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Within one week we went to court. The judge and her secretary were very nice, and the judge was very understanding because she had just recently adopted a child herself. During court she asked me a bunch of questions, and I answered them honestly and quickly. The court session only last about 30 minutes, and then we asked for the ten days to be waived. She said that she was just filling in for the "regular" judge that was on vacation, she could not waive this ten days. She did not know enough about the adoption laws to make a decision on that. So we would have to wait the ten days.

At this point I was already missing the four kids that were back in America, but I was not that upset because I knew that spending time with Julia and her family would be nice.

Right after court we went back to the orphanage and got Zoya. Even though I was not yet "legally" Zoya's mother, Ekaterina let us take her.

We said our goodbyes to some people and told everyone that we would come back before we left.

During that ten days, we went all over Ukraine. Julia's family insisted that we see Yalta , Svestopol, and the city were Zoya was born. We also went for picnics in the mountains, and to several nice resturants with Julia's family. We even went out one evening for ice cream and to shoot pool.

This trip to Ukraine was more like a vacation, rather than a adoption. Everything could not have been better. We were really enjoying ourselves.

On the tenth day after court, we returned to the court house to pick up the final court degree naming me as the mother of Zoya Ekaterina.

The judge apologized and told me that I would have to come back the following day to pick up the court degree, because it was only the TENTH day, and I had to wait until the ELEVENTH day to get the necessary documents.. So we returned the following day.

We then left for the region that Zoya was born, to get the new birth certificate naming myself as her mother. It was a long drive through the country, across mountains.. We passed a lot of farm land with big beautiful gardens, and a bunch of goats, sheep, chickens, and cows walking around without any sort of fencing. There was cows on the sides of the roads, and also some in the middle of the road that we had to go around. Having cows myself, I found this amusing to see how the cows just wander around.