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The evening after our appointment at the SDA, we took the train down to the southern part of Ukraine where we will be for most of the time we are here. We left Kiev at about 8:20 pm on Tuesday and got to Simferopol around 11:00 am on Wednesday. I definitely prefer the 90 minute plane ride to the 15 hour train ride, but the train is a lot cheaper. After arriving in Simferopol, we went to the apartment where Joe and I will be staying with my parents until Monday. It's very close to the apartment where Shelby, Matt, and the kids have been staying for the past few weeks. When my parents leave, we will move over to the apartment with them.

Once we got our stuff into the apartment and cleaned up a bit (you feel pretty grimey after being in that train so long!) we got something to eat and then Joe, Shelby, my parents, and I headed out to the orphanage. Joe was so excited to finally meet Vacya. We didn't tell him anything at that point, though; we just spent time with his whole class.

Today we had our appointment with the regional inspector and the orphanage director. Both meetings were pretty short and went well. When Shelby and Matt had their meeting with the orphanage director, they ended up bringing the boys in at that time to tell them about their adoption, so that is what we kind of expected to happen with Vacya. However, the director didn't have time to do that, so he told us that we could go meet with Vacya and tell him ourselves, which worked out really well. It was naptime when we went to see him, so the caregiver had us go to their classroom and then brought Vacya in to see us. It was really cute... Vacya had a big smile on his face when he came into the room. Shelby asked him if he knew why he was there and he said, "Da." (Yes) Then she asked him why and he said, "Because everybody loves me!" and we said, "Da!" We all sat down and just told him that we wanted to adopt him and be his mom and dad. When the interpretor/ facilitator asked him if he wanted to be adopted he said yes. He just smiled the whole time and looked like he wasn't sure if he was going to laugh or cry. We stayed and talked with him for about an hour. We will be going back tomorrow morning when Vacya will have to meet with the director and write up a statement saying he wants to be adopted by us. Shelby asked him if it would be better if we came to be with him when he did that and he said yes.

At this point we will be able to visit with Vacya at the orphanage everyday until he can come to stay with us. It will take a few days for all of the paperwork to be completed by the orphanage director and regional inspector here in Simferopol. Then our facilitator will take that paperwork back up to Kiev so that we can get permission to adopt from the SDA. Once we have the permission, we will get a court date to finalize the adoption. Then we still have to wait 10 days after the court date before we can have custody of Vacya.

There have still been some problems with one of the caregivers being really mean to Vacya. Please pray that he will be protected both physically and emotionally until he comes to be with us.

I'll try to post some new pictures soon.