Shapgat bound..

I received an interesting, and slightly alarming (more on that in a minute) email today from other parent who adopted from Karaganda using the same agency I am.

The interesting news: the baby house where I will be going is no longer named Mylutka. Kazakhstan has a strategy in place, a plan to aid in the development of the newly independent country. Loosely, it is called the "2030 Strategy" ('cause I guess they want to accomplish all goals by 2030) and part of it includes changing the Russian names of all government run entities to Kazakh names. So the baby house I am going to is now named "Shapgat"-- and no, I have no idea how to pronounce it (or even if that is the correct spelling!) So from here on out, I am headed to Shapgat..

The alarming part of the email was that the parent confirmed some rumors that had been floating around the internet for about a month-- that the region of Karaganda is closed to Americans adopting for a while. The reason is that some parents/agencies do not live up to their obligations to do post-placement reporting on the children to the Kaz government. Every adoptive parent is required to keep the Kaz government posted on their child until that child turns 18 years of age. Up until now, I have been told that adoptions had still been moving forward so I was trying not to worry about it before I had to-- but the parent's source for this information is pretty reliable. At a minimum, the region closing to adoption means a travel date later in the year-- and I was really getting excited about the prospect of not traveling to Kaz in the dead of winter! So the process may be getting longer.. You just have to stick with me..