Ready, set, ship!

I had intended to post in the past couple of days, as we have shipped our dossier to Ukraine! We sent our documents FedEx to Gorlovka, Ukraine, where our facilitator is located. He will translate the documents and be responsible for getting them to the NAC.

It's a bit expensive to ship documents overseas! We've never sent anything overseas (sorry, Lee, Ryan, and Kyle!) so we weren't familiar with the process, but the FedEx guy we worked with was wonderful. He explained everything in detail and told us exactly what to put on the forms. There are people who have had their documents held up in customs in Ukraine, because they listed the value of the package as $100 or more, thinking that that is somewhat close to what it would cost to replace the documents (in reality, it would probably be more!). However, when the documents get to customs, the customs agents have a hard time believing that paper only is worth $100, and are very suspicious of what's in the package. Our FedEx guy said to write "adoption/legal documents" for the items contained and to list the value as "NCV"--no commercial value.

I can now state that I have been following our package online using our tracking number. It went to Paris, France, and is now in Kiev, Ukraine, and appears to have passed customs! Gorlovka is outside of the normal delivery area for FedEx in Ukraine so it cost us over $100 to ship there. Please pray that all of our documents will be sufficient and that we won't have to ship anything else! :)

If you would like to see some of the places we have talked about and will visit, here is a nice map of Ukraine. Gorlovka is in the Donets'k region on the southwestern side of Ukraine--it is written on the map as Horlivka.