More About Court

Rich walking in Siberia You get frosted up really quick!!!
This is the street in front of our hotel

We went to court at the Kemerovo Regional Courthouse to finalize Haylie's adoption. Anna our interpreter had kind of prepared us about what to expect which really helped. Our judge was a female who had obviously done lots of these proceedings. She read thru our mountains of paperwork and basically read our homestudy aloud, with Anna translating as the judge talked. Rich was asked to stand and he had to answer most of the questions--they were pretty basic, like why did we want to adopt, why from Russia, our occupations and salaries, etc. When he was done, I had to stand and was asked if there was anything else I wanted to add. I had been told to ask to have the 10 day waiting period waived, which I did. Next, the judge asked everyone to leave the courtroom (which was actually just a small office room). We went out in the hallway for only about 3-5 minutes and we went back in. The judge granted the adoption and waived the 10 day waiting period--hallelujah!!!

After court, we had to go to the police station to have more paperwork completed. Rich and I just basically sat in the hallway while Anna went from office to office getting the appropriate documents done. We left to be driven back to the hotel--however when we got back to the van, Sergei our driver was working on the motor because the car wouldn't start due to the cold. Luckily, it wasn't a very long walk back to the hotel, but it was a verrrrry cold walk. We had the rest of the day free, but because we were still jetlagged, we layed down for a short nap and ended up sleeping like 7 hours and woke up at 10pm. Of course we were then wide awake, so we watched a DVD till 3am. We had to be up and ready for breakfast at 7:15 (they made us our own breakfast every morning, kind of like a B&B) and then be picked up at 8am for the 3 hour car ride to the orphanage to get Haylie!!