Life in the U.S.: slavery or sausage?

On Tuesday we talked to our agency (in Indianapolis) by phone. She gave us some more information. (Because we are not already overloaded with it!) The main point of the conversation was to give us a loose idea of the agenda once we're in Ukraine. I thought perhaps you may be interested in seeing what we'll be doing:
Day 1 (March 20): Travel to Ukraine via Germany
Day 2: Arrive/down day
Day 3: Meet with the State Department of Adoption (SDA)-- This should take all of 5-10 minutes but is necessary to get our referral to adopt
Day 4: Get referral
Day 5: Travel to the Odessa region which is where Vanya's orphanage is (near the southern part of Ukraine). She mentioned an overnight train trip, and we are not crazy about that at all!!!! We are going to ask once we're there about having our facilitator/translator (haven't quite figured out if this is one person or two yet!) rent a car. We think it's only about 4-5 hours away.
Day 6: Meet with the Children's Inspector and the orphanage director. I believe this is the first day we'll get to see Vanya. This is also the day that Vanya has to write a letter saying he wants to be adopted by us.
Day 7: Paperwork (not us) goes back to Kyiv.
Day 8-18: ????????? Tim and I were taking diligent notes up to Day 7, and then we got sidetracked asking a bunch of questions. So, I really don't know what we're doing on the rest of these days! I'll have to get back with you on that. I am fairly sure that I heard somewhere in there that we have to take Vanya with us back to Kyiv and go back to the SDA. I remember this because she said not to bring any special clothes with us. Apparently the orphanage people get offended if you act like their clothes are not good enough.

I do know that we'll spend several days visiting Vanya for a few hours or so. We're bringing lots of travel-type games (Uno, Swap, Tetris, Simon, Pentomino, flashcards, etc) to play with him while we're there.

Some of the days where we go do all of this may change if we get another child. That's all up in the air right now. At the moment it seems like it might not happen, so I guess you'll just have to be surprised when we come home.

Now here is something that surprised US: She said that we may experience a "little" problem when we see Vanya. It seems that some of the orphanage workers and older children have been telling the younger kids not to agree to the adoption. They said that when the kids arrive in the United States, they'll either be turned into child-slaves or made into sausage!!!! Yes, you read that correctly!!!! She is giving us the phone number of a couple who adopted one of Vanya's friends. That little boy now lives in Indianapolis. If Vanya balks, we can call his buddy and have that child tell Vanya he hasn't been turned into a slave or a bratwurst! We're hoping that Vanya is smart enough to know that won't happen, especially since he was already here, and knows what we are like. Lots of prayers on your end can't hurt! :-)

Luckily, throughout this process, we'll have lots of support: God, who has blessed us with a fairly easy process so far, a facilitator, and a translator. We have been told to let God do all the worrying for us and to let the other two people handle the other important matters in Ukraine. We will try very hard, while we're there, to view all this as an adventure and not just a means to an end. We want to see some of the country and visit places that may have significance to Vanya and not worry about missing days of work. I'll have to keep you updated on how well we do with the worrying and stressing out. This past Sunday, we stood in front of our church family while our pastor prayed for our safe travels and return with Vanya. That definitely gave us a measure of calm amongst all the things we have yet to do before we leave. With that in mind, I leave you now. I've been on the losing end of a vicious cold/sinus thing for the last week, and I'm off to sleep some more. Stay tuned for the next chapter!