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We just returned from Bulgaria with our little boy.
I went this trip
with a friend and we had a great trip and visit in Bulgaria. I never
thought I would say this but Bulgaria
is truly a beautiful country and
we made some very good friends in the town near the orphanage and I
believe with the
people that run the agency that we used in Sofia. We
had a great experience at the orphanage and were allowed much more
open
access then I was told to expect. Whether this had to do with the fact
that I am a doctor or that I brought a tremendous
amount(as much as I
could carry) of donations for the kids I will never know. I seem to
have a great working relationship
with the director and we are planning
on working on a mission in the near future to help all the children in
Bulgaria
who have the same special need of my child. She is a more
open director and you can tell that she cares deeply for these
kids and
they to her. The orphanage was clean and they did as much as they
could with the little they had.
Please
remember that with the lack of referrals the orphanages are
affected by over crowding(no one getting out but more coming
in) and no
income from the adopted child as well as no donations from visiting
families. This standstill is affecting
everyone involved but the
powers that be are not physically seeing the children or waiting
families and therefore are
not seeing any urgency in the matter. In
my son's orphanage there were 150 children and 30 children in his
building.
I
was told by the director that there were more than 75 children from
this orphanage alone already registered and that all
children (not only
healthy or healthy looking special needs) were being registered. His
was a special needs orphanage
but when questioned of the 15 children in
his play group(children that came out to playroom and all were
beautiful)
only 3 were special needs. One had a repaired menigocoele
(but was developmentally healthy and the happiest 2 year old
you have
ever seen) and the other one was OI (with a family waiting and the
final was a 5 year old F with normal intelligence
and a left sided
weakness(that would be fine in US and PT/OT) but has no ID number(born
in greece and abandoned in Bulgaria.
So our look for a SN girl in
this group was fruitless. The other 12 are healthy and registered.
We went on Weds
and arrived on Thursday and drove directly to the
orphanage to play with Avery Boiko for a few hours before his going
away
party on Friday. On friday we arrived to a big party. The kids
were in their sunday finest and balloons were everywhere.
The staff
told us the kids had been partying since 7am. We had cakes and
cookies, bananas and oranges and I had brought
chocalates for kids and
staff. We had brought big beach balls and blew those up and the kids
had a ball and so did the
nurses if their faces were any hint. My son
had his last lunch and nap while we finish the paperwork to remove him
on
the exact date (2 years) that he was placed in this facility. When
we left the orphanage we did so with the women who had
been his
surrogate mom since August 2004. The transition went smoothly as she
came back to the hotel and had dinner
with us. He never cried and went
right to sleep for me. He awoke in the morning and was fine. When he
saw Elena though
he was very excited and smiling. Throughout Friday,
Saturday and Sunday we intermittently would be together and apart and
he
got used to this and to me and so when we seperated from Elena on
Sunday afternoon there was no scene except from the adults
involved
(Elena, Angelina(my friend) and me were like blubbering idiots). She
truly loves him and he her and I plan
on keeping her in his life and
updating her as much as possible. On Sunday I wanted the weekend
staff to have a party
so we returned one final time to the orphanage
and the kids got another great day. They had such a nice time and the
staff
was so pleased that I had thought of them as well. The director
came in specially that day to see my son off and to have
a long
discussion with me on other matters that we plan to work together on.
It was nice taking the extra time
to transition the child then to take
him on Monday morning abruptly from everything he knows. I think this
would have
really traumatized this particular child and set him back
developmentally and I am glad I took the time and had a director
that
was willing to work with me in this.
On Sunday we went to Sofia and monday was the visa foto, physical exam
and
filing the application at the embassy day. Tuesday we went for
visa interview and had our visa by 430pm that day but could
not leave
until thursday as we had scheduled our flight for that date because I
had been told I would not receive the
visa until weds. We stayed in a
great 2 bedroom apartment in the 5 corner's area(central) for 78 a
night and you were
close to everything. We got used to the little
markets(no wal marts here) and our internet cafe(were they knew us
well)
and the little vendor who used our front door to the building as
a store during the day(lots of entrepaneurs there). After
the Visa
interview on Tuesday we hired a car and travelled to his birth town and
got lots of pictures and had lunch
and bought him a bib and book so
that he would have something from there.
A cute Embassy story:
On Monday
the plan was for the agency director to pick me up at 2 and
take me to the US embassy to file the application but at 2:15
the taxi
arrives with our typical driver(who was sweet but couldn't speak a word
of english) and drove me to the embassy.
