Trip 2 Day 3 The Day Time Stood Still

We had court today so put on the fancy duds and headed over there shortly before 11. Julianna arrived soon after that with the Orphanage representative. She was obviously stressed and told Diane “I scary”. She’s not that scary so presumably she meant she was scared. We sat around waiting for a long time, always a lot of fun when you’re nervous. I kept checking the clock on the wall until I finally realized it wasn’t working.



Eventually we were ushered into the room and waited some more for the judge. Here’s the cast of characters (ages are my best guess):

Orphanage representative Female in her 40’s
Child Welfare representative Female in her 40’s
Secretary Female in her 30’s
Witness #1 Female in her 50’s
Witness #2 Male in his 40’s
Prosecutor Male in his mid to late 30’s
Judge Female in her mid to late 30’s
Our Group Julianna, Jillian, Diane, Ted & Nastya

Apparently these things can last 20 minutes but for us it was a 3.5 hour ordeal. I don’t know why for sure but probably the combination of a new judge and corruption charges against the Head Judge and Inspector (Olga) has everybody on edge. I don’t want to relive the whole experience but Ill try to give you the lowlights.
The prosecutor asked us numerous questions. I was the main spokesmen for our group but everybody else was involved. The majority of the questions related to our finances and why we would want to adopt. To me he seemed dissatisfied with most of our answers. I’m sure he uses the same techniques on ax murderers. This seemed to drag on forever but the clock wasn’t working in this room either. This didn’t stop me from stealing a glance at it every so often.

The witnesses were allowed to talk and the male, who we’ll call Jerkov, proceeded to lecture Julianna on how this was a bad idea and how things weren’t so bad in the orphanage and how he went to another country once and really didn’t like it. This didn’t phase Julianna at all. She told him she would be OK. I was very proud of her. Eventually everybody gave their consent however most of the russian speaking people in the room thought the prosecutor mumbled “This adoption is impossible.” Julianna started sobbing at this point which set Diane off and even the secretary was crying. Evidently he said “possible” but there was some confusion for a while. I thought we were in the clear after that but the judge told us to return tomorrow at 2:00 PM for her decision. This is unprecedented in Nastya’s experience. All indications are the result will be positive. We’ll see.

I know there are a lot of cultural differences here and I should be more understanding but it’s hard not to be angry over what we, and more importantly, Julianna, had to go through. They’re willing to kick her out of the orphanage at 15 or 16 with an inferior ninth grade education and very little prospects for success but when it comes to adoption they want to act like they care about her so much she needs to be protected. Hypocrites! I could go on but I won’t.

We had a nice visit at the orphanage following court. We played Uno and did some beading. I tried to color a sheet made to put in the window and look like stained glass but I realized after an hour I was coloring the template instead of the plastic sheet. It was embarrassing but Jillian made me feel better by rolling on the ground laughing. I think it was a message to go to bed and try again tomorrow.

Julianna thinks this adoption has been approved because she told Diane “Mommy I very, very happy”. We didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t over yet. She better be right or I may get a chance to see how the prosecutor treats an ax murderer.