Praise the Lord, Sweet Girl slept until after 7 this morning. She’ll fit right in at our house! We love our sleep! I’m still having a hard time sleeping between 1a and 4a so I told Him just one more minute for me. Before I knew it, it was 9am and Sweet Girl was jumping on the bed. It’s just like home. On the weekends, He gets up with the girls for me and I get another wink of sleep. It’s just so hard to get up in the morning! Boris came and picked us up at 10:30 for our 11:30 embassy appointment. There were lots more locals in the embassy for business purposes than I expected. We paid the fee and sat down in the little room and Irina told us we were 1st in line. “This is good thing,” she told us. Soon enough, another 5-6 adoptive families filed in and began to wait with us. Sweet Girl seemed to be the oldest and she was for sure the most well behaved. Lots of the little ones were tired and hungry and cranky, etc. After about 20 minutes of waiting, a lady came out and addressed us all. They said to save time, they would tell us all the general information together and then we’d be processed faster. She said her bit and then we waited for another couple of minutes. She called our name and we went up to her window and she asked us to confirm Sweet Girl’s name and birthday. In under a minute she said sit and wait while we process the Visa! It took about 5 minutes for the Visa to be pasted in and the packet for immigration prepared. We quickly picked up our packet and were out the door. When we got back into the car with Boris it was 12:15. We ran over to the consulate to register Sweet Girl’s passport. We waited in the car for Irina and when she got back in the car, she said, “Success!’ They will pick up and deliver the passport to us tomorrow around 4. After that we are free to leave! We are checking on flights to come home either Saturday or Sunday – whatever is cheaper.We had Boris drop us off at the market and we picked up a couple of things – some cheese and beer to welcome my friend Luella in with tonight!

Back at the apartment, we tried mac n cheese for lunch. It was a no go for Sweet Girl. She ended up with yogurt, grapes and another breakfast bar. She’s doing much better about drinking a little milk at each meal and then helping herself to her water cup throughout the day.  After lunch, she went down effortlessly for her nap. We did stay in the room with her and play on the computer while she slept.

When she got up about 4 we headed out for dinner. We thought we’d test her restaurant skills at McDonalds which was bound to be forgiving. She behaved great and loved the apple juice that came with her happy meal. She did not however have any interest in chicken nuggets or a cheeseburger. I think we did get 5-6 fries in her. We are hoping that tomorrow night we can try TGIFriday’s. We’re still a little too nervous to take her to a place we can’t read the menu.

In the tiny apartment elevator

 

It was sketch by American standards, but pretty good for here.

Around 6:30 or 7 our friend Luella and her husband got here. Yay! About 30 minutes into us chatting I saw that sweet girl had just started crying. We aren’t sure yet what spooked her, but Lu and hubby went ahead and took off for dinner so we could get Sweet Girl settled for bed. I later realized that maybe the gift they brought her messed her up. So far, the only people to bring her a new outfit were He and I when we were leaving the orphanage. It’s possible her little mind raced to the possibility these people would try to take her away.

While they were gone, we went ahead and put her to bed and stayed in there with her for a long time until she fell asleep. She was back to normal by bed time.

We however stayed up and chatted for awhile. It was so nice to have people who spoke English as a first language to talk to!