Monday, April 11, 2011
Apparently a lot.
We received good news today! S’s passport is ready in Donetsk and will be brought here via train to arrive tomorrow morning. We also have his doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM followed by a visit to the U.S. Embassy to begin the paperwork for his Visa. The bad news is I checked some of the paperwork I have to submit for Scott at the embassy. Since he did not make this trip with me, we had to have some paperwork signed and notarized at home before I left. The problem is, S’s name on the paperwork from Scott, lists him as S. Andrew Schork and the name on his passport (and on the court decree) lists him as Andrew S. Schork. This was a misunderstanding between us and our agency. On the first trip, we needed to come up with a name for him. We chose Andrew and thought we’d just call him Andrew S. Schork. When we got home, we realized his initials would be A.S.S.(not good). So we asked our agency if we could change it. They said yes but I guess the miscommunication was over WHEN we should have done this – it should have been BEFORE court. So you parents coming behind us, beware. Have a name handy since they’ll ask you quickly what it will be. Once you settle on the name, it cannot be changed. Therefore, I’ll be going to the embassy and doing my best groveling, begging and pleading tomorrow that they accept our paperwork as it is. Worst case, Scott would have to sign and re-notarize a few documents and FedEx them to me here in Kyiv, delaying our trip home.
Otherwise we had a good day today. It’s hard to get S out of the apartment but I eventually succeed and he’s always happy once we get to our destination. I can see a little frustration in that I cannot understand everything he says to me. He got mad at me today for a few minutes and refused to hold my hand when we were walking. Poor guy! When it really gets bad, I call my friend Natalia and she always saves the day! He’s much better after he knows what’s going on and he has a way of communicating. Today we walked down to McDonalds to have dinner. In front of the McDonalds, there was a little kiddy carnival so I let S ride 2 rides. He had a HUGE smile on his face! After we got off one of the rides, two kids approached us, a 9-year-old girl named Christina and her brother, and asked us a question. I explained to her he was my son and we were from California. Her eyes lit up! California?! We tried talking to them for quite some time so I finally called Natalia again and it turns out Christina wanted to know how much it cost to go to California. What a cutie! S played with Christina’s brother for a while, but right before he left, he got out his wallet and insisted on giving the boy one grivna (8 grivna = $1). It was precious! I’m not sure if he thinks he needs to pay off people to play with him or he’s just being a philanthropist! We waved goodbye to them and they walked toward the metro station, evidently to go home (do they come downtown all by themselves?). On the way home we stopped by a Minimarket since S told me he wanted to buy some gum. This was his first purchase with his own money and boy was he proud!
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| S offering strangers grivna. |
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| S's new friends. |
Das-vi-dan-ya! (Goodbye)
Congrats on your progress!! You may be aware of this, but we had a similar name issue. A painful and expensive repercussion was with Dema's airline ticket...the name on the passport needs to be an exact match to the airline ticket. I ended up purchasing 2 whole new tickets--hopefully you don't need to do that!
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