Day 5 - Waiting for Documents

We actually slept late today.  At least that killed a little time this morning. We got our third silent treatment from Milcho. Again it was over the use of the phone.  I can't wait to get home where this will simply not be an option anymore. Another time, they actually got into a spat with each other.  I'm not 100% sure what happened, but it looked like she changed the tv channel he was watching.  He yelled at her; she threw a brush across the room -- hard.   I told her she had 5 minutes to sit with me on the couch. So they each had their moments.  

Deliana took us for a ride on the new subway system.  It was so pretty.  when we came in May, there was a huge construction zone because they were building it. Now, it has been open only about 2 months.  The details (like all the shops that are going to be down there) are not finished yet.  And I just realized I forgot to take any pictures down there. How dumb is that!!!  Grr!  Anyway, the ride only lasted about 3 minutes and was really cool, but it made Vanessa a bit nauseous.  We took the subway to the mall and ate lunch there at KFC. Deliana had left us at the mall, and we did not feel brave enough to take the subway back alone.  We had no way to tell where we were going.  So, we just walked back.  (I figured out on Google maps today that the mall is 1.1 miles from our apartment.  Doesn't seem like it.  City miles really are shorter than country miles.)

More hanging out in the apartment before Deliana came to bring us all of our documents and collect our final payment.   We revisited our pizza place and the ice cream place for supper.

Once home the evening took a rough turn right before bed.  Not so much a problem directly with the kids, just a culmination of issues that will go away just as soon as we get home.  I've generally enjoyed my time in Bulgaria, and it's a beautiful place.  But I feel the need to get the kids back on my turf.  They feel a little to detached from us here because of the language barrier between us and them and the language familiarity between them and everyone else.  They are leaning heavily on all the people who lovingly gave them their phone numbers, and they even keep calling poor Deliana about every little thing.  When we get home, they will be so out of their comfort zone, I believe they will have to learn to depend solely on us.  And that's what they need to do for a while...just like Colton and Eli depended entirely on us when they were infants.  

Then after the kids were asleep and as if I weren't stressed enough, I pulled out our return itineraries to type up a simplified version, and I almost flew into a triple panic.  Tim and I have one itinerary because ours is round-trip.  The kids have a different itinerary because theirs is a one-way trip.  I looked over the printouts several times and saw that while our flight was leaving Sunday morning, theirs was leaving Saturday morning, just a few hours away. (This was discovered about 9 or 10 PM Friday night.)  The only shred of calm I held on to was that the information on each was identical except for the dates.  I checked the airline's app on my phone only to find all of the flight numbers did in fact have identical departure times on Saturday and Sunday.  Yikes!!  I emailed our travel agent to check it out.  We waited a few minutes and finally decided to just take the international roaming charges and at least call him to tell him to check his email ASAP.  

He felt everything was fine, but said he would check it out and email us.  An exceptionally slow few minutes later, we got an email with an updated itinerary. We travel together!  No need to stick the kids on a 19 hour trip through 2 countries and 3 airports alone.  Thank you, Lord!  

A potential warning to future 2-trip adoption travelers:  the second trip may seem twice as long as the first.

Have I mentioned how badly I want to go home?  

Just 2 more sleeps, 2 more breakfasts, 1 lunch, and 1 supper.