New and improved blog!

I am not too keen on our Wordpress blog that we host on our website (www.mikeandrani.com) so I am going to move all of it's content to this blog. All of the content you say? Well, if you look at our current blog, the content is terrible. We are terrible bloggers. So, I am going to start at the beginning, fake back date my posts and tell the ongoing story of our adoption. Enjoy!

April 4th, 2011

Today we got to go to the orphanage to see our little girl. We got a taxi from the hotel and drove to the orphanage. We had no idea what to expect. It was on the outskirts of town, near some soviet style tower apartments. The building looked like an old school, maybe from the 50's or 60's. It looked quite run down, with some old playground equipment and some basketball courts that had seen better days. We went into the building and first met with the orphanage director and the state issued social worker who is there most every day. We talked (though our interpreter) about her and the social worker stated that she was very excited to meet us. Note to everyone, smoking indoors is the norm in Bulgaria, they are just now laying down rules for non-smoking areas, etc. We were then ushered into another section of the building, and into a little waiting room. We could hear children about, but we didn't see any. As we got into the waiting room, the most heartbreaking thing happened. The children spotted us. I think they were moving from one area to another, but they noticed someone was in the waiting room and they rushed the door. Through the frosted glass we could see little faces and hands, most of them yelling "mama" "mama". The caretakers quickly pulled them away and moved them on, but wow...I have no words to describe what we felt. A couple of minutes later the social worker and a caretaker brought the little girl in the referral to us. She was absolutely terrified! She was older than the picture (we later found it was from about a year earlier) and her hair was different. But she was still the most beautiful little thing! Since she was so scared, they tried coaxing her with food to come to us, she actually took a granola bar from my hand, but ran off behind the social worker. They decided to move us to more familiar surroundings for her, and we went over to the other building. We got to interact with her a bit, we played blocks and she had a talking stuffed animal that she liked. Rani started to warm her up with hair barrettes which she loved, and some other little toys she had brought. We found out that we had been introduced to her as her actual parents, her mom and dad. I found that strange, but then again, how are you going to explain an international adoption to a 4 year old. After a while we left, and came back that afternoon to see her again. We would repeat a morning visit and an afternoon visit for the rest of the week. In between visits we would explore a little bit of Dobrich by walking though the (massive!) central park and eventually we made it up to a little supermarket. It was smaller than my house (about a thousand square feet) but it was called a supermarket. If only they could see a wal-mart here, they would probably have a heart attack! We purchased some snacks for us and for her, as the way to her heart is through her stomach. She will eat anything you place in front of her!

April 4th, 2011

Just some general observations about Bulgaria. My first reaction upon seeing Sofia up close was a horrible one...I thought it looked pretty bad. Kind of like a war zone...lots of graffiti, many abandoned buildings, lots of concrete, and most of it in disrepair. You could see the communist influence in the bland, boring buildings, the same muted colors everywhere, etc. It was the very beginning of spring, and as only daffodils had "sprung" up at home, here trees were bare, the streets were dirty, and trash was everywhere. I was kind of overwhelmed on the drive out of the airport. As we got to the hotel in the city center, I started to see the real Bulgaria, friendly people, road construction to fix the golden brick road (yes, really, it runs along in front of our hotel!), the area was clean, the park across from the cathedral was nice and full of artists and others selling trinkets. The hotel was beautiful, a mix of old and new. The cathedral was stunning, it's golden roof visible from our room. The imposing statue of the Tsar liberator in the parking lot was really cool. It only got better from here. The drive to Dobrich was very pretty, even with no leaves on the trees, and we drove through several small towns where the main form of transportation was horse and cart. We began to notice that each little house had a garden, and we began to see spring flowers blooming. As we drove into Dobrich we passed farmers fields that looked just like back home. More little houses with red tile roofs. It became clear to us that Bulgaria was a great little up and coming European country. After staying here a week, we definitely fell in love with it's old world charm and friendly people. Not to mention, it's really cheap here. Sofia was priced about the same as Columbus, 10 dollar hamburgers, 4 dollar cappuccinos, but Dobrich was incredible. 5 dollar hamburgers, dollar fifty cappuccinos. The hotel in Dobrich was also incredible, built into the side of a hill overlooking the huge park in the city center. If I could retire today, it would be in Dobrich, your money goes a long way!

April 3rd, 2011

We are in Bulgaria now! Here is what Rani had to say about it from our original blog:

We’re here!

We arrived in Sofia on Saturday, after a long 20+ hours of travel. We made it to the hotel, and were almost ready to drop. First, though, we took a bit of a walk, to get a feel for some of Bulgaria and also just to stretch our legs! We tried to go to the Nevsky cathedral, but alas, there was some sort of shindig happening right on the front steps, complete with what looked like a crush of newly ordained priests and news crews. We got some pictures and walked around the cathedral, but that was all that we could see there.

We continued on about a block or so, where we saw the St. Sofia church. It is quite old, and undergoing renovation. In the park across from there, a market was set up, with vendors selling some cool old stuff - an old Cyrillic manual typewriter, records, and even books. There were also vendors selling hand painted/carved religious icons that were beautiful, and even a lady selling matrushkas. I may try to revisit her stand on Saturday if she is still there…

After wandering a bit, Mike and I made our way back to the hotel. We still had not eaten, and wouldn’t you know it: the hotel restaurant was closed for a private event. We ended up eating at the hotel bar. The food was fine, but this was our first experience with European waiters. They are the complete opposite of American waiters, in that you have to flag them down if you want anything - refills, to order, to get the check, etc. It took us about an hour and a half to simply eat dinner, but we finally caught on. We paid the bill, and went upstairs to sleep for about 12 hours straight.

