Embassy and Russian food for lunch

Tuesday we went to the Embassy. It was so much easier than courts! Since it was the Embassy’s first day open things seemed to be a little slow making it through security. Note to those coming. They take your iPod, cameras, cell phone. Don’t bring them, you can’t keep them with you.

After a very short wait we had our interview which consisted of us standing at a window, them taking our son’s fingerprints and asking him 2 or 3 questions. Then telling us to come back tomorrow to get his Visa.

Note to parents – they “need” to hear you are homeschooling during the hosting time until they are legal US citizens. Daina said there is a big meeting coming up. She said this is the ONLY country that allows kids to come home immediately and if we keep putting them in American schools before they are American citizens then this part of the program will close and they will not be able to come home anymore early. Think about it and plan for it. Even charter schools are not acceptable as they are public schools. Daina said if you can’t home school them (if it’s school time) then leave them here until the last trip. I am 100% sure more will be coming out about this soon for those adopting here. She was very firm on this.

We were in & out in about 30 minutes with both of our families getting done. We came back to the apartment as we had lunch plans but not until 2pm.

We caught a train to David’s old foster family’s home and had a wonderful lunch. David had “prewarned” her I was a very picky eater and may not eat much. I really did not want to hurt her feeling, but I could not eat fish soup… but she made chicken soup too! It was fun to hear about our son and that he “can” cook, not that he has for us! We had a special treat as one of his adult brothers came to visit while we were there. We had never met him before, and it was wonderful to meet him.

When David’s brother and foster mom found out we wanted to see the Baltic Sea and David had not taken us, they told him he needed to do this. He readily agreed. ??? We thought it strange at the time he agreed so easily. After lots of hugs and see you next time we headed to the train. His brother escorted us there before catching his bus. We also had our friend Paula’s son with us who was going to the Sea with us.

Well, this is where the sneaky child comes in. I thought he agreed too easy to go to the Sea when I had been asking him for a week and he kept saying nope. We gave him money to buy train tickets to the sea and he comes back with ones back to Riga. Brat! He wanted to go back home & hang out with Noah (Yuri)

It was all good. We spent several hours visiting with Paula’s son and she got to see his sweet face on Skype, and not just hear his voice. So that was worth giving up my trip to the Sea.

David and Natalija

David and Rodion

Noah William Chaffin