Our Court Appearance- The Long Version

As you can see, this really is the long version, but we know that some of you are interested in hearing the whole story, and some of you are just saying, "Less talk! More videos and pictures!" To the later group, we'll have some fresh videos up soon, including- "Cosi versus the juice box."

Our train arrived at 8:50am. The ever faithful and well-paid Pasha was waiting on the platform to pick us up. But, even if he hadn't been, we were asked about 10 times by 10 different men, "taxi?" But we like Pasha, so we were happy to see his smiling face and his reliable car.

We arrived at the courthouse at 9:20 on the dot, only to wait an hour for our hearing. We were told to expect the hearing to last about 15-20 minutes.

At 10:20am, we entered the courtroom with a small crowd of unidentified people. We later found out that group contained the Inspector (like a social worker), a representative of the orphanage, a secretary, a prosecutor (wait...why is there a prosecutor? This should have been our first clue that this was not a friendly chat with the judge), and two people who were paid to be witnesses (their role is still unclear to us). We sat with our facilitator on a long wooden bench, next to some potted plants.

Within a few minutes, the judge entered the room and everyone stood. The judge was a woman, which was surprising since all the other big players were men. She was wearing a pink dress and a very interesting black hat. The hat was big, a little lacey and had a large bow on the side. We couldn't stop looking at it.

The proceedings were all in Ukrainian. We were given partial translation by our facilitator. Essentially, she told us stuff every now and then when she thought it was important. Things like "stand up, no not both of you, just Rob." (which was just as well, because as April stood, she knocked one of the plants off the bench and it landed face down, so she needed to discretely re-pot the plant while attention was on Rob.) Anyhow, then we'd get questions like, "Where do you live?" or "Are you a criminal?" or "Do you have a problem with alcohol or drug abuse?" Really? Does anyone answer "Yes" at that point? "Gee, your honor, now that you mention it..."

The funniest point was when our facilitator mistranslated a question for Rob. The question was supposed to be, "what are you using for identification?" and the answer would be "a US Passport." Instead, she asked "how would you document your personality?" Rob fumbled a bit and started talking about how he likes to read, before our translator re-phrased her question.

We thought things were going well, but after that the judge started flipping through our giant dossier (maybe 150 pages long) and making comments about every page. [Side note- the state department of adoption confirmed that we have the thickest dossier in their history.] We didn't know what she was saying. The only thing our facilitator said was, "the judge is not happy." And - just like that, we were totally nervous.

After about a half hour of who knows what, the judge announced a 5 minute break, which turned into a one hour break. The prosecutor had a problem with one detail of our adoption request, and they needed an hour to "resolve" the issue.

However, after the break, we were ushered back into the courtroom and told "Congratulations, you are parents!"

So that afternoon, we were able to visit Cosi again. She seemed to remember us, which was good, and she still seemed to prefer going to April over Rob. However, at one point, when April was holding her and Rob picked up another one of the little kids in the orphanage, Cosi had (what we believe to be) a jealous look in her big brown eyes. We don't think she liked Rob holding another kid.

Yay! Another step completed. But there is still the chance that a new objection will be filed in the next 10 days. Our adoption will be really really official on the 17th.