Trip 2 Day 16 Monday May 31

The day involved a lot of waiting but it was all worth it in the end. We decided not to go to the orphanage until Nastya arrived and that happened around 3:30 PM. Julianna called during the wait and said the Director was telling her the 10 day wait wasn’t over and that her paperwork wasn’t in order so she probably couldn’t go today. I told her not to worry and just be quiet and wait. I have no idea why the Director would say this because we had no problems once we arrived and I gave her a “gift”.

We ended up staying at the orphanage for quite a while because Nastya had to run around completing paperwork. Sveta and Valya were crying most of the time and Julianna went from happy to sad and everything in between. I gave Sveta the extra Ukraine phone we had and we all tried to make her feel better. We hope to get Sveta and her brother on the GFA hosting list next summer so we can see them again.

We said our farewells and after checking Nastya into the hotel we went to the cemetery. The tradition is to put a specific number of flowers and candy on the grave so she did this for her dad, uncle and grandma. The cemeteries are very elaborate with many silk flowers and even small tables picnic tables at many of the graves. We were doing all this in the middle of a thunderstorm to add to the ambiance.

After that we went to a different graveyard back in the woods. It was raining now and the area was very flooded. Here we placed flowers and candy on the adjacent graves of mom, grandma and grandpa. We weren’t able to stay long because of the mosquitoes. We hurried back to the hotel to get Jillian some antihistamine to try and mitigate her reaction to the bites. We wanted to meet Julianna’s sister but she wasn’t available so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

We all went to our favorite restaurant for our last dinner in Schors. We had a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Nastya was able to tell our waiter Misha that we were leaving and he asked her to find somebody to adopt him. He’s a nice guy, maybe Justine would be interested.

Back at the hotel Julianna and Jillian went to the shower room. No sooner had they started then we lost power in the entire building so that caused a little excitement. Diane went to their rescue with a small flashlight.

We’ve been working towards this day for a long time. It would be hard to overstate how good it feels to have her with us.