December 6, 2005

Today was a busy but not very productive day. We picked up the court decree at 9:30. Then we went to the birth certificate office. We sat in this very beautiful building for a long time. Then Stas learned we had to have the Tanya our official court translator with us in order to get the new birth certificate made. So Stas called her. We didn't think she would be able to come to the office because she is a school teacher and it was only 11 am. But fortunately for us she was home with a fever. So the poor girl hopped on a bus and met us at the notary's office. We had to get a copy of her translator's diploma notarized for the birth certificate office. Let me tell you when I get sick I wear sweats, tennis shoes, and a pony tail if I have to go out. Apparently not in Ukraine, Tanya had on a dress with 4 inch heeled boots and her hair was what my sister Holly calls "wedding hair". We sat in the waiting room of the birth certificate office until 2:30. Finally they called us in, Jeff, Tanya, and I signed our names on a document and that was it. We took a cab to the legalization office while Stas took the document to get notarized. When we got there, the electricity was out, so we sat in a dark hallway until Stas arrived. He took the document into the office, they couldn't do anything without their computers. They sat the documents would be ready in the morning. So we left and took a cab to the orphanage. It was rush hour so traffic was hardly moving. Our cab driver drove on the sidewalk for several miles. He was crazy and I was so car sick. Then he took a gravel road with puddles so big I thought we would be swallowed up. We visited Matthew for about an hour. We decided to leave him one more night so we didn't have to drag him around while we finished up the birth certificate and went to the passport office. Stas said it could take all day to get Matthew's passport. We went to the internet cafe to fax our court decree to Sasha for translation for the embassy and to print off the new iterary for our plane tickets. Angie was able to get us tickets for Saturday instead of Tuesday. We were so excited. For those of you in Ukraine, if you are having problems getting return tickets as soon as you would like, have someone from the states try. For some reason it works.