The Interview

May 23, 2008

On Friday after our coordinator coached us with a few questions, we headed to the Department of Education. Our meeting was to take place at 4:00. We parked the car and it felt like it was 100 degrees outside! Scott had on a suit and I wore a black dress both of which were VERY hot. Valentina ran in and found out that our meeting was being held up and we wouldn't meet with the Minister of Education until 5:00. We all stood in a parking lot and talked because running the air conditioning in the car wasn't possible.
We ended up waiting until 6:00 for the appointment and we were both nervous and at this point, very sweaty.

When we walked into the building, we were told to wait again because the top floor wasn't air conditioned and we would need to wait a while longer before they were ready for us.

Our first impression of the Minister of Eduction was that she looked very unhappy and serious. Besides having our coordinator with us, we also had an interpreter that provided simultaneous translation. It was confusing at first to understand which person to look at because so much was going on. The minister asked each of us specific questions about why we were adopting. I felt as if she grilled me a little bit more because she kept asking why I needed to work. She even came back to the question after asking several other questions and I wasn't really sure if I was answering it "correctly" for her. All in all, the interview lasted about 40 minutes. It was more detailed than I had imagined it would be. I just know that we both felt relieved when it was over.

When we finished with the questions, she went on to show us the first photo of Our Little Girl. It was a black and white picture and she looked very sad. They told us some information about her life and how she came to live in the orphanage. We told them that we would like to see her and a meeting was set for Monday. We had the entire weekend to wait and we were both ready for a BIG nap. Exhaustion had set in by now and we were over our first big hurdle.