Preliminary Court, DONE

We just got back from pre-court. We got there early and went into the Judge’s office and she looked through about a half of foot thick of paperwork. The head of the baby house was there, a lady from the Department of Education, our coordinator and of course us. The Judge had questions that she asked everyone and then she started to asked me a bunch of questions. They were all pretty easy and it went off without a hitch. The hardest one was: What child do you want to adopt? The correct answer was: Nadya Zuonaryeva. I guess I said it correctly since she didn’t say there was no such baby available for adoption. The only question Melissa had to answer was what is you birthday. The Judge has asked that she get a copy of some death certificates to show that Sophia doesn’t have any living relatives. She then said she would set a court date and there was discussions about dates (in Russian) and they finally said the date would be August 7th at 10:00 AM. The Judge then said that Melissa might get a present for her birthday which is the following day.

With all that in mind we are going to now try to figure out when we can get a flight out of here. We are thinking that we will return to the US around the 10th or 11th. The only sad thing is that we can't wait until Sophia is ready to come home with us. There is a mandatory appeal period of 15 days following court and then they will get her paperwork ready for her to come to the US. So it looks like I will fly back to Kazakhstan the first week of September to bring Sophia home where she will be allowed to eat ice cream, have cold drinks, see what a TV looks like, what air conditioning feels like and be allowed to run around without 10 layers of clothes on. These are all things that will be so new to her.

Tonight we are heading out for a celebration dinner. We’ll fill you in tomorrow.