Stahlke Adoption

No Travel Date Yet

Masha thought she might know our travel date by today. Jonathan attempted several times this morning to telephone her, but the calls did not go through. We suspect that there's a breakdown in the telephone system somewhere between here and Ukraine. He sent her an Email, and he's checking his messages throughout the day to see if she's written a response.

A comment to my August 8 posting asked what Mikola knows about the upcoming adoption. The government in Ukraine, and Ukrainian society in general, places a high value on an individual's privacy. Until we meet with SDA officials at our appointment in Kyiv, at which time we receive permission to visit Mikola, we have no legal access to information about him. So . . . we don't know what he's been told. We also have no photos or description of him, either. The legally-obtained information that we possess includes his name, birthdate, comments about him from our children, and general data on the family from our children's paperwork. We know that Mikola resides in the baby orphanage in Kirovohrad because that institution is the orphanage for children his age in the state of Kirovohrad.

Our postal carrier asked today if the fighting in Georgia would affect our trip. While events there are important for Ukrainian politics, the country of Ukraine is quite a distance from Georgia and not directly affected by the fighting there.

posted by Stahlkes @ 4:19 PM