So here's the short of it, 
Today - 17 years ago.

 And here's the long.

Alan and I adopted Liga and Valdis in the early days of international adoptions in Latvia. Our local agency began the process as soon as the country opened to international adoption - they went in November of 1993 to identify available children. We were the second family from that agency to complete an adoption. In those days, the adoption actually happened before the family arrived in country. The facilitator had our power of attorney and completed the process.  That has changed significantly now. Families are now required to spend 6 weeks with their matched children before the courts will even consider adoption.

Hotel Riga 

We got the kids on Monday, May 31st. It was Memorial Day. Our facilitator planned for us to go from the orphanage directly to the Embassy to process the kids and be ready for our trip to Warsaw where we would get the appropriate entry papers to bring the children into the United States.  We arrived at the Lativan Embassy and it was closed for Memorial Day! Even though our facilitator didn't know about Memorial Day, we felt pretty silly for not thinking about it.  We returned to the hotel and spent the evening there. The kids loved the  wide hallways, the steps, and of course the restaurant. There was a buffet that evening.  Valdis just kept on eating. Alan and I had a conversation about whether or not we should stop him because we were afraid he would make himself sick.  We decided that we would just let him eat.  He did NOT get sick! On the other hand, Liga was still recovering from a pretty serious illness, and didn't have much of an appetite at all. Our pediatrician had given us an antibiotic to start her on the day we got her, but would be some time before her appetite picked up.

This is a picture of the entryway at Hotel Riga.  This is a very new remodeling effort and when we were there it was not nearly this elegant. But oh it was so much fun. The kids loved going up and down the steps - and the entrance was an automatic sliding glass door. That was another activity that was great fun - running up to make the door slide open. It was obvious that the employees of the hotel thought we should be keeping the kids under much better control.  Occasionally one of them would speak sternly to the children. They would immediately become very sedate until they got around the corner or the employee got out of sight. Of course neither Alan nor I had any idea what they were telling the children.  My fifty memorized words did not include scolding!

We didn't have hot water at the Hotel Riga - when we checked in on Sunday, they told us that there would be no hot water until Wednesday! So tub baths would have to wait. The kids were in twin beds - Alan and I were sharing a pull out sofa. None of us were really able to settle down very easily, but we didn't have the day of leisure we were expecting. We had to get to the Embassy and get the kids paperwork approved so that we could leave on Wednesday.

On June 1st, we headed over to the Latvian Embassy - there was something wrong with the paper work and we had to go back to court!

We loaded back into the car and drove to the courts location. Victor looked at me with the children in the back seat and said "you stay".  He and Alan disappeared into the building while I waited with two children that didn't speak any English!  They jabbered with one another and once in awhile looked at me and said something that sounded like "corjannie". Within an hour, Alan was back at the car telling me to get the children and come into the court. The judge had told them that she was leaving on vacation, and that this was a very complicated problem. She would be back in two weeks, and she would be able to take care of it then.  That's when Alan came to the car and brought the children in and had me hold one of them and he lifted up the other so that she could see them over the high bar that separated us from her. She looked at them, and she and Victor spoke in Latvian for a bit. She told us to come back in two hours and she would have our necessary paperwork ready.

We spent two hours in a park in the center of the city wiling away the time. A fellow was playing music and the kids danced; we found some art displays; and a young man told us that "corjannie" meant chewing gum! When we returned, our paperwork had been changed and we were set to get cleared at the embassy.  On our return to the embassy, the clerk said that there were still some inconsistencies, but she thought that it would pass.  So she gave us our packets and sent us on our way.

We had an afternoon shopping for some memorabilia and then had another great dinner at the hotel letting Valdis eat as much as he wanted and encouraging Liga to get some protein.

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