He parks in front of embassy
and I ask him where is Violeta? no response so I mime to him to call
her and he does and
she tells me that she is on her way in a seperate
taxi. As this is happening the men in front of the embassy(you know
the
ones with the machine guns) are heading towards me so I quickly get
out and cross the street to wait. Well while waiting
I get this
brilliant idea.............I pull out my camera and decide to take a
picture of the embassy sign for his
memory book.............yes I know
now I agree that this sounds like a dumb idea but at the time it seemed
like a great
one. Very quickly a man with a machine gun is in my face
yelling in Bulgarian.......I say I am american and cannot understand
you.
He goes and gets the dude who speaks english and they both come
back. The 2nd dude says"Why you take picture?" and I say
I am
adopting a 2 year old and I wanted to show him what his embassy looked
like. The 2nd dude says"Why you take picture?"
I start to repeat
myself when I nice bulgarian lady(visiting from Chicago) says would you
like me to help..............to
which I say sure and she proceeds in
Bulgarian into the strange preoccupation of americans and their need to
make scrapbooks
and keep things open and documented to which The 2nd
dude says"Why you take picture? in Bulgarian..........at this point
I
say I will delete the picture and I do but then he says you need to
give 1st dude your passport. He had a machine
gun so I did but when he
walked away it wasn't towards the embassy it was down the street.
I figure now that my attorney
is going to kill me and I am wondering
how I will get into the embassy. Violeta shows up and says "are you
ready to
go in?" and I say"I can't , I don't have my passport" She
says"you forgot your passport? and I say "No, that dude made
me give it
to another dude" and she says "Why?" and I say "because I took a
picture of that sign" Well she called her
contact in the embassy(Mr G)
and I am sure in Bulgarian she was saying"the crazy american has lost
her passport because
she took a picture of the sign for her baby
book! Shortly after this Dude #1 reappeared and I guess Interpol said
I
was not a terrorist and I got it back. Security in the Embassy is
unbelievable and almost comical as well. As we were getting
ready to
enter(and I was so happy to have my blue passport back that I was
flashing it) Violeta asked me if I had brought
any perfume? What? Did
you bring any perfume or do you have perfume on you? I started to get
upset at this(maybe still
a bit tiffed from the camera incident) but
why did I have to bribe my own embassy when I had not had to bribe one
person
in Bulgaria to date!...........she must have realized my
question because she said no that security says that perfume is
comsidered
a weapon and you could not enter with it(maybe in 007 movies
from the 60's). We entered the first security check and it
took 10
passes through the metal detector to get her purse to pass. She had to
leave a 2 inch mirror(not made of glass),
a lipstick, a date book, a
hair clip, a lighter and some other craziness. This was all done in
Bulgarian and to me quite
humorous. I passed in one try once I gave
up that pesky camera.
Back to the return:
We left Sofia at 710
am and Avery slept until we reached Munich. He
ate breakfast and played for 2.5 hours and then I medicated him with
Benadryl
and a hydrocodone cough syrup for the long flight. Well the
combination might be what did us in but he was a wired happy
baby for 4
hours before he went down. The flight attendants on Lufthansa could
not have been nicer or more helpful(on
all 4 flights to and back). It
is really a great airline and worth it for there care and efficiency.
He slept on the
floor and 7 blankets in bulkhead seating for the final
5 hours and then we were in charlotte. It took 1 1/2 hours in customs
to
finalize his visa and make him a US citizen. My husband was out
there panicing because the airllines could not tell him
if we made the
flight and he thought we were still in germany. There is a long
hallway from the homeland security area
and the baggage area and so as
we started down the walkway my girl saw us from afar and began to run
towrds us (and
homeland security)............I got some good video of
their first glimpse of their brother and he them and it is
sweet........of
course my friend AC was still a little nervous about
the Embassy picture taking so we moved right along. He then got to
spend
3 hours(rush hour traffic in Charlotte) with 4 crazy and loud
sibling and so at this point we realized he would never get
the easy
quiet transition for his adjustment.
The first few days have gone great and his sleep is now good and his
eating
is slowly improving. He loves neing outdoors and moving freely
anbout the house. His sibling adore him and are very protective
of
him, lecturing each other on the need to give him some space. He still
has very little thirst and doesn't seem to
want to drink as much as I
would like but I believe he has been programed for so long that this
was not an option that
it will just take time. He is such a happy
go lucky fellow and he is improving his development milestones within
days
of leaving the orphanage. He is babbling so much now that he is
hoarse and he rarely made any sounds in the orphanage.
I actually
believe I heard him say mama the other day but I may have been
hallucinating...it sure sounded like it.
I
posted some pics of him under Avery Boiko Suri if you would like to
see my beauty.
Mary
mom of Alexi(6-30-02)
Type III/IV(mild) 27 lbs 33 inches
Avery Boiko(7-15-02) Type III/IV(mod) 22 lbs 30 inches
and the nonOI threesome Alec
(9.75) Aidan (6.75) Aubrey (5)
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