Friday, January 12, 2007

Slogging Away

It's been a week of ups and downs. Our home study social worker was out sick for the entire week, which has put us more than a week behind in our schedule. I talked to her today, though, and she's been to the doctor, so I hope for her sake that she starts feeling better soon. She sounded really sick, poor girl. We're rescheduled for appointment #2 next Wednesday.

On the paperwork front, we've started receiving some documents back, like our birth certificates and marriage license. Last night we had our fingerprints taken at the local police station -- one set for an IL State Police check and one set for an FBI check. We'll have to have more done for USCIS -- we're waiting for them to let us know where to go to have them done. Our references started receiving their instruction letters. Tomorrow John and I will have our medical exams (again, two sets of forms: one for the HS and one for the placement agency).

Last night I was going through a binder full of recipes we've collected over the years and I found a recipe for Pho -- a very popular Vietnamese noodle soup. We had picked it up at Global Festival, a yearly event at MSU that celebrates cultures from all over the world and works to foster international understanding. One of our favorite parts of Global Fest was that people would make dishes from their native lands and serve them in the cafeteria. Yum! And they always set out the recipes. We'll have to make it soon.

I'm getting a grasp on the whole paperwork process, and I don't feel quite so muddled anymore. That makes me feel like the chase has slowed a little, and it's a good thing because Ethan took his first steps last night! It's nice to slow down and spend more time with Jack and Ethan. I'm looking forward to a nice family weekend.

Christine

Friday, January 5, 2007

Ready, Set, Go!

The paperchase has begun! To give you an idea of the shear amount of forms to be filled out and official documents to be aquired, the dossier guide that FTIA gave us is 42 pages long, and that doesn't include what we need to do for our homestudy agency or for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Almost every document has to be notarized, certified by the Secretary of State, and Authenticated by the Vietnamese Consulate, and no record can be issued more than 3 months prior to the authentication, which means we have less than three months to gather everything together and get it to them. Seems like quite a while until you think about the fact that you are depending on government agencies to get you the documents, and more government agencies to certify and return them!

This is the first of three basic stages leading up to us meeting our daughter for the first time. Stage One is this hectic time of gathering documents, having the homestudy done, being fingerprinted (by local police and the FBI), and fullfilling the USCIS requirements to get Advanced Approval for an international adoption (meaning they'll let us bring our daughter into the country and she will become a U.S. citizen).

Stage Two is The Wait. I'm sure that the sudden stop in activity will be hard to adjust to, but I have lots of little projects that need to be done, like painting the downstairs bathroom (goodbye, fire engine red wall), so I'm hoping to use the momentum to get them done. According to FTIA, at this time the average wait for a referral is 9-12 months. However, now that China has tightened their requirements for adoption, a lot of people are switching to Vietnam, which I'm sure could extend the wait. Our coordinator told me that they used to get one or two applications for the Vietnam Program a week, and now they are getting one or two a day.

Stage Three is Referral and Travel! When we reach the head of the line, we will receive the next referral that matches with us and will then decide if we want to accept it or not. Once accepted, the average wait from referral to travel is 60-90 days. Then we fly to Vietnam, meet our daughter, and three weeks later bring her home!

But first things first. Back to filling out forms.