As she and I go to various places, the airport, the grocery store, the mall, the embassy, I can hear her reading the words and looking at just about everything. She is a very quiet girl, at least with me, and to some extent even with Tammy and Matt. Not so much on Skype or the phone with her friends, she rolls into being a teenager needing companionship, something we will have to work hard at nurturing back in NC.
Tuesday afternoon came with a quick trip to the grocery store to get some food and snacks. The hard part is buying for only a few days. We normally shop every 1-2 days anyway, but that's the perishable items. I still have to get oil, sugar, flour, and that stuff comes in large quantities. Well, larger than we'll use in three days. Anyway, I will be making the sirniki on my own this time. Should be interesting. Thank you Lena for the "recipe". We watched TV until around 9:30 when we both went to bed. I noticed that she had her overhead light on, but was curled up under the covers. I turned the light off, and she protested, but I was going to turn on her bedside lamp. She liked this much better. She did this the first night at Matt and Tammy's too. We'll have to put a couple of our night lights in her room to help ease her anxiety of sleeping in a new room, new house, new family, new country, new, new, new...to her anyway.
This morning, Wednesday, started early as we were headed to get the medical exam before going to the embassy to apply for the visa. I was nervous for the medical exam as it was going to be a male doctor...I had asked for a woman, but was told this could cause a serious delay. Right. This was actually an easy process and the doctor did speak English. My only complaint is that the doctor was a man. We have a woman doctor for Lisa and Sophia back in NC. When the doctor was going to listen to her breathing and heart beat, the driver was just standing there. REALLY! I think I became a fluent speaker at that moment and asked him to wait outside in the hall and I got behind a screen. 1 minute later, it was over. 45 minutes later, we got our form. The embassy is newly renovated with a guard room right at the entrance. The guards are Ukrainians and speak English, though not as well as I'd like and when you are standing there taking your documents out of a backpack, and they scan it, and THEN they tell you that you can't bring it in...let's back this process up and save us all 2 minutes. Ah well, Lord give me patience as we take these last steps towards home.
We headed into the main area, for immigration at least, to file for the visa. When I last posted we had an issue with a typo on our I-171H form. This is the approval to adopt a child and bring them into the US and they be granted citizenship, immediately. According to this document, our finger print expiration date was the same date we got them taken in Raleigh. Lisa, my very efficient wife, sent the appointment letter with the time/date stamp on it to our case officer. They turned it around quickly as Lisa would not be satisfied with a voicemail. The voicemail of the case officer states that leaving more than one message will not speed up the process. How about two hundred. If I fill it up completely that you have no space for other messages, you'll only have mine to work on. Thankfully, she didn't have to do that. She went to the supervisor and pleaded our case. Two things come to mind. One, officer? Do they get to wear a gun sitting at their desk? Two, I wonder how well it would go over if I told my customers to only leave one voicemail message and to not waste my time. Whatever. So late last night Lisa called to tell me that it was done. She rocks! Love ya babe! As soon as we got in and took our number, they called it. We were out of there in about 15 minutes. 15 minutes!! That's the fastest part of this process so far. Plus the correction was EMAILED. Not walked by hand down the hall, not even faxed, emailed. No visits to a notary to wait an hour for a one page document, no ledgers to sign, no cross town excursions. No sewing the pages together. FYI - official documents are sewed together to signify there officialness, originality, and excellent sewing skills. Point being, it happen fast. Also, in all fairness, it did not happen that fast last time we were there. We were told to come back tomorrow to pick up the visa and we are good to go.
On our way back to the apartment I asked to be dropped off at Cosmos to exchange more money, payback the driver for the medical exam fee, and get some extra carrying money. Then we headed into the rest of the mall to find Sophia some sneakers. We found a pair that would work (though she wasn't thrilled with the color), but she didn't have any socks to try them on, so we went on a sock hunt. In the third store, we found socks, but we were looking in the boys section. The store lady directed us over to the girl section. Thanks for your help. We found a set that would fit and were a versatile color. We took them to the cash register only to be told it doesn't work. See my comments about the backpack above, same problem, different scenario. At the sixth store, we struck gold, or purple rather. We found the socks and got a little help finding the right size, got her foot measured, and then found a pair of purple shoes with neon yellow/green soles. They are so cool! I never would have picked these out for myself, but she said she wanted a purple pair. I love them. Maybe she'll wear them on the plane. We'll see. We also swung by an electronic store and got a couple of DVD's for her to watch as I only have movies in English on the iPad. We got back to the apartment, had lunch and she watched one of the movies. I read a book. When her movie was over she wanted to watch the second one too. This one was Ratatouille, in Russian. I watched this one with her. Very cool as I picked up some new phrases and again, I created a moment for her to smile and laugh. I love her laugh. I can't wait to create more moments.
I love you Sophia.
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