Final Court

One Note: Annonymous(es), please sign at least your first name so I'll know who you are:)

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to post in a couple of days. The past few days have gone by very quickly. When you wait here in Ukraine, you wait! When things start happening, watch out:)

We showed up for our 2nd and final court appearance on Thursday, January 10 at 10am. The director had just arrived with K. We all walked into the courthouse together. Shortly after, the Social Worker arrived. We waited in the hall until we were told we could go into the courtroom. At one end is the bench where the judge sits with a juror on either side of him. There were two ladies in their beautiful fur coats in those seats. They walked in after we were already seated on the wooden pew-type benches. We stood as they filed in. There was another lady sitting on the side to the left of us. We're not really sure who she was, but she asked a lot of questions.

We were asked if we believe in this court, and we said yes. That's what our facilitator said which I'm sure meant that we recognized the power of that court. We were told that we could ask for another judge and jury. We didn't have the same judge as the first day because he was ill. The first judge was a white haired in his late fifties early sixties and very nice. This judge was younger, maybe in his thirties. We really didn't get to meet him. There was a lot of reading of Ukrainian legal papers before during and after. We were asked to stand up and state our names, where we were born, where we live now and jobs. I was so nervous, I let my husband do most of the speaking when possible. K was able to sit between us. She was nervous also when asked to speak. She had to tell about how she came to the orphanage. The Social worker and orphanage worker were asked to speak also. The lady on our left asked questions about how we would provide for K, health insurance and something about education insurance. I'm not sure what that meant. We were asked how we would communicate with K. I've learned some Russian, not near enough to understand anyone here, but a few words here and there to help, so I told them that and that we had taken a Russian language class and had Russian language CDs. Before that the lady asked how we knew K. She also asked why we weren't adopting the child who stayed in our home during the camp K came to America for. The fact that we hosted a child wasn't mentioned so either they assumed we hosted a child or they read our dossier. We were asked to each make a closing statement. Dennis did very well. I started by saying that we had always wanted more children and I was unable to have any more, so we considered adoption. Then, I couldn't help it. I couldn't hold the emotion back anymore. K was upset that I was crying some. She was telling me no, and wiping my eyes. She acts like that is a bad thing. I tell her they are happy tears, but she still doesn't seem to understand.

The court recessed for 5-10 minutes. It seemed like an eternity. They came back and we all stood up. The judge started reading the paper in front of him, in Ukrainian of course. I kept hearing him say, K's new name and looking at K to see her reaction. She had no reaction. Our facilitator was in front of me. I didn't see any reactions from anyone else. After the judge was through, our facilitator turned around and congratulated us telling us we were parents. The two lady jurors walked by and each talked to K with tears in their eyes. I couldn't see the one straight in front of me, but my husband said she was tearing up the whole time. We were very blessed to have two compassionate ladies as jurors.

We still have the 10 day wait with an unknown wait for the birth certificate from Moscow. We spent a few hours with K and rode the train to Kiev on Thursday night. We are in Kiev until Tuesday. We were able to use the remainder of our roundtrip tickets on Aerosvit. Now we just need to book a flight home from JFK. It will be nice to be home for a while, but we will miss K terribly. Hopefully, it won't be too long before we are flying back over here.