to find out exact mileage to Moscow but it looks to be about 500 miles on the map.