Questions for anyone who has traveled in the last 6 months

1 - We had help from a private adoption Atty 2 - Romania Border - Chernitvsy 3 - We werethere for four weeks in September adopted a little girl but with the new laws the judge could not wave the 30 days for appeals so we returned to CA for four weeks and were there for two weeks the second go around. We have been back for three days now. She s healthy and happy 4 - We went to the NAC once and saw only one child. In our case we visited her twice a day for a few days before we moved forward. We wanted to make sure she would bond with us. 5 - We wanted a boy or girl 5 and under with correctable issues - ie glasses hearing aids prostectics 6 - We had to wait 7 working days after the first court hearing to get an approval 7 - We took stationary, scarfs, coffee, etc. We ended up bringing alot of it back because they wanted gifts that were from there perfume, conac etc. 8- We brought a dvd player and we needed it in her region there are no tv channels nor newspapers in english Nothing 9- We bought the clothes there at the open market because we did not now what sizes 10- Pack Lightly the cars are small and can not hold alot of luggage. 11- We picked her up when it was time to take the 15 hour train ride back to Kiev. We paid for a hole compartment 12 - We took baby benadryl We only used it twice 13 - We were in a hotel in kiev for 1 week with her and we had to spend the night in london on the way home 14- Money the first time around we took 5K and the plane tickets cost 3K on top of that. The second time around our tickets were 2500k we took 2500 dollars cash and put 7K on the credit card. We spend about 3500 dollars of that in cash fees Bring your own coffee if you drink it. Bring a hot pot for sure, bar soap, salt and pepper peanut butter and jelly. It will be very cold there so be prepared you will most likely be on foot and it will probably be snowing. I hope this helps.

kjtj....has given some excellent tips.... especially useful for smaller children...baby benadryl....it has a calming affect ;) ....afterall they are being bounced about like basketballs ...can be a very trying experience for an infant or small child. ....people in EE are very savvy about name brands...and "demand" to be given such...something less is considered an insult.... Name brands have extra "umph" in EE economic conditions... .....I'd also suggest scarves.... paisley....is highly favored. They would be appreciated by a more mature woman.

Gifts--we took 20 total b/c we wanted to take small things for the workers in the orphanage who actually took care of our da. We took good silver & costume jewelry, scarves, Nike swoosh hats & t-shirts, maps and picture books of our state, perfume and make-up. The officials really liked the state gifts showing where our child would live, type of weather and natural beauty (Great Lakes). The best rec'd gifts were the ones we took for the workers---small makeup bags from Estee Lauder, Clinque & such and FILLED them with sample sizes of make-up, perfume, full size lipsticks and nail polish, stuffed in a scarf or pc. of jewelry and the women were in tears. Our translator told us they thought one bag was to be shared with the whole shift, but when they found out that there was one for each of them they wept. She said they could never afford such quality items for themselves and many would save them for Christmas presents for loved ones. The translator had to make sure they knew what each thing was (in some of the art supplies we took for the children the workers thought the glue sticks were deoderant at first, since few read English there) One of the few gifts we bought there was a nice pair of "driving glasses" (good sunglasses) for our driver. He thought they were a great luxury, which made us so happy. The very best gift was the brand name CD discman that we took for our facitator's son. They said over & over "this was his dream, to have one of these some day!" When we left, we also left him the copies of our favorite discs that we had taken for ourselves. He loved this to help him with his English. It was fun to see his "homework" from the translator---writing out Beatles lyrics in English. On the last night of the trip we were all back in Kiev and wanted to have a final dinner so we took our facilator, translator, driver and their spouses out to a nice resturant. We lingered for hours sharing stories and impressions of each others cultures and countries. This will always be one of our most special memories of the trip. May your travels be safe and fruitful!

Great ideas! I especially like the gifts for all the caretakers. How did you get the sample sizes of the good make up? Can you buy them at the dep't stores? How many caretaker gifts did you bring? I would like to do something along the line of what you did.They were thoughtful gifts!

You know how everyone you know from church to school is asking how they can help? Ask them all to give you the most recent "free gifts" they've received when they've bought any good make-up or perfume. That's how I got so many beautiful & fun little bags in shuch a short time. I also just asked at the better dept. stores. Told them what I was doing and they were very generous for the most part. It really all came together with so many friends giving me items, they were full in no time. I think I took 15 of those alone. We left a few as "hostess gifts" when we rented someone's apartment and probably used 12 at the orphanage. Another good thing to add in are small trial size soaps, esp. Dove or other beauty bars. Soap in Ukraine is usually quite harsh. My mother-in-law works part time for a dermatologist and he gave us several boxes of soaps and lotions to put in the bags, many of her friends gave us scarves. Really, they more people helping, the better they all feel to have something that actually is helpful and takes up part of all the waiting. Another word of advice---I wrote a simple children's story on my computer about a wonderful family in America who wanted another daughter to make their family complete...blah blah blah...printed out each page and put fun kid stickers on it and real pictures of our home and family as appropriate. Put it all into scrapbook sleeves and had an instant book. Then we took it to a local college and found a student who spoke Russian & Ukrainian and she translated the story for us so we could put it on tape, burn it to a dvd to play on the portable we took there (no video, only audio) and our new da. could listen to it in Ukrainian as she looked at the pictures. (We were adopting an older child and I wanted her to have an idea of what was happening.) We knew it had done the job one day when she flipped back to the page where the airplane was flying around the globe b/t the stars in Mi & Ukraine and she said "I will go there, I will go!". There were a lot of happy tears then :o). This book also was a great source of pride for our facilator who showed it to every official that we ever came in contact with in the 4 weeks we were there. They all were amazed at the pictures of the toy room in our house, couldn't believe that a child would have a whole room to play! Same with the woods and the yard shots, the girls room, pictures of her kookla (doll) and misha (bear) that were on her bed at home and then in our daughter's arms as she read the book. The waiting is the hardest part and we too suffered set backs when 4 days before we were to leave we got a call that they had closed the program--I nearly lost it, but afterwards we knew it was all part of the plan. The delay is when I thought up the book idea and had time to complete it in the few weeks that passed until the call came that we were leaving again. Once we got home and looked through all of the paperwork translations we found that our da. had ONLY come off the waiting list the day before we saw her picture on the second trip to the NAC. She wasn't available 2 days earlier when we had been there and turned down the referrals for all boys and a sick older girl. That's when you truly know there are angles involved in this whole process and some things are just out of your hands. I originally got the idea of gifts for the caretakers from my friend who had adopted two older from Russia. We all learn from each other! Ugh-sorry this is so long!Karen

I wish I had a bunch of people asking me how they could help!!! No-one has asked us that at all. I knitted fashion scarves for all the ladies in the orphanage, I think I have 17 of them & I hope that's enough. I have also knitted several hats/scarves/gloves for the kids there. I have so many gifts, they are going to be the bulk of our luggage, but at least we'll be lighter on the way back