Events of the Day:

Since Monday was a Ukrainian holiday, Tuesday was our first visit to the famed NAC. Our apartment was within walking distance, but Katherine came to pick us up with a taxi since our appointment seemed to be a bit "loose". First it was scheduled for morning, then afternoon, then back to morning, before ending up in the mid-morning. Since we had already had it in our minds that Alyona was our preference, the trip was thought to be just academic - look at some photos, identify Alyona, sign the papers and move on. However, once we finally got in to see the NAC officials, they had trouble finding Alyona's file. She only became available in late June and the file/photo had not yet made it into the big books at the NAC. We left somewhat disappointed at lunch time (1 PM) with the promise that they & our facilitators would straighten out the paper work that afternoon. We were overjoyed when Yulia called at the end of the day confirming that the file was found and that all was well for initiating the adoption process for Alyona. After a trip to the notary just ahead of the 6 PM closing time, life was again good.

One exception to the "life is good" theory - the hot water seems to have disappeared in the apartment. It's not that the water wasn't hot - it simply wasn't there. Opening any hot water faucet just resulted in air being sucked in! Cold water pressure was good and we were drinking bottled water anyway. We were hopeful that it was just a transient thing - turned off to meet industrial demands on the local steam heating plant. After all, we had hot water Sunday and Monday, but Monday was a holiday. Surely, we would have hot water again in the evening or early the next morning after the industrial loads were down. Boy were we wrong!

We spent most of our day with the NAC process so we took very few photos on Day 3. The slide show just contains a few of Alyona, Travis & Taylor happily playing in the apartment.