Day 8

Another big day: Off to court to the de register the flat, we arrive early so we wait a few minutes for the prosecutor and the magistrate. It’s a small chamber, a conference table with twelve chairs and a section for a small audience. The prosecutor has prepared a three page brief describing the situation; the girls are being adopted by a family in America and need to be de registered from the apartment to receive their passports. In lieu of the fact that they probably will not return, the magistrate decides to de reregister the girls from the apartment, but if they return before there 18th birthday they can again lay claim to the apartment or some other said premises. The whole process takes 10 minutes, everyone is happy and cordial. The paperwork is signed and we wait for copies with an official stamp.

After receiving the documents we head to the hosing authority where we provide them with the paperwork in triplicate. The manager of the housing authority calls the director of the Illichivs’k passport office at 9:30am. She states that we have the paperwork and can be there in 5 minutes if she can sign. No she must go to Odessa at 10am to see the president and cannot sign today. We must return on Wednesday at 10am.

Oh the feel of power. It must be something like a high for her to have that kind of power or maybe it is a prerequisite to be crazy to get a job in the passport office. Who knows, but now we must wait another day. The passports have not arrived in Odessa yet so we can’t leave anyway. The passports can take up to ten days, but normally its 3-5days. Again this is something new, old passports were made in the local offices in 1 day, and the new passports are all made in Kiev and shipped by government courier back to the originating city.

By the way the president will be in Odessa today, so the passport office in Odessa was empty. I guess all government employees can go to see him speak (another day off). So we wait………

Hopefully we can get the signature tomorrow and the passports arrive. Then we are off to Kiev (6-7hr drive) and the US Embassy. I’m told this is a 48hr process to get the girls Visa’s, but Christina says it is much more difficult with two girls. Hopefully we can make contact and get some help. We are so close, but so very far, far, far away.