Well, we still have a couple of weeks before we can get our final documents from our home study agency, and when they arrive we will be in Canada for a week...so we hope to send our new dossier on August 15. We still don't know for sure which region we will end up in...a total of 19 agencies have been reaccredited, but ours is not one of them. So assuming they are not reaccredited within 3 weeks, we will go with the new region.
Meanwhile, we thought we should be thinking ahead a bit and learning some Russian for the trip. Although we probably would have done a short/simple program for tourists, some friends were kind enough to pass along a longer course that they no longer needed. It is a completely "aural" course (all on CD's, listen and repeat, no book). It took us a bit to get used to it, but we are starting to catch on. We listen in the car almost every day. We have finished 20% of the course (6 out of 30 lessons) and I can already say some important stuff:
(note: I am making up my own spelling, because of course we are just learning how to say them, not write them in Cyrillic)
"Zdrastvuit-ye. Ya nimnoga goveroo parusskie. Ya Amerikanke. Ya khatchelee ba shtonyboot payeest."
"Izvineet-ye. Skazheechee puhzhalste, gjeuh shtonyboot payeest?"
Translations:
"Hello. I speak a little Russian. I am American. I would like something to eat."
"Excuse me. Tell me please, where is something to eat?"
I figure these will help me in any number of situations :)
I know that the language is starting to sink in, because I was trying to wake Rob up yesterday - "Time to get up!" - and he mumbled something at me. I said "What?" He repeated: "mozhitbweets poe-zhuh".
Translation: "Maybe later".
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Let the games begin!!!
What games? Why, the Olympic games for one thing. Russia just won the bid for the 2014 winter Olympics.
But that wouldn't be enough to write a blog entry about. Instead, I have great news -- yesterday, on the 4th of July, seven American adoption agencies were given their reaccreditation by Russia!!! Ours was not among them (there are around 40 still waiting) but this is a huge turn in the tide. No agency had been reaccredited since April 2006. This is a symbol of a giant breakthrough: Russia has demonstrated that it is going to continue with its system of accredited agencies being allowed to facilitate adoptions (which at times people had begun to doubt). Our agency "hopes to be" in the second batch of reaccreditations (who doesn't?), and we aren't sure when they would be. However, last time Russia did reaccreditations the first two "batches" were only about 3 weeks apart. So it may not be long. But who knows?
What does this mean for us? Well, the timing is interesting. It is still another month or so before we are able turn in paperwork to switch regions. If our agency is reaccredited before that, we plan to stay with our original region. If not, we will prepare our documents for the new one and send them in mid-August. In either case, we very much hope that we will be traveling in September or October!
Fun fact: Our original region is in Siberia, and would require a plane trip from Moscow. Our potential new region is just a 3-hour drive from Moscow. While sort of attached to the old one, one nice thing about the new one was that we could at least save money from not needing those flights. Then we learned that in the new region, there is an extra doctor's visit required in Russia. Each of us would need to go to a special clinic where they do these exams (most people say they're quite brief) and it would set us back $700 PER PERSON!! Scandalous!
But that wouldn't be enough to write a blog entry about. Instead, I have great news -- yesterday, on the 4th of July, seven American adoption agencies were given their reaccreditation by Russia!!! Ours was not among them (there are around 40 still waiting) but this is a huge turn in the tide. No agency had been reaccredited since April 2006. This is a symbol of a giant breakthrough: Russia has demonstrated that it is going to continue with its system of accredited agencies being allowed to facilitate adoptions (which at times people had begun to doubt). Our agency "hopes to be" in the second batch of reaccreditations (who doesn't?), and we aren't sure when they would be. However, last time Russia did reaccreditations the first two "batches" were only about 3 weeks apart. So it may not be long. But who knows?
What does this mean for us? Well, the timing is interesting. It is still another month or so before we are able turn in paperwork to switch regions. If our agency is reaccredited before that, we plan to stay with our original region. If not, we will prepare our documents for the new one and send them in mid-August. In either case, we very much hope that we will be traveling in September or October!
Fun fact: Our original region is in Siberia, and would require a plane trip from Moscow. Our potential new region is just a 3-hour drive from Moscow. While sort of attached to the old one, one nice thing about the new one was that we could at least save money from not needing those flights. Then we learned that in the new region, there is an extra doctor's visit required in Russia. Each of us would need to go to a special clinic where they do these exams (most people say they're quite brief) and it would set us back $700 PER PERSON!! Scandalous!
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