Tuesday. Ate breakfast in the cafe in the building. Drank lots of Coke. It was my beverage salvation in Ekat, as even the water smelled funny and there was no way I was going to drink it. It was hard to take a shower with stinky water, too.

Anyway, we went to the Ministry of Education first. We were brought into the building and told to hang our coats on specific hooks; Alex got yelled at for putting his on a different one. Doug and I exchanged a look that seemed to agree - "we will do exactly as she tells us, always." We went up to the second floor and stood outside a door. One by one, we were ushered in quickly.

When we went in, we were asked to sit down. A blonde woman greeted us in Russian and then began talking rapidly. Helen translated for us:
"you are here because you are interested in adopting a child."
"Yes." ("Da.")
"We have found you a child. blah blah blah..."
She was talking so fast, I didn't even catch Roman's full name. I think his full name is Romanovich. Chekhomov is his mother's last name. Didn't catch his dad's last name. It was read off in this order - dad's surname, first name, mother's surname. As far as we can tell. We did recognize birth date and city, so we figured it was the same child. We just kept nodding and saying thank you (Spasiba - "spuh-SEE-buh").

We were then asked to sign a ledger, both of us. The blonde woman wished us luck and we were hustled out of there as fast as we were hustled in.

When everyone was done, we piled into the car with Helen and our driver, Andrei, and whisked off for the 40 min. drive west to Pervouralsk. All the other couples were going to orphanage #2 in Ekat. On the drive, Helen received a call - Roman had been admitted to the hospital that morning for obstructive bronchitis and a fever (101). I was a little worried, but Helen said we could go to the orphanage first, then to the hospital.

Pervouralsk is a dirty town, lots of manufacturing. The first factory we came to makes pipes - and they snake all around. A few back roads, past apartment buildings - almost hidden, it seemed - was the orphanage. A 2 story building, play areas in the front. We were escorted into a playroom that was empty. We sat down with the orphanage lawyer, who is the one that files our papers on that end, to get the social history (family background). Perv. is a small town and therefore we got a lot of history that we normally couldn't - because the lawyer had tracked mom down herself after Roman was born to sign the Letter of Abandonment.

Halfway through, the lawyer was summoned - and came rushing in to say we had to go to the hospital IMMEDIATELY to see Roman. This is when I panicked - I thought there was something horribly wrong. We piled into the car and zoomed over to the orphanage.