I didn't visit Roman today.  I'm trying to save a bit of cash in case the letter of consent is a long time coming.  Every 3 visits is basically $100 USD and money is tight.  So we slept late this morning, then I got up and just roamed around Simferopol.  I stopped by some of the underground vendor stalls to find a wallet for Roman.  I want to put some family contact information in it, just incase we get seperated during the trip home.  I know airports can be busy and teenage boys can be overly curious.  Since he doesn't speak any English, this could be a real problem - better safe than sorry.

Loonya went to the "car mart" this afternoon to pick up oil for the car.  He still wasn't back when I returned home at 3:00 p.m.  He arrived about 5:00 p.m. with great news.  Luda managed to get the "letter of consent" signed.  At first I thought this was because the director was actually being nice.  I later found out that she was out of town, so the assistant director was processing documents.  I was told that some families had waited many weeks.  One family from Spain waited 21 business days.  Its amazing... the director goes out of town and work gets done.  I was also told that she started another new process at the NAC. After visiting and deciding to adopt a child, you must get together a lot of paperwork for the NAC.  The paperwork includes things like history of the child in the orphanage, info about their abandonment or parental rights termination, medical info, letter of conclusion from the inspector etc.. etc..  This pile of papers goes to the NAC for review and once approved they issue a letter of consent so that you can have court.  Well now instead of being able to submit these papers any day during the week, you can only submit them 2 days out of the business week.  This change can add 2-3 days to the process.  In addition the director will only sign the letter after the 5th business day that the documents have been in the NAC.  She has stretched this period of time as well.  If she finds one typo even in an insignificant word like "the" written as "teh", she denies the adoption.  At that point, the facilitators have to go back to the region, redo the paperwork, then travel back to Kiev and resubmit the new papers for approval.  Then they begin to count down another 5 - 7 business days before the director will sign.  I know prospective adoptive parents are gonna love this.

So after hearing the news that we got the letter, I thought Luda was playing with me.  I did not think after all the trouble I had in getting to see Roman that the letter would be approved on the 4th business day.  I was expecting to be delayed a week.  Loonya went to pick up Luda from the airport at 8:30 p.m.  We had a late dinner then reviewed the documents that would have to be processed after court tomorrow.  Tomorrow will be an extremely busy day. 

I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.