Ruslan's Court Date

End of Day 27.  I could be off on some of those, but I know that we got here 4 weeks ago on Saturday, so this one is right.

Vitals:  Today was the court date for Ruslan.  We got a taxi to Vorzel and it still took an hour (rather than two by metro/bus) to go 17 miles.  But, we made it, they asked us a bunch of question and apparently we answered OK, since the approved us.  This begins Ruslan’s ten day wait.  They still haven’t even filed for a court date for Roman, so we are still stuck here indefinitely. 

Not at all vital and really, really long:  So, we did school this morning from about 8am to 10:30 then left at 11:00 for the court hearing.  We had been careful to pack books and make sure that all the kid’s hand-held Nintendo DS-es were all charged and they all had games, headphones and working “pencils” to use.  The taxi ride was fine, and the kids were doing great until Matt and Paul got into a fight over a DS game, just as we were walking into the court building.   I pulled them all aside and laid into them as much as I could about how important it was for them to BEHAVE for at least the next hour.  Then I went into the standard set of rules for public venturing, explaining as clearly as humanly possible, about how they should act for the next two hours:  Don’t look at each other, don’t talk to each other, don’t touch each other, don’t share toys or games with each other, don’t breathe on or near each other, don’t communicate with each other in ANY way.  At this point, I felt moderately confident that I had covered every possible way that they might misbehave or reflect poorly on Bill and I as competent adults who can reasonably parent six children.  We entered the building.

There were six chairs in a row in the court room.  They ushered Matt into the court room first, and he sat down in the farthest chair.  Paul was ushered in next and he sat down right next to Matt (DANGER ALERT) and that is when I realized that we couldn’t sit with the kids.   Reilly and Sharon were ushered in to sit by the boys.  All four kids were to sit in a row, next to each other.  Then, if that wasn’t enough, Matt suddenly became terrified, pulled his jacket hood over his head and pulled his baseball cap down so that it covered his whole face, forehead to chin, with the bill resting against his chest. Technically, he was obeying the rules.  We were stuck with it.  Luckily, the judge glanced over at him an laughed.  I let it go. 

The judge read our petition, asked our names, birthdays and addresses, if we understood why we were here,  and if we had anything to add to the petition.  I thought about saying, “please?” but Bill was NOT in a joking mood, so I let it go.  Then Bill had to stand up and answer about 10 to 15 minutes of translated questions about why we were adopting and how we planned to care for Ruslan.  Bill was as nervous as a Ukrainian traffic cop, but I thought he did pretty well and I was grateful that it was HIM standing up there and not me.  I managed to glance over at the kids a few times and saw that they were “chatting” on their DS’s.  I learned later that they were fighting but at least it was silent.   

So, anyway, then it was my turn and I got off easy.  The judge just asked if I had anything to add to what my husband said.  I told Nadya, “You can tell her that I told Bill what to say, so there’s nothing, you know, to add.”  Now, I thought that was pretty mild.  Nadya laughed, I laughed.  Bill was horrified.  He said, “MARN. NO! NO JOKING!”  Which was useless, because he knows I can’t help it and besides, now it was obvious that there was dissension in the ranks so Nadya HAD to translate it.  Luckily, the judge laughed, as did everyone else in the room (social workers and some sort of lawyer for Ruslan I think) so we’re still married.

Despite everything, we were approved and can get our papers in ten short days.  We took the taxi home and decided to go out for pizza to celebrate.  This was also sort of a disaster.  We walked into what we THOUGHT was a family friendly PECTOPAH (restaurant).  It was passable until they seated us.  There were pictures of women in bikinis all over, which is true just about anywhere you go, but behind our booth were pictures of women topless and there was something covering sensitive areas (I didn’t look closely enough to figure it out).  Matt was appalled.  The jacket hood came right back up again and the baseball cap went straight back down over his face.  We angled him to a new spot where he could see the ONE safe wall in the restaurant but he stayed under cover for most of the meal.  We got pizza—it was not too bad, but they didn’t have any tomato sauce, just garlic butter, cheese, tomato slices and (brace yourself) DILL.  It was a funky pizza.  Not bad entirely.  We got pepperoni on one and sausage on the other.  All the meat here has a distinct smoky flavor to it and the dill was pretty strong, so it was definitely uniquely Ukrainian pizza, but it was good enough. We all ate a lot. 

It should be noted that this is the only public facility so far that has managed to pass muster in the public restroom arena.  When I was young, my older sister came up with the Wetzel Bathroom Rating scale, a handy ten point scale used to warn siblings about the state of public restrooms.  It goes like this;  Two points each for flushing toilet, toilet paper, and cleanliness.  One point each for soap, water, something to dry hands with, and a trash can.  Unfortunately here, some of the restrooms have actually gone into negative points—for example,  in the underground mall, there is only “squatty potties,” which are literally a ceramic hole that one is to squat over, and toilet paper can be purchased at the entrance  (you MUST remember this).  So, you can see the necessity of tweaking the scale for current country standards.  However, this one passed.  There is a balm in Gilead.

By the time we got home, everyone was wiped out on many levels.  I took a nap, thinking it would be 20 minutes, but it was two hours before I could move.  I felt like a train came and just parked on my chest. Those meetings take more out of a person than one might think.  I could barely open my eyes.  Sharon finally came over and performed her “Chinese water torture”—sprinkling water on my face, to wake me up.  The kids spent the rest of the afternoon playing with their plastic hot wheels “track” from yesterday.  And our neighbors from home called about 8pm, which was really great.  Reilly cried, which is to be expected, but she said she’d rather us all be together than half home and half here.  …I agree.