Gotcha Day: Zephan

When we left with Ellie, we drove 2 1/2 hours to pick up Zephan.

Andrew is as engaging as ever. This is the first time he and Zephan met, and it was like they had always known each other! Andrew is always amiable in social situations and helps everyone feel comfortable.

This was a delight for Zephan's foster family to see.

This social center was not fun like the one in Ruse. This is in Pleven. We met in this room sometimes during the pick up trip. It was hard to know what to do in there.

We didn't feel the same "magical moment" here, like we did when picking up Ellie. The problem was that Ellie peed in her clothes in the car seat on the way. I was focused on getting her to the toilet and changed. It made the moment all messed up. Zephan came out the door to greet me as I was about into the bathroom. We changed Ellie, then greeted Zephan again, more properly the second time.

We also didn't have a way to play with Zephan. Small room, no toys, and we were rushed.


Zephan's foster family congratulated us with wine and Bulgarian chocolate. This was a thoughtful gift, so sweet of them.

We were given few clothes with Zephan, but his foster family made sure he was dressed dapper in new clothing. And he had a fresh hair cut. They really thought of the details, making our Gotcha Day special.

This is Zephan's lovely foster family.
Zephan's foster Baba (grandmother) is to my right.
Zephan's foster Dyado (grandfather) is to John's left.
They are his foster parents.
To the Dyado's left is his daughter. She is also a foster mother to a baby.
To the Baba's right is her grandson, the son of their daughter in the photo.

They all, with great emotion, told Zephan bye. They hugged me. I hugged them each again....the emotions were unbearable as they cried. We felt too rushed, but off we went with our son.

 We stopped for a quick lunch just blocks away from the social center. We bought Bulgarian pizza.
For the record, Andrew is holding John's pizza on his lap :)
The pizza there is not like it is in America. It has no sauce and has strange toppings. These pizzas have ham and pickles.

When our facilitator went to bring her car around, she bumped into another vehicle. It's the first time she was ever in any sort of accident and it happened to be while we were in a hurry to get to the capital city of Sofia. We had to get there before they closed to get the children's visas underway.

We had to wait.
and wait.
and wait
for the police to arrive and fill out a report.

 Still waiting.Nothing to do. We waited for a long time.

When we finally left Pleven, we were in a great rush to get to Sofia. Our facilitator was driving quickly the whole way. We arrived at the police station just as they were closing and yes! they did still allow us to get the visas underway. This is huge, because if we didn't get things going that day, everything else scheduled would have become backed up, delaying us from leaving the country.