We arrived!

We Arrived! God is Good!
Our trip pretty much went without incident. We took every spare hour and minute after our trip to Indiana for WGM’s 100th Anniversary Celebration in Marion. Sunday night we dropped off some students, unloaded our luggage, and drove to Wal Mart to purchase last minute supplies and gifts for the trip to Albania. We packed until a little after 3AM and got a cat nap before leaving for the airport at 5AM.

Ellie truly was an amazing little traveler. It turns out that airports are chock full of fascinating things to observe and experience, in addition to the trams, escalators, elevators, revolving signs, and general airplane maintenance machines. If we had an issue, it was her fear of the automatically flushing toilets in the American airport restrooms. It really proved difficult, but was Then, the cramped airplane bathroom proved too claustrophobic. So much so that she managed to ‘hold it’ the entire 8 or 9 hour flight across the Atlantic. Probably wasn’t a bad thing since they forgot to resupply our plane with water so there was no running water in any of the lavatories to wash your hands. YUCK! Did I mention that the front page story of the complimentary issue of USA Today the airline staff distributed boldly warned of the hidden dangers of airplane food and the shockingly unsanitary conditions in which most food is prepared. Lovely.

We also learned some of her ‘mis’conceptions about what we already knew was an abstract place to her: Albania. She raised more than a few chuckles on the first flight from Lexington when she walked down the aisle and announced loudly to our fellow passengers that we were going to ‘blast off’. She then kept an unwavering eye on the planes wings for ‘flames’. Apparently the differences between planes and rocket ships are pretty slim in her mind. Once we finally took off she declared, “We’re leaving Earth to meet my brother!” (Further confirming our belief that our repeated explanation of taking a plane to Albania caused her to put Albania in a similar plane as heaven. Some may not disagree)! Last Ellie story/quote: I didn’t consider that she just might be enamored with the animated safety video produced by Austrian Airlines. When they showed the face masks dropping from the ceiling she said, “I want to play with that but I don’t want to put it on my face!” Then, when they explained that in the event of a water landing, the emergency evacuation slides would convert to water rafts, Ellie again loudly declared (enough for at least three rows of folks to hear), “But I don’t want to land on the water!!

We landed in Albania around 1PM and (as is typical for us), hit the ground running. Mandi picked us up and took us straight to the Bethany Offices where we made arrangements for our trip to meet David Reni TOMORROW! We learned that the Article 5 letter has not yet made it to our Embassy in Tirana. If we have that letter, Alma could be requesting a court date for us tomorrow. We’ll start the day bright and early with a 9AM meeting with the head of the Albanian Adoption Committee. After that meeting and before the trip to Elbasan we’re going to check with the Embassy again to see if they have received the cable from the States.
The trip to Elbasan takes about 90 minutes (so they say) so the commute to and from Tirana on the weekends won’t be quite as great as it was to Vlora with Ellie. We plan to repack our bags and stay in Elbasan for 8-9 days until my Mom is due to arrive. We’ll come back to see her and do laundry before returning to spend more time with David Reni and appear in court.

Here’s the Timeline/Checklist/Process for the adoption:
1.) 14-day visit period prior to court for bonding
2.) 1st court appearance
3.) 2nd court appearance (usually about a week after the first hearing, but possibly sooner)
4.) 15-day appeal period
5.) Issuance of the adoption decree (pray that this happens before August 1st when the courts close for the month of August).
6.) Procure birth certificate, medical evaluation, Albanian passport, and US Visa
7.) Go home!

Thank you for upholding us in your prayers. We are truly sensing God's hand in everything, especially after our conversation with Agim about the timeline. It may yet be possible to bring Reni home with us in August which is more than we dared to hope and imagine, but could be possible -- please pray!!! Sending this from an internet cafe` so I apologize we don't have photos. Hopefully our next post will include photos of our son!
Gonna go back and crash in bed! Big day ahead of us tomorrow!