Paka Dana in Eastern Europe!! Preevyet Dasha in Ukraine!!

Finally the blog is private and I can share more information!  If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re in Kiev, Ukraine.  Dana’s real name is not Dana, it is Daria.  The nickname for Daria is Dasha and that is what she is called at her orphanage.  We are planning to rename her Rachel Daria.  We will call her Dasha as long as she wants/needs us to since we’re not looking to make more changes than absolutely necessary for her right now.  For those of you not familiar with the the adoption process in Ukraine, it works like this.  We travel to Kiev for an appointment with the SDA, which is the government’s adoption ministry.  At this appointment we let them know we want to adopt Dasha (so far, check).  The following day we pick up the referral that gives us permission to travel and meet her (we do that tomorrow).  Then we take a train to her region of the country.  She’s near a city called Donetsk.  Once we get to Donetsk we will meet her and tell them that yes, we want to adopt her.  Our regional facilitator will start the paperwork process and work on getting us a court date.  We don’t know how long it will take to get a date, but we’re praying it’s quickly.  All the while, we can be visiting Dasha everyday and getting to know her.  Once we have court, we have a 10 day wait before we can take Dasha out of the orphanage.  We are allowed to stay and continue visiting daily with her or we can go home.  The plan is that I’m staying and Norm is going home to be with our other kids.  Once the 10 days is up, we’ll take her out and she and I will head back to Kiev for a couple appointments at the US Embassy.  Then we are free to go HOME!!!  That’s the process in a nutshell.  I don’t know exactly how long it will take, but I’m obviously hoping things move quickly.  I miss my boys and don’t want to be away from them one day longer than I have to.