pусский

If you don't realize that the title of this post is the word "Russian" in Russian, then you too have not been studying your Russian language tapes. I have Russian language tapes and a book and have only learned a few words so far. So I signed up for a class at the local community college that starts on June 30th. I don't know how much I can learn in 6 weeks, but it is better than what I know now. Of course with my luck, the people I will try to interact with will speak Kazah which is a totally different language of which I know nothing!
Update: I just spoke with a family who adopted a little boy from Shymkent. She told me that they do speak Kazah in the babyhouse and not Russian! So now that I FINALLY sign up for a Russian course, I find out it will probably not be that useful. :)
Update #2: I may just end up deleting this post as I am probably going to drop the Russian class without going to a single one. If they speak Kazah in Shymkent, knowing some russian will probably confuse me even more!
Update#3: I decided to go ahead and go to the class anyway, but I got a letter in the mail today with a refund for the class init. They ended up canceling the class!

How about July?????

I just found out that I will NOT be getting a call in June to travel in July. SO how about getting a call in July to travel in August?????? Think of all the advantages of traveling in August:

It is the busiest travel season so flights will be extra fun to find

It will be a bazillion degrees in Shymkent and I will get to fight global warming by not having an air conditioner

It is another month for me to have to get ready since I haven't had enough time to do THAT yet

I will probably get to redo more documents since I'm sure Kaz will change the paper work requirements before I travel

I'm sure there are lots more good reasons to be happy about not traveling for another month, but I am just not having much luck thinking of them right now.

Is it June yet?

May seems to be taking forever to get finished up. At least this weekend is a 3 day weekend! I am still thinking June is finally going to be the month that I get that call.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to my mom and all the other moms and moms to be.

Swine Flu

Well, it looks like we have found the source of swine flu! Actually, swine flu is starting to be a real issue in the adoption world. Not the flu itself so much. Every year 30,000+ Americans die from the regular flu and the only person in the US to die from swine flu so far was a child from Mexico who crossed the border for treatment. Unfortunately, the media is really hyping this up. It is an issue that needs a intelligent response, but as usual reporters are trying to out scare the other reporters and we are seeing the outcome from that. There are already rumours that China is temporarily halting adoptions to the US until this is over. I am not sure if the rumours of China are true or not., but I am very afraid that Kaz may end up halting adoptions until this is over. I can't really blame them since adoptive parents are strangers are coming into the orphanages and one person could spread the disease to a lot of kids. On the other hand, so far, it is not the pandemic with millions dead that the media keeps saying it may turn into.

The company I worked for issued travel warning today and is restricting travel to the US for employees. The fact that it has 25,000 US employees that travel around the US every day makes the email warning we got today confusing. Do we get to stay home and still get paid? A followup email confirmed that US employees can still travel in the US so no vacation for me! UPDATE: It is starting to look like swine flu is a non-issue. I don't think it is going to have any effect on traveling.

June????

That's right- no travel in April or May. So hopefully June?!?! Since today is April, I guess I can make it to June-like I have any choice.

And no, this is not an April fool's day joke.

Paperwork

Even if there is no news on travel, there is ALWAYS more paperwork to redo in this process. I just started my home study renewal process since it will be a year old on May 1st and they are only good for a year. So I get to spend $400 for a piece of paper that says nothing has changed in my life. Some of the paperwork expires every 6 months so towards the end of March, I get to go have my fingerprints taken yet again-twice. You would think they would store them on a computer somewhere, but they don't so every 6 months I get to go to the local police station and get printed for the FBI. Then I get to go to St Louis to get my fingerprints taken again for the USCIS because the agencies don't share the fingerprints and each need their own set(this is every 15 months). My favorite paperwork redo is getting a new birth certificate every year because my birthdate is going to change?? I've never figured that one out yet. So by June 1st I have to redo everything I did a year ago. The good thing is that it gets easier every time.