Oath of Citizenship

When Alex stepped foot on US soil at Hartsfield Jackson Airport on Saturday, March 5, 2011 she automatically became a US citizen.  Pretty cool, huh?

However...because Alex was older that 14 when she entered the country the United States Customs and Immigration Service would not issue her a Certificate of Citizenship until she took the oath of citizenship.  Today was the day that Alex was assigned to recite her oath, along with 109 other people from a total of 45 countries.  It was definitely a long process, but pretty cool to be able to witness it.  Alex was not the only child there who had been adopted.  For these kids it was pretty much just a formality.  They were already citizens, but had no paperwork to prove it.  For the rest of the people in that room it must have been an amazing day.  Becoming a US citizen is a long and difficult process.  The people who worked so long and hard to obtain citizenship have my utmost respect.

There was one young man there, however, who apparently didn't get the memo that this was a pretty big deal.  I don't know how old he was or what his circumstances were, but he blew it big time.  He was seated in the ceremony room waiting to have his paperwork processed before the group recited the oath.  He had a baseball cap on.  One of the agents approached him and told him he needed to remove the cap.  He nodded as though he understood but made no effort to comply.  A second agent came over and repeated the request that he remove his cap.  Again, he nodded but did not comply.  At this point I thought he surely must not understand what they are asking him to do.  The second agent reported the situation to the lead agent who approached the young man and asked him to stand up so he could speak with him.  The young man stood and listened as the lead agent explained that the cap needed to be removed out of respect.  He was very calm and tried very hard to reason with this young man asking him if he understood what he needed to do.  The young man said he understood but wasn't going to remove the cap.  The agent told him he had no choice but to escort him from the building.  This person was an hour away from receiving his Certificate of Citizenship and he absolutely threw his chance away.  Over a cap.  What was he thinking?  People literally die trying to get into this country to have a better life and he had the opportunity in his hands and he acted like it was nothing.  All I can do is shake my head.

On a happier note, today should have been Alex' last day of school but she missed it due to the oath ceremony.  So yesterday was her last day of 8th grade.  I now have a rising Freshman!  And a rising 4th grader and a rising 2nd grader.  We are so excited for summer vacation to begin!  I hope I am able to hold on to this enthusiasm for the next nine weeks!

Going from Olga to Alex

I was recently reminded that I never told the story about Alex' name change on this blog.  (Thanks, Marcie!)  Some people know just because I have told them the story in person, but I thought I would share it here as well.

As you all know, before she was "Alex", she was "Olga".  Technically it is pronounced with a softer "hy" rather than a hard "g", but she didn't like it when we tried to say her name the way "they" said it in Ukraine.  (Clear as mud?)  So, Olga with a hard "g" it was.  A few weeks before she arrived for Christmas hosting I started thinking about names and whether she would want to keep Olga, change the spelling to Olya or Olha so it would be closer to the correct pronunciation or change it all together for a more "American" name.  I tried thinking of different names that suited her and the one that I always came back to was Alexandria...Alex for short.

After Alex arrived and got settled in we spoke to her about our plans to adopt her and told her we had an appointment in her country in January to start the process.  Normally we would not have spoken to her about that, but as we had our travel dates in hand we made the decision to tell her.  A few days after talking to her about that I brought up the subject of her name and asked if she would like to keep it or change it.  She quickly said she wanted to keep it.  She didn't even want to change the spelling so that people would pronounce it "more" correctly.  Of course that was fine by us and I never mentioned the name that I thought suited her.

Several days later as she was walking by the TV she heard someone say the name "Alex" on the show my two younger kids were watching.  She kept walking and got to the top of the stairs when she stopped and called down, "Mom, I like the name Alex".  I am fairly certain I flew up the stairs and told her I loved the name Alexandria for her using Alex as her nickname.  She got a little smile on her face and I told her to just think about it.  She came back downstairs about five minutes later and asked what the full name would be, and I told her.  Then she double checked that we would call her Alex for short.  I told her she could still keep Olga as her middle name and always go back to that if she didn't end up liking the name Alex after all.  And of course I told her that if she changed her mind anytime between then and when we had to fill out the paperwork requesting the name change to Alexandria Olga, that was okay, too.  She never changed her mind.

And so that is how Olga became Alex.

