Bye Bye Bulgaria

It has been a very busy few days, so I am a little behind in posting, but I am trying to sneak in a few minutes to catch up on our last day in Bulgaria, the trip home, and our first day together as a complete family.

Friday was our last day in Sofia, and the only real scheduled event we had was to drop by the offices of the adoption agency to pick up our document package with all of the court paperwork, medical records, birth certificates, etc. Family National Association was such a pleasure to work with as our representatives in Bulgaria. They really went all-out to make the adoption process go as smoothly and easily as possible, and in our case, that wasn't necessarily always easy. Since we adopted 2 unrelated children, everything had to be done twice. That made the initial 5 day visit into a 13 day event for our attendant and translator, Maggie. It also meant she had twice the amount of documentation to keep up with. The whole adoption process is an exercise in document control, and there is a lot to keep up with. Maggie did a wonderful job. As I have said over and over again, she was so much more than just a translator. She was a wise counselor, an encourager, a comforter, and a good friend. There are a lot of different emotions involved in the adoption process, many of them unexpected, and it is wonderful to have an experienced confidant who can assure you that everything you are experiencing is completely normal and happens in every adoption case. It was great to be able to have Maggie go with us for the pickup as well. She was a lifesaver on the long car rides, and the fact that the girls already knew her made the travel experience much easier for them. We also received excellent staff support from Nina and the office folks at FNA in making reservations, working out details, making sure everything was in order, getting passport applications ready in time, and a million other things that they handled very efficiently behind the scenes that we will probably never know about. Angela and Nadya took care of all of the legal stuff involved and made everything run smoothly and easily for us throughout the whole process, from finding and requesting the girls and getting the referrals timed so that we could visit both girls in one trip, to making everything work out on the pickup trip so that we could get both girls from opposite ends of the country, get the passports, visas, and medical exams completed in less than a week, and get our paperwork in order in time to make our flight out on a very short schedule. They were all amazing and so very helpful. I don't think we could have made it through the process without them. Thank you so much for all your help!

 

After we said goodbye to Maggie and the folks at FNA, we had a quick stop for some gelato to cool everybody down a little, then finished up the shopping that Carolyn needed to get done. We had lunch in town, then headed back to the hotel for a quiet afternoon. After the girls went to sleep, Carolyn and I spent the evening packing, and as much as we tried, it was still very late when we got to bed, and the alarm was going off VERY early in the morning to get to the airport on time.