All 21 documents with their apostilles & Heidi sending our Dossier to Ukraine at Fed-Ex
Well, the day has arrived! At the beginning of the week, Heidi finished getting our updated (6 month rule) medical forms and we completed the power of attorney forms. I had to meet her at the notary's office during a busy day at work. Heidi got our dossier down to the Colorado Dept. of State yesterday for the apostille process. Today she went back down to Denver to pick them up and she sorted them at home. We have three copies of the Dossier.
We are excited to announce that WE HAVE SENT OUR DOSSIER!!! Yes, we were shouting there. What seems like an impossible task is done! We will have to keep an eye on our document expiration spreadsheet (6 month rule), but the hard document gathering is complete.
Our US agency, Ukrainian Angels (Cathy Harris) assigned us our assistant (facilitator) in Ukraine. Her name is Valentina. We say assistant because Ukraine doesn't allow facilitators. In Ukraine she is called our "translator", but she "facilitates" our adoption process and represents us in line at the Ukraine Sate Dept. of Adoption (SDA). So, she is our facilitator. Believe me, we were confused too the first time this was explained to us! It is Valentina's job to translate our dossier into the Ukrainian language (not Russian, more on this later) and get it into the SDA. Once the SDA gets it, they have 20 days to accept it or reject it. If they accept it they will notify us of our appointment. This is the official invitation to come to their country to accept a referral. A referral, for those who don't know, are the children we have selected to meet.
About the Ukrainian vs. Russian language reference above. The country has both languages. Russian was the official language during the Soviet era, Ukrainian is the official government language. Therefore, all documents are in Ukrainian. But, most everyone speaks Russian and Ukrainian. The east bank of the country (split by the Dnieper River) favors Russian and the west bank favors Ukrainian. In school, Ukrainian is taught. Confused yet? Nyet?