On Sunday, our driver picked us up promptly at 10:00am. We hopped in the car and settled in for the long drive to Dobrich. Little did we know that the ride was about to get longer…at our first stop, the car broke down! Luck was on our side, however, because we broke down literally across the street from a service station. They pushed the car over and 1 hour and 1 new fuel pump later, we were back on our way.

We arrived in Dobrich Sunday evening, and checked in to our hotel here. Our translator beat us here, and was already checked in to the room next to ours. We wandered over to the restaurant for dinner, met our translator, and then settled in for a nice sleep before the big day on Monday….

April 3rd, 2011

I can only think of one way to describe Charles De Gaulle airport, but common decency prevents me from stating it here. If you have a choice in the matter, please do not visit this airport for any reason. First we touch down and make it to our gate. We get off the airplane and into a hallway that looks like it is under construction. It is clear that this gate is just for getting off the airplane, there are no provisions (ticket counter, etc) to get back on. We travel down a dark hallway for quite some time and eventually end up in another hallway. This continues on for a while and eventually dead ends into a tram stop. There is a color coded chart on the wall, red, blue, green tram. We figure out our destination and that eventually all of the trams go to the same places. So why the different colors? Why does France have to make everything so hard? A security guard checks our passports and tickets to let us onto the tram. We get on and the tram takes off on some kind of crazy route, under the airport, around the airport, through construction, around buildings, so many twists and turns that I have no idea where we are...are we still at the airport? We get off at the correct stop, and into another hallway. Have I mentioned that everything is bland and made of concrete? Cause it is. We go down this hallway and hit security. It's very fast and we get eye rolls when we don't speak French, but we make it through. I get flagged to the side, and they want to hand check my backpack...I left a bottle of water in there. They mutter something rude I am sure under their breath and throw it away. Cleared security. We then take another hallway and it comes up into the area underneath all of the gates. There is a little cafe, some very expensive shops (Rolex, the Monte Blanc pen store, that type of stuff) and that is it. Nowhere to really sit down and eat, nowhere to get little souvenirs (the word is even French!), nothing. We grab some stuff at the cafe, pay with a credit card from America with no chip inside (Europe uses chipped cards for all transactions, we use magnetic stripes) so the lady had to dust off an old terminal with a mag stripe reader on it, LOL. Then we made our way up a level to the terminal itself. It was visually stunning, all metal and glass in a sail shape. Awesome! But alas, a large glass enclosed area with the sun shining down on it is not just neat to look at it, it also doubles as a greenhouse. As we start to melt, we sit down to wait a couple of hours for our flight.

It gets better. So we start to board our flight. Just like normal. Except when we walk though the gate and into the corridor, the corridor has no plane...just some stairs down...and outside. We and the other passengers then walk down a flight of stairs and down to the tarmac. There we find two airport buses. Each bus actually has our Air France flight number on it. I am now worried that the plane doesn't exist and that they are going to bus us to Bulgaria. Eventually all the passengers get on the buses and away we go. Another labyrinthine trip though the bowels of Charles De Gaulle airport. Eventually we make it to another stairwell leading up, they exact same thing we just came down. We all go up, and finally, a plane!

Why they operate this way at CDG airport, I will never know...all I can say is that it was an experience!

March 23rd, 2011

One of the great things about working with a good adoption agency is the in country help. They have everything arranged for us. Airport pickup, hotel rooms, cars, drivers, translators, etc. All we needed to do was get to the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia.

Sofia is located in the Western portion of Bulgaria. Bulgaria is about the size of the state of Pennsylvania. Sofia has the same population as Columbus (about 1.2 million people) but only takes up about 1/3 of the space. It is much more compact than Columbus, as most every European city is. Dobrich is located in the Eastern portion of Bulgaria. It has a population of about 100,000 and is located about 6 hours away from Sofia by car.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Sofia,+Bulgaria&aq=0&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.287373,93.076172&vpsrc=6&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Sofia,+Sofiya-grad,+Bulgaria&ll=42.681426,23.509369&spn=0.352837,0.727158&t=h&z=11&iwloc=A&ved=0CBAQpQY&sa=X&ei=rcWITsn3BYbeNYvXvcwF

March 22, 2011

Travel booked! Due to other employee vacations at work for myself and Rani, we couldn't leave as quickly as we wanted to. We would need to get ourselves to the town where she is located, her orphanage is in Dobrich, Bulgaria. It's about a 6 hour drive from the capital Sofia. Here is what Rani had to say about it from our original blog:

After getting the referral, we wanted to travel to Bulgaria that night! But alas, vacations on my team at work would delay our trip. April 1st is the date we will be leaving to travel to Bulgaria. Columbus to Minneapolis to Paris to Sofia on the trip there, and Sofia to Amsterdam to Minneapolis to Columbus on the way back. We are super excited and cannot wait to leave, luckily the days seem to be flying by.