What a Day

We had a lovely morning visit with Anelya. Today they were cleaning at the baby house and so when we arrived, Anelya's baby rooms were completely stripped of all linens, rugs etc for cleaning. I also think they were disinfecting from all of the illness going around. So, much to my delight, we were allowed to take her outside for the entire visit. We walked around the baby house several times and also sat out on the bench in the beautiful weather. Anelya was smiling, laughing and gazing at us and at the trees.

They are redoing the stage on the playground now!

The signs for "orphanage" in Kazakh and Russian

After the visit, we came back to the hotel to get ready for our first court training. It was strange, because we were told to have questions with us, but we had received no information at all about court to begin with. We were told that we would have lunch at a Turkish restaurant and that Olga would join us. When we arrived at the restaurant, we realized that it was the same outdoor restaurant which we were told was "traditional Kazakh". Today it's Turkish. Tomorrow? Who knows, but they will still have the same menu! At least this time we knew what and how much to order.

Olga came about an hour later and sat with us to discuss our questions. We were told that we have to prepare a 10 minute speech to give in court and that we cannot use notes. We were told the criteria for these speeches and that we would each have a private 2.5 hour preparation before court. As this conversation with Olga continued, all of the families were growing increasingly frustrated with the translation we were receiving. We literally could not understand anything our translator was trying to say. The translator who usually does this job is in China because her daughter is having surgery. As this problem progressed, I began to listen more carefully to Olga's Russian and what was being translated back to us and to her. It became very apparent that major things were being missed in translation. When we were then told that this translator would be representing us in court, we were all VERY nervous.

The more I listened, the more I realized we were missing and being misrepresented. After the lunch and on the way back to the baby house, we spoke with Tammy & Bob about how terrifying the concept of having this translator in court is. We all know that our lawyer, Olga, is a pit bull and we couldn't have better representation for an adoption case in this city, but the translator has been hard for us to use even at the bazaar (although she is a lovely person) and there was no way we could allow this to happen.

We are pressed for time here and I did not feel I could hang around and worry about what to do about this. I believe the best thing to do in these situations is to be honest, open and polite. I also decided that I needed to do for my adoption case whatever it was that needed to be done to bring my little girl home and I didn't care if the other families agreed with me or not, I was going to speak for myself and make sure that everything is right. Boy, am I glad I did.

Coleen, do you recognize this finger puppet glove?

I asked Pasha to please request that Olga come to the hotel at 4 after my visit with Anelya. I asked that she come alone, that I wanted to talk to her alone, but that it is hard for me to do so on the phone because of my level of Russian. It is much easier for me to speak in person. She was worried and came to the baby house to see me. I decided to put on my business hat and approach this in a way that Olga would understand, so I switched from mommy mode to business mode and had a private talk with her.

Olga does not understand a word of English, so I knew I would have to do this whole thing in Russian and make things very clear, with no room for misunderstandings, and without upsetting anyone. I said, "Olga, thank you for coming to see me. It is very important for me that I talk to you right away because I do not think that (the translator) is capable of translating in court. I have listened to what you said today and the translations we received were not the same and a lot of information was lost. I also listened to what we said to her and what you were told we said and it was incorrect. We very much like this person as a person and she is fine to work with on a social basis, but for court, I just cannot trust that she can handle this level of language. This is about my family, my daughter, the most important thing in my life and I cannot just watch this disaster happen."

She responded immediately and asked if she really did not understand what I said and I told her that she really does not and I am sorry, that I do not want to cause problems or be of any trouble, but if she is to represent my voice in court, I need to know that she is saying what I am saying. I also offered to pay another person if that needed to happen and Olga laughed and said, "No, of course not. We will arrange for another translator for court. I am glad you told me this. I had no idea."

She smiled and said she would take care of it and within 10 minutes Pasha came up and told me that she had arranged for a translator who is very good and that I could test her during my private preparation and see what I think. All of the families will now use this translator, who we will meet tomorrow. I was also told that the woman who was supposed to be our translator was VERY relieved to not have to do it. She knew her skills were not apporpriate for this level off communication.

I have to say, I am so proud of myself for daring to speak up about this. It was a tough decision. I certainly didn't want to upset Olga, but I could not risk having that translator represent me. The other families were VERY thankful and I hope this will only ease their minds as well. Court is stressful enough as it is!

Anyway, on a lighter note, I found out that I have a VERY nice judge who gets emotional with you when you talk about how you feel about your baby. This is good since I am such a pile of mush and will certainly cry at several points during my speech, which I will begin writing once I am done writing to all of you. The other judge is apparently strict and looks like Mimi on The Drew Carey Show, but I don't have her. The next couple of days will be very hectic with speech-writing, court preparation on Tuesday (where Olga will role play the judge and grill me about everything possible) and visits. I will write as much as I can, but please understand if I am just too busy right now. Starting tomorrow, the rest of this trip will be a whirlwind.

The next wave of excitement has begun, my friends. Buckle up. Let's get this show on the road.