Good News May Be On Its Way While We Learn Russian

Is it possible that re-accreditation is on its way?? We hope so. There were rumors swirling around Friday that an agency (not ours) had heard the last two ministries had signed off of the re-accreditation documents in Russia which means that some agencies, ours hopefully included, would begin to receive their documents required to open all regions back up to adoptions. This would mean quicker referrals and long awaited court dates for many families. We know it may not be true, but we spent the weekend praying it is. I will let everyone know as soon as I can!! This could be really, really exciting. Of course we don’t want to get our hopes up too much as we know it could be a false alarm.

In other news...I think I am sore from laughing so hard this weekend – Troy and I trying to learn Russian is extremely hilarious. We spend a lot of time listening to the words going “Huh??” or “What was that??”

But we figure we’re okay – we learned the word for pizza which is “pizza” and soup which is “soup” and most importantly french fries which are “cheapsies”. Our new joke is seeing me order chicken and fries and going up to the counter and flapping my arms making chicken sounds and finishing it with “and cheapsies”!!!

Seriously though we learned hello and goodbye – you know the basic easy ones, not the formal vs. informal because this will be a game of memorization for us. We also learned the words for mother (mot) and father (achyets) and grandmother (babushka) and grandfather (diadushka). The other two big words we learned are dog (sabaka) and cat (koshka) since we have plenty of those around!! It’s actually pretty fun. Our goal is to learn a couple new words every so many days during the wait.

If anyone out there has a word they think we really need to know or just think it would be amusing to hear us say - chime in and we’ll try to learn it!!

On another note – ever since we have started the adoption we’ve seen little signs that we are on the right track. Now I’m not a believer in signs, but Saturday at the SPCA I adopted out a kitten to a family. The kitten’s name was Babushka!!! We normally name the animals as they come in, but no one remembers naming this one. That’s another thing – if you have any good dog and cat names send them on to me!! We are taking in an influx of stray kittens and puppies and are running short on creative names for them!! We even had a litter of puppies someone named Arms, Legs and Lips. We’ve been through cities, fabrics, movies stars, singers, you name it!!

So, here's to learning Russian and some hopefully good news about the re-accreditation!!