Yesterday I went over to my new friend N's house. She is my "international conversation partner" through the university and she is Russian . We have a good time together - I find her interesting and she gets to practice her English in a way that she doesn't get to do when she's at work. She has children, too, which gives us something in common.

For the first time we talked about her views of Russian adoption. Of course we've spoken of Little J's adoption before. It was the reason I requested a Russian conversation partner. She is very pro-adoption and she feels that the children in the orphanages are much better off with Americans (or with other foreigners) than if they stayed in the orphanages. She confirmed that most Russians don't think adoption is a good thing to do, and she also said that IF people in Russia want to adopt then typically they'd do it privately, especially if they have money. Children in the orphanages are not the first ones they'd think of adopting.

What was most interesting about our conversation was that the part of adoption from Russia that was disturbing to her was the amount of money we have to pay to adopt. She said she doubted that even the fees we pay as "country fees" actually went to the government - by that she meant the people (as opposed to govt. officials). She said that is the way things work in Russia. If you know who to pay then things go quickly. If you don't pay - not so quickly.

I know the money we paid for our adoption went to attorneys, social workers, rent for the nice offices our agency has in Raleigh as well as the offices they have in D.C. and Moscow. We also had a facilitator and a translator and a driver to pay. Those things cost money. But we also had a very speedy adoption - from time of referral to the time we brought Little J home was about 6 weeks - and that included waiting 3 weeks to travel the first time. That's fast. Who did we pay for fast? We didn't knowingly grease anyone's palms, but we certainly gave a big chunk of cash to our facilitator. And if we did grease palms, was that unethical? If that's the way things work in Russia would we have gained anything by not doing that?