Monday, March 4, 2013

We made it! March 5, 2013

Blogging has been a luxury, and there’s been no time for luxuries the past two weeks!  Fast forward through a whirlwind of scrambling, packing, crash courses in Russian, tying up loose ends with our jobs, our household, our finances, schools, day cares, preschools, assembling lists and more lists … topped off by the arrival of Pilar, our 28-year-old brave goddess who’s charged with the daunting task of managing our home, kids, and pets for the next three weeks…

And here I am, sitting at a table in a teeny apartment overlooking a busy street in a one-thousand-year-old city in Eastern Europe, drinking coffee that we’ve made out of bubbly, gassy water that we purchased by accident, not understanding the language – and even if we did, not understanding the Cyrillic alphabet. The sun is beaming through the window at 6:00 a.m., but outside snow lines the sidewalks and mottles the crazy roof lines, and the cold bites right through your clothing as if you weren’t wearing any.
It’s a moment of peace in what has been a couple weeks of sleep deprivation and an emotional rollercoaster unlike any I’ve known. 

And now it really sinks in.  I don’t know how we did it, but we’re here:
WE MADE IT!!!

Peter has been patient with my hysteria over technology, or lack thereof, which has almost resolved itself so that we can relax from the panic that has gripped us by spending several days en route with no means to communicate home.  Now we can laugh a bit and – more importantly – look forward.  A word of advice for those who may be traveling out of country soon:  Learn your technology BEFORE you leave.  For whatever reason, our phone will not work here.  Our brand-spanking new laptop that we purchased just days before flying out is loaded with Windows 8, which is about as user-friendly as changing the diaper of a wiggly toddler with only your left hand.  It REFUSES to acknowledge any wi-fi that’s been made available to us.  That left all hopes pinned on an old I-pad that a neighbor was kind enough to run over to us the day before we left … but never having seen one, let alone used one, we found that learning on the fly (literally!) does not work out so well if you’re not a gadget-savvy teenager or you’ve left your gadget-savvy teenager at home.  What this meant was, by the time we were flying out of Munich, not having talked to our family in two longgggggggggggggggggggggg days, I panicked.  I mean,  seriously panicked.  The nose of that plane  was pointed in the wrong direction:  How could I put myself on the other side of the world from my family without a means to communicate?  I sobbed the entire flight to (Our Country X).  When it became apparent that the drunk man two rows back had died en route, a little perspective settled in.  Things could be worse.
Yesterday I staved off my mounting panic to make our first appearance at the department of orphans, the moment we’ve been anticipating for months.  Sitting in a room lined with binders full of pictures of the country’s orphans, we held our breath that our girl was still amongst them.  And she was.   And she’s still available.  We were given an opportunity to view other orphans or to change our mind.  We didn’t hesitate for a micro-second:  We accepted her referral.

Afterwards, we walked across the street from the government building to a local restaurant and met for the first time many of the folks behind the scenes of this country’s sad orphan situation, whose passion and perseverance in fighting to create adoptive opportunities for the cast-away special needs orphans is remarkable.  Were it not for them, we would not be here.  Were it not for them, these children would never know a family or a world outside the confines of their institutional walls.  You could almost see their halos.
We also met several U.S. families who are adopting special needs children.  One of them, as it turns out, will be adopting from the same orphanage as us.   Lucky for us, they are avid i-Pad users and were willing to give us a crash course right then and there.  Voila!  I was able to send a cryptic and hilariously desperate message to Facebook, begging someone, anyone to check in on my family and Pilar.  By the time we’d left, we’d received response back from family in the U.S. and, for the first time in several days, the cloud of panic lifted.

Now I can look ahead!
This afternoon, we will pack up, drop by the government building to pick up our orphan referral, and head out on a 12-hour overnight train to the region in which Melody’s orphanage is located.  (Sorry, still can’t disclose her real name or specifics of our whereabouts!).  Tomorrow will be spent running around gathering paperwork, meeting the director of the orphanage, and setting up a visitation schedule with Melody, whom we will be meeting within the next day or two.   The length of our stay there will depend on how long it takes to get a court date, as long as a couple weeks.  Between now and then, we’ll make a daily trudge through the snow  to the orphanage to spend time with, and get to know, our Melody.

Last night I dreamt of her.  I dreamt that her groupa nanny walked her out to me and gently set her down in front of me.  I expected her to topple over, but instead she took several  steps to me in that crooked just-learning-to-walk way.  Her long dark hair was held back in two ponytails, and she smiled shyly at me.  I picked her up, surprised by her healthy weight, and she perched on my hipbone as if she’d always been there.   I woke up this morning at 4:00 a.m. feeling hopeful and, for the first time in a week, semi-refreshed.  Six hours of sleep sure beats the heck outta my two-hour average over the previous few days.  Add a pot of bubbly-water coffee and a chunk of a chocolate bar for breakfast, and I’m ready for anything.  Speaking of, everyone talks about how much weight they lose when they come here, but I don’t see that phenomenon in my horizon when bakeries and chocolate and fresh bread abound here.
We finally got our (until now useless) laptop online, thanks to an old-fashioned Ethernet cable that was lent to us by our apartment’s manager.  Since we need to return it to him today, Peter just set off on a mission to buy another cable before we head out to country, assuming our wi-fi woes will continue.  All you can see of him is his nose poking out from behind a wool hat with earflaps and a scarf wrapped tight.  He'll face the cold rather than face a panicked mama again.  Oh, and he's searching for water that tastes and acts like water.  Buying anything here is an adventure itself. 

I’ve packing to do, so that’s all for now.  Love to all, and miss you so much I feel it in my bones.

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