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!

Why the waiting is so hard

I don't talk about my grief on this blog. Most of this blog has been very focused on our adoption and it probably will continue to be that way. My grief has become such a part of me that I don't feel it's something separate from any other part of my life. It's hard to explain but basically I'm always grieving for my daughter. It's something I've been doing for over a year now and will continue to do as long as I live. But, I think the grief does make the waiting in this adoption process a lot harder. Justin and I have talked about this at great length and we both feel this way.

It's so hard to be so far away from your children. We have one child in Heaven and one child who living halfway around the world. It's heart wrenching at times. Today is one of those days. The weather is changing here in CA. It's our first real rainy day of the season. I don't mind the rain but it's funny how the weather can affect your mood so much. It's easier for me to happy on sunny days and harder to feel like everything is okay when it's dark and gray.

I've never really doubted our decision to go forward with this adoption process. Both Justin and I feel very convicted that this is what we are meant to do. But, it doesn't make the waiting any easier. The adoption process requires a large amount of faith that everything will turn out the way it's meant to be. Much like the grieving process. You must have faith that will you will survive it all.

I'd like to end this post with picture of my precious Abby. She sure did love her baths! It's one of my absolute favorite pictures of her because she just radiates joy. I wish I could include a picture of my other sweet girl. It will happen, someday soon.

Our paperwork has arrived

Our paperwork arrived in Eastern Europe on Monday! It was actually a day early and arrived with another adoptive family's paperwork that was a few days late. I was shocked that it arrived early since that never seems to happen in this process! It is currently being translated which we were told would take about a week. Then our facilitator in the country will make an appointment to submit it to the Ministry of Education. We are predicting that the earliest that it will be submitted will be sometime next week. We are hoping to travel for our 1st trip sometime in November. A lot of that will depend on the schedule of our facilitator. She has quite a few other families that she is working with and she can't be in two places at once!

So we're waiting, again. But, we are keeping busy with working on the additional education that is now required. The requirement went from 10 hours to 80 hours. Yes, that is a crazy jump! Once our adoption is over I will give you my true opinion about all this but for now I will do what I'm told. We're taking an online course that is based on an international adoption book and it's actually very interesting and helpful. It's much better than the online classes we took for our home study requirements. Part of the new education requirements is that 30 hours have to be "face-to-face". Nobody is quite sure yet what that means but that will probably be the most expensive and difficult part for us to complete. It might cost us around $2,000, yikes! And another expensive requirement that we did not originally plan for is that we have to get medical exams during our court trip. This exam will be in the capital city and probably cost a total of $2,000 for both of us. The Region we are adopting from did not require this exam until recently. Possibly $4,000 added on to our costs!

We are also planning for our travel. I've started reading a guidebook about the country we are going to be traveling to. Something I would do before I traveled anywhere. The strange part is that we are traveling to this country but we don't really get to decide where we're going to go. It's like traveling for business. You are going to a particular place and so you figure you might get a do a little sightseeing while you are there. The guidebook is making me wish we were going to get to see a lot more of the country. Though I think I would choose a different time of year to visit than the middle of winter! But, it's giving me an appreciation for our little girl's country and cultural heritage which I feel is really important. By adopting a child from another country in a lot of ways her heritage becomes a part of ours.

I changed out our giveaway page to a timeline page. It was one of the features I really liked about adoption blogs when I was reading quite a few before we started this process. I feel like we've been at this process for a long time, but it's only been 3 months!

Our paperwork is on it's way

The big adoption news is that our paperwork is on it's way to Eastern Europe! I've been stressing and pushing and bugging people for the last few weeks so we could get all this paperwork done and out of our hands. I think that is the key if you are adopting. You have to be assertive about getting people to do their parts, and do it quickly. They will never understand your urgency. This child is your child that is just waiting in an orphanage and though others might care, they will not care like you do!

I was extremely frustrated on Friday when after driving 40 minutes each way to have 30 papers notarized, I discovered that they were all done incorrectly. Technically, the notary should have known this, but most notaries never notarize documents that need to be apostilled by the Secretary of State. The SOS will only accept documents that are notarized in one of two ways and the wording has to be exact. I realized that I could have saved us this frustration if I had taken the time to research this more thoroughly myself, but in the end it didn't delay our progress at all, so it wasn't a big deal. The notary had offered her services for free so we didn't have her redo them. I changed all the documents and we found another notary who also notarized all of them for free. Let me just say I am an expert at notary stuff now. Never thought I would say that! And I'm very thankful that my Dad is a real estate broker and knows all the notaries at the title companies!

So, on Monday morning we drove 40 minutes each way again to have our papers notarized. Then I came home to wait for a FedEx package from our home study agency and then drove 20 minutes to downtown Sacramento to have it all apostilled. Registration dossier=15 documents=$312. Other states don't charge as much for apostilling, but everything is more expensive in CA! We're also very lucky that we live so close to the SOS office. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to do this so quickly. The end result was a package sent priority overnight to our child placing agency. She received at 9:48 on Tuesday morning and told me that she would send it overseas later that day! This paperwork sets everything in motion for us in our little girl's country. The paperwork will be translated and then submitted to the Ministry of Education in her Region. Once they register us, we should receive an invitation to travel to meet her! Sometimes I would ask myself, "why am I stressing so much about a bunch of papers?" Well, that's why! These papers are directly leading us to our daughter.

Giveaway Winner!

I was going to post this last night but it got very late, so I'm posting it now. We have a winner for our Amazon Gift Card!

The winner is Jake S.!

We had 1133 entries and the winning entry was 112. Here is the picture of the computer screen and the Random.org random number generator.

Thanks to everyone who donated money to our FSP! We truly appreciate all your support!

This will probably be a 2 blog post day as we have other adoption news but I would like to put it in a separate post.

Impatient

I usually consider myself a very patient person. I don't think I could work as a nurse without an above average level of patience. I also consider myself pretty good with kids who test your patience like nothing else! But, during this adoption process I have become very impatient! My impatience seems to grow over time. We are soooo close to getting our finalized home study and our paperwork ready to submit overseas. But, it feels like this past week has just dragged on. Why is this taking so long? So, that's where we are. Just waiting for other people to do what they need to do. The amusing part is after we get our paperwork submitted, we will be waiting again. For our referral and travel date. The hardest part about waiting is that we know that this child is getting older by the day. Each week that goes by is another week that she is living without a family. This is why the waiting is so hard. I've already backtracked in my mind how we could have sped up this process to where we are now. It's almost been 3 months since we started, but looking back I think, well if we did this again how can we make this move along faster? But, we didn't know at the time. I tend to optimistically estimate everything anyway. I think I assume everyone is on my time schedule. Well, don't we all? It's time to send some emails and make some phone calls.