Our transition to Kyiv has worked out very well. Our apartment is centrally located in the historic district so we can walk to most destinations. Masha, our Ukrainian host, has been very helpful in getting us acclimated to the city, as well.

We met with the federal adoption agency yesterday. Things did not go as well as we had hoped. We saw the dossiers for three children all girls under the age of four, but none of them met our criteria for adoption.

As it turns out, the adoption system in the Ukraine has changed a great deal in the last year and this appears to be having an effect on the number of available children. The Ukrainian government has instituted a foster care system, similar to the US in which Ukrainian orphans are given to families who are paid to take care of the kids. While this provides a handsome income for many foster care families, it also means that children who are in foster care are not available for adoption. These problems are new, the result of recent changes in the federal orphanage/foster care system, according to Masha.

We we are now waiting for a second appointment, which we hope will be scheduled this week. Evidently, the agency will not grant us an immediate appointment until more files of elligible children arrive from the orphanages. We are hopeful that a second meeting will result in a better outcome. More soon!