Not a lot has happened in the past two weeks, so we took a break from the blog to get settled into Internat Longmont. Besides, the Internet at home isn't working yet. We are all moved in, but the vast majority of household goods are in the basement and garage. We are still living out of boxes, too. We manage to unpack a little every day. The TV is still on the floor, every bed except ours is still in the garage, and the fridge just arrived last week. The funny part is, we don't have window treatments yet, so we have to turn off the lights and dash from the bathroom to bed. Ugh, we have to put an end to the free neighborhood peep show, lest we scar small children for life!
We talked to Zina again this morning. She said that she is getting our text messages every time. She can read most all of them and the ones she doesn't, she asks her English teacher to translate. She was happy that we called with a translator this time. She was in a "tizzy" about her registration and immediately launched into the topic. Someone there told her that she is not on the adoption list and that she could never be adopted and this made her very upset all week. She took it upon herself to schedule an appointment with her Director on Monday to talk about her need to be adopted by us and to ask him to help her get on the list. We explained to her that we have told her numerous times that this is indeed the case and that we are taking steps to get her registration issue resolved. We told her that was a big reason for our trip in April and that we made good progress. We asked her to not make her Director upset. Lastly, we emphasised to her that we would never give up working to get her registered, adopted, and home. She understood that it will take a long time and she calmed down for the rest of our conversation. She even told us that she felt better getting it off of her chest and that she trusts us to do all we can. We spent the next hour talking of pleasant things such as her new bedroom, the trip in April, her summer camp plans, and Rimma's excitement with our visit to Odessa. Zina is a very smart and mature 12 year old young lady. We can't wait to hear how the meeting with her director went. I'd like to be a fly on the wall for that one - Zina can be persistent!
Rimma seems to be doing well. All of our texts to her have been in vain, however. Zina confirmed that she dropped her cell phone in some water, somehow. Zina said that Rimma will be coming home on May 25th. So, until then, we will not be able to contact Rimma. One day when she reads this blog, she will scorn me though. She didn't want to take a picture with that ugly chicken head, but Heidi persisted. I can hear her now, "Dad, why did you put THAT picture on the web!!??"
