As most of you know, my
sister adopted twin girls from Ukraine in February 2000. My
mother and I went along with my sister to support her during her
adoption. We also returned with my daughter Shayla, because she would be meeting her
birth mother in person. Below is our story of the February 2000
journey to Ukraine.
We left America on February 4,
2000 and flew Lauda Airlines to Vienna,Austria. We had a over
night lay over there and was able to catch up on our sleep to be
ready for our adventure to Ukraine. We arrived in Ukraine on
February 6, 2000 and were greeted by my best friend.
Upon arriving at the hotel,
we met up with four other families who were there completing a
independent adoption from Ukraine. We all went down to the
restaurant and talked and got to know each other.
The following morning we all
went to the National Adoption Center in Kyiv. Everyone was very
excited to be there, and could not wait to look at the available
children in Ukraine. We all talked in the hallway and waited for
the director to arrive. When she did, it was wonderful. She
hugged my Ukrainian daughter and welcomed us back to Ukraine.
We went into her office,
where we were hugging and greeting each other with pictures of
all the children who had been adopted from Ukraine. The director
was VERY excited because she was given the photo album of over 40
adopted Ukrainian children with their names, regions, and date
adopted. She was very pleased.
She asked would my sister
like to go to Simferopol' since this is where my children were
all adopted from. Of course we immediately accepted this offer.
Later on we found out that FOUR families were all sent to the
same region that day.
It was very nice because we
would all end up on the same plane heading to Simferopol'. We
were able to talk more on the plane and get to know each other
even more. Upon arrival in Simferopol' we were all whisked away
in separate cars. In the end, we ended up in the same apartment
building as one of the other families. The first night in
Simferopol one of the translators invited us to her house for
dinner. It was very nice, because three families adopting were
there and we were able to talk about how excited everyone was to
go to the orphanage the next day.
The next day we all leave for
the orphanage. My sister went into the orphanage directors office
and was being shown some girls, when they mentioned that they had
twin girls who would be 2 years old on March 6, 2000. I asked
them to bring the twins in, as we would be VERY interested in
them. Within a few minutes the door opened and there they were.
Suddenly, I felt the feelings that I felt when I was choosing my
children from the same orphanage, same office, sitting on the
same couch. My heart dropped as these girls were just so very
precious. The Twins
face="Lucida Sans Unicode"> were just perfect and my sister
immediately announced that she wanted them, and did not need to
see anymore children. She was SO happy...
Dasha was one of the girls names. She is a
very happy go lucky little girl who is VERY active and loves to
play. While Masha is a bit reserved and very shy and
quiet. Later my sister would change their names to Brittany and
Brianna.
We immediately started the
paperwork on the twins. We had to go to the notary
office first and then
we started to go shopping for the orphanage. We bought all sorts
of things. The first few days there, we were
not allowed to visit the children that often. There was a bunch
of children that were sick, so they had the whole orphanage under
quarantine. Masha was sick, so we only could visit her every once
in a while, but since Dasha was in the same group that my two
daughters were in, and we were friends with the care takers, they
would sneak us in to see her everyday. We played with Dasha's
group the most
because of this quarantine. So we were limited to the children
that we could play with.
At the same time, My daughter
Shayla was enjoying playing outside the orphanage in the snow . She was very happy to see her
favorite care taker from when she was there. We only
brought Shayla a few times, because we where afraid
that they would not allow Shayla around the other children with the
quarantine.
Birthmother Visit