Alex the Warrior

We started our day *very* early this morning.  We woke up just before 4:00 so that we could hit the road by 4:30 for our 2.5 hour drive to a crazy fun obstacle course race called Warrior Dash  We were in the first wave at 8:00.  It was pretty chilly up there in the North Georgia Mountains!    Some of the obstacles included: walk/swim through a muddy lake, tire course (think football training), junkyard crawl, hurling ourselves over 4' walls and then under barbed wire X5, rope climb up a 20' vertical wall (that was a little scary...no safety net!), Cargo net climb, trail run through the mountains, army crawl through a blacked out crawl space, more trail running, horizontal cargo net crawl, sliding down a steep embankment on our tushies, mud crawl under barbed wire, another turn in the water but this time hurling ourselves over rolling logs and last but not least, jumping over logs set on fire not once, but twice (the jumping part twice, not setting the logs on fire twice!).  Did I mention that they watered the mountain trails down so we were running/slipping/falling in pure mud?  I know my list is out of order and I think I even left one or two obstacles out.  It was a *B*L*A*S*T*!  Alex wanted to do it again.  :)

On the shuttle bus from parking to the race course.

Five of us started, four of us finished.  :(  One of our
Warriors twisted his ankle on the very first part
of the run.

You can't really tell how much mud Alex
is wearing here.

She got a little scraped up on the
slide down into the mud pit.

Finished!  Notice we are in front of the first aid tent.

First School Dance in America

All dolled up and ready to go.

Results after an hour with the curling iron.

She was concentrating on not getting her freshly polished
 nails on her  dress and wasn't really wanting to smile for the photo

Look!  A dress that is a decent length!

Parlez-vous français?

Alex got to select the classes that she would like to take next year as a rising Freshman.  Apparently she feels being able to speak four languages isn't quite enough and signed up to take French.  I have no idea if they will actually let her take it or not as she will be in ESOL as well.  I am pretty sure she is exempt from the foreign language requirement, but she really wants to take French.  Crazy kid.  :)

Let's Dance!

The Fabulous Miss A had been going back and forth regarding the upcoming 8th grade dance and if she wanted to attend or not.  I mentioned dress shopping to her last night and suddenly she landed squarely on the side of wanting to go.  Funny how that happened.  :)  We power shopped our tailbones off and came home with a dress, shoes, necklace and earrings.  She still needed a shrug as the dress is strapless and I believe, per school dress code, that is not allowed.  I found a perfect little shrug this afternoon with a little help from my mom for $16.  When I got to the register it was on sale for $6!  I love little surprises like that!  Anyway, she looks adorable in her dress and I was thrilled with the length of it.  It hits slightly above her knees as opposed to slightly below her rear end like all the other dresses she tried on.  Yeesh!  And I didn't even have to push her toward that dress...it was her favorite.  Her shoes have a tiny little heel on them and she, ummm...needs a little practice walking in them.  I told her not to worry about it.  I assume that she will most likely wear them into the dance then promptly kick them off like most of the other girls will probably do and dance the night away barefoot.

The dance is a week from tomorrow.  I hope it lives up to whatever her expectations of it might be.

Routine

I know that it has been a while since I posted.  It is mostly because we have settled into a routine and there isn't really anything new to report.  :)  Alex is bringing home more and more homework which to me says her teachers are beginning to expect a little more from her.  She has a huge project for reading class that is due at the end of the month.  She has to read a book and then re-write it into an illustrated children's novel.  I can't remember how many pages the children's book is supposed to be. The book she chose is not exactly suitable for children, and she doesn't understand most of the 11 out of 278 pages she's read, so this should be interesting.  I am going to buy the book on my Kindle so I can read along with her.

Only a few more weeks of school left.  She has a dance next week at school, but she keeps waffling back and forth on whether she wants to go or not.  She does still get "homesick" for her friends back in Ukraine and I think because of that she is having some difficulty making new friends here.  Hopefully when she begins her Freshman year in the fall she will start to develop friendships here and realize it doesn't mean completely letting go of her friends in Ukraine.

On a completely unrelated note, I am sad to report that my six year old busted the Easter Bunny.  Apparently the Easter Bunny accidentally left a partially filled bag of jelly beans on my dresser and my little girl found them.  She was very quick to put two and two together.  She was actually delighted to know the truth because she realized that it was us giving her all of her wonderful Easter goodies.  Oddly enough, the Tooth Fairy nor Santa came up in the conversation.  I guess I'll tackle the subjects when they come up.