10:00am The State Department of Adoption meeting was supposed to take 15 minutes. However, they could not find the boys' sister Anna. She was listed as living at the same orphanage as the boys in the database. However, he has not lived there for at least 3 years. It ended up taking an hour and 15 minutes and they finally decided they would just write the referral for 2 boys-Maxim and Roman!
The SDA office was very small, and old and it was like walking down a dark alley and into a side door. It is not at all what I expected, but we were so happy to receive the referral for the boys pretty quickly.
When we arrived there was a lot of Russian speaking clearly about us, but we have no idea what they were saying. The lady read to us in Russian about the boys, their parents, and why they are orphans. Konstantine, our facilitator translated very little for us. One more thing about the SDA office...The database is not what you would picture as a database on a computer. This was more like a binder with plastic cover sheets with a very old photo stapled to the front.
After the meeting we walked what seemed to me 20 miles in high heels with Roman, our translator. Tim says we only walked 2 miles, but I beg to differ. Our translator is very nice and we really like him.
In the evening Tim walked to the underground mall. It is a lot like an American mall only people speak Russian and you pay for things in Grievna and not American dollars. The bathrooms are just porcelain holes on the floor. :) We got some souvenirs for the girlies today as well and then went back to the apartment and called the girls via Skype.
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