Going to the American Embassy
On Thursday, July 28th, we got up early that morning to take Sophie to the doctor. This is required before they will issue a Visa to travel to the United States. We waited a long time to see a doctor. Sophie was NOT on her best behavior. She was not feeling that great, but the doctor did not notice anything wrong. She did get worse that night. You know, just like at home. You take your child to the doctor, and they don't even act sick. Get home, their fever goes up, and you have a sick baby. Well anyway, the main reason to go to the doctor is so they can fill out medical reports for the U.S. embassy and so that our doctors at home will have some medical records they can actually read. Then, we went to the American Embassy.
I have to say that it was wonderful walking in that place! There was a huge, long, line of Ukrainians waiting outside, just hoping to get in for a chance at an American visa. We walked right past them to the front door. Boy, we were thankful to be Americans! We went inside through a ton of security, then found a line for adoptions. It was great to speak to Americans! They were so nice. We paid for the application for Sophie. Then we went into a waiting area loaded with toys for soon to be American children. After about 5 minutes, they called us up to congratulate us on our adoption. They asked us many, many questions. They wanted to know if we were happy with our "help", how much we paid total for the whole adoption process, if we would recommend to other Americans to go there to adopt. They asked about Sophie. They wanted to know how many trips to the NAC it took to find her, about any health problems she had, about court, about any family members she had. They wanted to know how long we had been in the country. We told them that it had taken exactly 20 days to that point. It would be exactly 21 days till we left. We really felt bad because there were other couples that had been there so long their visa had expired! We met one couple who had been there 10 weeks. They were adopting an adorable little boy though, so I'm sure it was worth it.
After we finished answering questions, they told us congratulations! We could come back after 3:00 p.m. to pick up her visa to go to America! So that afternoon, I stayed in the apartment with Sophie while Lee went back to the embassy to get her visa. He was hoping there would be a line, so he could wait in comfortable chairs, drink COLD water, and sit in air-conditioning. But no luck! He walked right up, got the visa, and left!
By the way, I wanted to tell a little about our airline situation. We flew to Kiev with Northwest Airlines. We used the adoption fare. We already arranged to fly back on August 3rd. We hoped that was far enough out that we would only have to change tickets once. Well, our facilitator called them for us while we were traveling around getting paper work. He said he could not even get Sophie a ticket to go with us until August 5th! YIKES! I almost cried. Everything was going so well until this. He said that he had a travel agent for a friend. He would ask her try to find us one way tickets with another carrier if we would agree to pay her about $100.00. I could not get through to Northwest myself on our cell phone, so I called my WONDERFUL sister at 5:00 a.m. in U.S. I woke her up. She began calling Northwest to get us home. For about 2 1/2 hours she had no luck. She was finally able to call the adoption line at about 7:30 a.m. U.S. time. The agent she spoke to again said that there were no flights available. Jayna (my sister) asked her to please help us get home because we had two little boys begging to see their mom and dad. The agent sat there a few minutes looking and finally came up with three seats for us to go home on Saturday, July 30th! After we went to the American Embassy, we went to the KLM airline office (they work with Northwest) to make sure our seats were there. We went on and traded our tickets and purchased Sophie's. So everything was set. The timing could not have been better. We had one day out of the whole trip back in Kiev that was not spent working on going home. And we spent a couple of hours that morning buying souveniors.
Well, I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies for my boys. Sophie is asleep. She'll get some tomorrow. I wonder if she's ever had them before?
I'm going to try to post a little about our trip home tomorrow. We had the most wonderful homecoming! Please come back and read about it.
Shannan
I have to say that it was wonderful walking in that place! There was a huge, long, line of Ukrainians waiting outside, just hoping to get in for a chance at an American visa. We walked right past them to the front door. Boy, we were thankful to be Americans! We went inside through a ton of security, then found a line for adoptions. It was great to speak to Americans! They were so nice. We paid for the application for Sophie. Then we went into a waiting area loaded with toys for soon to be American children. After about 5 minutes, they called us up to congratulate us on our adoption. They asked us many, many questions. They wanted to know if we were happy with our "help", how much we paid total for the whole adoption process, if we would recommend to other Americans to go there to adopt. They asked about Sophie. They wanted to know how many trips to the NAC it took to find her, about any health problems she had, about court, about any family members she had. They wanted to know how long we had been in the country. We told them that it had taken exactly 20 days to that point. It would be exactly 21 days till we left. We really felt bad because there were other couples that had been there so long their visa had expired! We met one couple who had been there 10 weeks. They were adopting an adorable little boy though, so I'm sure it was worth it.
After we finished answering questions, they told us congratulations! We could come back after 3:00 p.m. to pick up her visa to go to America! So that afternoon, I stayed in the apartment with Sophie while Lee went back to the embassy to get her visa. He was hoping there would be a line, so he could wait in comfortable chairs, drink COLD water, and sit in air-conditioning. But no luck! He walked right up, got the visa, and left!
By the way, I wanted to tell a little about our airline situation. We flew to Kiev with Northwest Airlines. We used the adoption fare. We already arranged to fly back on August 3rd. We hoped that was far enough out that we would only have to change tickets once. Well, our facilitator called them for us while we were traveling around getting paper work. He said he could not even get Sophie a ticket to go with us until August 5th! YIKES! I almost cried. Everything was going so well until this. He said that he had a travel agent for a friend. He would ask her try to find us one way tickets with another carrier if we would agree to pay her about $100.00. I could not get through to Northwest myself on our cell phone, so I called my WONDERFUL sister at 5:00 a.m. in U.S. I woke her up. She began calling Northwest to get us home. For about 2 1/2 hours she had no luck. She was finally able to call the adoption line at about 7:30 a.m. U.S. time. The agent she spoke to again said that there were no flights available. Jayna (my sister) asked her to please help us get home because we had two little boys begging to see their mom and dad. The agent sat there a few minutes looking and finally came up with three seats for us to go home on Saturday, July 30th! After we went to the American Embassy, we went to the KLM airline office (they work with Northwest) to make sure our seats were there. We went on and traded our tickets and purchased Sophie's. So everything was set. The timing could not have been better. We had one day out of the whole trip back in Kiev that was not spent working on going home. And we spent a couple of hours that morning buying souveniors.
Well, I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies for my boys. Sophie is asleep. She'll get some tomorrow. I wonder if she's ever had them before?
I'm going to try to post a little about our trip home tomorrow. We had the most wonderful homecoming! Please come back and read about it.
Shannan
posted by LeeandShannan @ 6:54 PM
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