While this blog begins in Ukraine, our story goes back about a year. We first met Katya (Kateryna) at JFK Airport in December of 2009. We flew there to meet her for World Orphan Project’s winter hosting program. While we had only seen one photograph of her before we met, we recognized her immediately as the group of children emerged from hallway. She also seemed to recognize us very quickly from the letter and photo she received from us while on the plane from Frankfurt. The children were all very tired from an extra night at the Frankfurt airport due to bad weather in Europe, and because of bad weather in the northeast we had to reschedule our trip to Colorado through Philadelphia.
Despite all of the travel delays, we made it to Colorado two days before Christmas. Katya seemed a little apprehensive on Christmas morning, but when she learned that there were gifts for her under the tree she got very excited. She especially enjoyed going through a stocking full of barrettes, nail polish, lip gloss, and candy. For the remainder of the holiday season, we played games, watched movies, went to the zoo, and got together with several of our friends and family (some via webcam). She also managed to teach us a few words of Russian. During her 2½ week stay, we got to know a kind and gentle girl who quickly felt like part of our family.
After a wonderful Christmas, we decided to make it official and try to adopt her. We previously learned that Katya would not be available until September 2010. Therefore, we couldn’t start too quickly on our dossier since the documents can become out of date (and thus have to be redone later). Over the summer we subjected ourselves to a series of medical exams and criminal background checks, not to mention countless impositions on friends to help prepare documents on our behalf; all with the hope of traveling to Ukraine in October.
In May we also learned that we could again host Katya in the summer, and this time for ten weeks through Frontier Horizon. Our summer with Katya was better than we could ever have hoped for. Despite being a busy time at work for both of us, we each got to spend a lot of time with her. During her visit, she became a good bike rider, enthusiastic swimmer, and harvester of tomatoes and other vegetables from the garden. Katya also took on the self-appointed jobs of feeding the dogs their dinner and making sure the birds that visit our yard had food in the feeders. Most of all, she felt more than ever like a part of our family. At the conclusion of the summer hosting we were sad to see Katya leave, but knew she had to return to Ukraine so we could take the next steps in making her place in our family permanent. As we watched her plane depart from Denver at the end of August, we knew it wouldn’t be long before we followed her across the ocean.
Well, we’ve made it this far. Our dossier was submitted on September 10 and our SDA appointment is scheduled for October 14. As we begin the next chapters in our adoption story we are in Kiev and awaiting our appointment.
Katya at the Denver airport in August.
No comments:
Post a Comment