Saying Goodbye

Well, it's official. We signed the final acceptance document this morning for the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice stating that we have met with both girls and we are willing to accept the referrals and complete the adoption process. The new names are Emily Catherine Osborne and Madelyn Dell Osborne. The Dell is both her mother's and her great grandmother's middle name. We are so excited to be able to pass that heritage forward another generation! The next steps on the Bulgarian side are for the Minister of Justice to give final approval and for the adoptions to go to court. Once the court decree is issued, they will get new birth certificates and eventually new passports and be ready to go. On our side, we have to work through the rest of the immigration approval process to get their travel visas. We had to get the documents notarized, which was an interesting experience. Bulgarian notaries are more like contract lawyers than US notaries. They not only witness signatures, but they completely review, and frequently prepare, the documents they notarize to ensure they are in accordance with appropriate laws. The notary we saw had two assistants out front and a very nice private office.

After the notary, we had our last visit with Madelyn (Cici). It was a very nice final visit, and we were able to present both the Dukov family and the social worker with thank you gifts. Both were genuinely touched. We said our final goodbyes and headed for the car.

Lesson 1 for driving in a foreign country: when you have a native translator with you who is reasonably familiar with the road system, listen to her instead of Google! Google maps gave a couple of options for getting back to Sofia. There was a 100 km difference in the routes, but only about 8 minutes of estimated driving distance because the longer route had significantly longer spans of limited access freeway with 130 kph speed limits and no towns, as opposed to the shorter way which was mostly two-lane highway with 90 kph speed limit and lots of reduced speed zones through towns (and therefore lots of speed traps). I find the rural highway driving exhausting, especially given the higher probability of a speeding ticket in a foreign country - not an experience I care to have - so I wanted to take the longer way and drive on the freeway. Maggie suggested the other way - a straight shot from Shumen to Sofia. We went the long way. The first part of the route involved heading south through the mountains to hit the freeway and head west. It looked like a good route on the gps as well. Only one problem. About an hour out of Shumen, the road shrinks down to a small country road as it passes through the final mountain ridge. And, oh by the way, it has snowed a lot here over the last few weeks, and the road was too small for the road crews to bother with, so they closed it. We had to turn around and drive almost all the way back to Shumen to pick up Maggie's route. It cost us at least 2 hours. That meant we didn't get to Sofia until after dark, and navigating over here at night is an adventure in itself. Should have listened to Maggie!

At any rate, we got to the hotel, got checked in, and then saw Maggie off in a taxi. We will miss her! We're working on final packing and getting ready to go. We have an early flight out of Sofia, so we will be out of the hotel around 5 in the morning. If everything goes as scheduled, we will be in Atlanta around 8:30 tomorrow evening.