Monday and Tuesday--Days 15 and 16--MOE Interview

Sophia and I are from the same room (room 11).

We are great friends......I'll hold your hand....if you let me play with your toy

We were happy to get back to the baby house on Monday. Sunday is a long day without getting to see her! We also got back up to the play room with the other families, so the babies had fun interacting with each other. Between visits our driver took us to the grocery store (Norma) and we bought my favorite juice, Cappy--Cherry Juice and some treats for the caregivers to take to our afternoon visit.

Tuesday we started out in the playroom, but the Doctor sent us back to the room since the babies are just feeling better and I guess she still wants them segregated. When we got back to our room our caregivers were having a tea party and invited us. Natasha came down and explained it was a national (religious) holiday in Kazakhstan and people have tea parties and invite their friends and neighbors over to celebrate together. We felt honored to take part with them in their tradition. Adelyn and Sophia joined in for their first tea party! We had hot tea and I was sweating since I was holding the baby and it was probably 90 degrees in there! They had a flat bread that they make at home only for this occasion and candy pastries and cookies and one of the snowmen marshmallow treats that we brought from the day before, plus a mystery meat that we did not sample. It was very nice that they included us.

After our morning visit the driver dropped us at TSUM Mall and we did some shopping and had lunch at Cafe Karaganda. We were all on pins and needles because our appointment at the Ministry of Education (MOE) should be any day and usually they only give a few hours notification. We were told this is the most important part of their decision on approving our adoption. We will be interviewed by a few ladies that represent the MOE and they will also represent us in Court, along with the Doctors from the orphanage in front of the Judge. Apparently, the Court case is more of a formality and the MOE interview is a bigger deal.

After returning from the TSUM, we checked at the front desk and with one family that did not go to TSUM to see if Natasha called. She did not, so just when we sat down, Todd knocked on our door to say be down in the lobby at 3:30pm, to go to MOE!! We hurried around cleaning oursleves up, ironed our clothes and got our dress clothes on. We had a bit of a wait, but thankfully all went well for each family. Todd was timing everyone and we were in there the longest (12 minutes)! Since we have a biological child we got more questions and also because of Michael being a banker, the US financial crisis was a hot topic. They told Natasha (in Russian) that they loved our photo album and that the pictures spoke that we were excellent parents. I thought that meant we were done--but they continued to ask us a few more questions! (They asked us the questions in Russian, Natasha would interpret and we would answer--trying to remember to talk to the MOE representatives in English of course, and then Natasha would translate our repsonses back to Russian). Their questions were very thought out. For instance, they asked if I traveled when I said I worked for NWA--like as a flight attendant. They also asked if there was a possibility if Michael could loss his job due to the banking problem. It is very evident that they care about the children of Kazakhstan and want the best for them.

In the end they wished us happiness and love with our daughter and that our family would be very close--we assured them that we would be, they were smiling too (which we understand they don't do very much). So it went very well......now hopefully, we won't be as nervous for our Court hearing on Saturday.

Unfortunately, we missed our afternoon visit at the babyhouse due to our MOE interview. In addition, our offficial bonding period is completed as well today!!

We all celebrated by having dinner (AGAIN) at the Apollo here in the hotel with everyone from our group. Our days are winding down and we are apprehensive about leaving the baby, but very anxious to get home to Andrew. We have been able to talk to him everyday again lately and he seems to be doing very well in our absence, wish we could say the same!

We are happy to have one more step down to bring the baby home and look forward to seeing her tomorrow!