Visas and USCIS approval

I just read my last post and it sounds like I promised more interesting posts but never delivered. Well, this one might not be super interesting either!

In the past 2 weeks we are still making slow progress. We are truly now at a point of waiting because it was finally confirmed by our agency that we will not be traveling until mid-January at the earliest. We are now hoping that they will be able to give us our exact dates of travel before the end of the year, but we will have to wait on that because we found out that the Ministry of Education is on vacation. Yes, a 3 week vacation. Only a few weeks before they will then have a 2 week vacation. Now we don't know, but the MOE could consist of just 1 person. And in this country, if the person who does a particular job is on vacation or out on sick leave, well nobody else does their job. Everything just stops. Yes, very different than the good ole USA where the idea of the country shutting down for even a week for a vacation would bring shock and horror to everyone.

But, anyway we think that is really why we're not traveling. We were told something about quotas and what not but I'm starting to think otherwise. It doesn't really matter, the end result is the same. I'm trying to keep some perspective about this whole situation. Even with delays here and there, this adoption from start to finish will likely take no longer than 12 months. That's really not that long. We have dear friends adopting from a particular Asian country and they've been waiting for over 4 years now. They finally have a referral for a child, but they're now waiting to pick up their son, and they've been waiting for that since May.

Being the independent person and traveler than I am, I starting looking into getting our visas for our eventual travel to Eastern Europe. Recently the US and this country signed an agreement (they've been doing a lot of that lately) to make it easier for Americans to visit their country. It was like a gesture of good will or something. Well, I suppose it's easier once you get the visa, but getting the visa isn't much easier. With the new agreement, Americans are now allowed to get a 3 year tourist visa. These will be the one's we are going to attempt to get. It will save us a good amount of money if we have to make 3 trips and it will probably still save us money and hassle if we only have to make 2. Though we could make the trip to the consulate in S.F. ourselves, we're going to pay a little extra to have a visa company do it for us. We would have to make at least 2 trips to the consulate and you can only go at certain times and well I don't want to deal with all that. I was thinking of posting a picture of a visa from that country to make this post more interesting, but then I realized that I would be revealing the country, so no picture!

And we finally finished our online education. I'm actually really glad we had to take it. I feel much better prepared for the potential challenges of parenting an adopted child. There truly are differences that need to be taken into consideration that are different than parenting a biological child. I might write a post about that and include the link to a great book I read on the topic. We are now taking some free foster parenting classes through a local community college. Hopefully, we can use these hours for our required 30 hours of face-to-face training. These classes are making me think that if we choose to adopt again, it will likely be through our foster care system. You just never know where life will take you, and what will lead you there!

And one last thing, we have USCIS approval! So, we are approved to bring an orphan into the US. When we got the notice from USCIS, I realized that my middle name was spelled wrong. It sort of took some of the excitement away because I knew that it needed to be fixed. But, I sent an email to them, and they replied on a Saturday to tell me they would fix it. I was very impressed with the USCIS's prompt service!

Making sloooow progress

I had been waiting to update the blog hoping for some exciting news like our paperwork has been registered and we should be getting a travel date soon. Well, our paperwork is registered! We think... Our agency didn't really tell us that we're registered but they did tell us that our facilitator was going to talk to the Ministry of Education about when we could travel! Yes, we were very excited and yes that should mean we are registered! Of course this process is more of a roller coaster than one of those smooth, boring, and predictable rides. After we were all excited and stuff and we found out we might not be traveling until next year!! Okay, I know next year is only 8 weeks away, but it sounds like a very long wait. Really we could be traveling at any time. So, it could be in a few weeks (doubtful) or it could be 8 weeks from now or even longer. The country we are adopting from celebrates their Christmas holidays in January. So, we know we won't be traveling the first week or two of January. So, now we're hoping for a second half of January travel date.

I will admit that I was originally very upset that we were going to have to wait. I think I had it in my mind that December would be latest that we travel, so the news was just so surprising. I'm now more at a point of acceptance. This will give us more time to plan, read about our little girl's country, and try to learn a little of the language! We're also planning on trying to get all of our court documents finished so we can take them over with us on our 1st trip. This will hopefully help us get a court date more quickly, which might make up some for our delay in traveling on our 1st trip.

In other adoption news, we had our USCIS fingerprints done on Thursday at 8:00 a.m. It went smoothly and if anyone is counting, that was our 3rd time being fingerprinted for this adoption (and not our last!). Once USCIS approves our application, we will have official approval to bring our little girl to the U.S. on an Orphan Visa. I was going to take a picture of the outside of the office to put on the blog, but let me tell you that this was the most boring government office ever! It was in an office park and all the building said was "Application Support Center" in the most boring government letters you can imagine. I guess it's good that our tax dollars aren't going to any frills, like a fancy sign.

We are also still plugging away at the required 80 hours of education. Overall, I think I've learned a lot from it, but I'm almost at the point of being "over it". I apologize that this post is basically a to-do list that we have completed! I have some ideas for more interesting posts, so I hope to become inspired enough to write them!

And thanks to everyone who is following along!