Gonder and Lalibela and Hanoi

ETHIOPIA
We had to send in our reservation and fee for the orphanage guest house, and include our travel plans with it, so we finally decided where we want to travel within Ethiopia when we make the trip. We feel it is important to see more of the country than just the capitol city, and figure it may be a long, long time before we get another chance to go, so we should make the most of this trip. We are going to visit the historical cities of Gonder and Lalibela.

Gonder (also spelled Gondar) is a former capitol of Ethiopia. It is known as The Camelot of Africa because of the castles built by the emperors and kings who ruled here. Check out this video about the history of Gondar:



Lalibela is known for its amazing churches which were carved out of bedrock.



On another note, we received two more pictures of the baby. She looks happy and healthy. No medical update yet, but there are rolling blackouts happening in ET which make it hard to get administrative work done and emails out. The children's care is not affected, but office machines and computers are down quite a bit. Hopefully we'll get that info soon.

VIETNAM
It's been awhile since we've had any news on this front, but we recently received an update from our agency. In late March the Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS) held their annual conference and hosted a delegation of 8 officials from Vietnam. The officials met with JCICS members, U.S. Department of State, and adoptive parents and their Vietnamese children in a series of 29 meetings in Indianapolis and Washington D.C. They said they had received over 9,000 letters from U.S. adoptive families, and were impressed. They expressed support for beginning dialogue on not only Hague convention compliance, which they expect to achieve by 2011, but also for an interim agreement to get adoptions to the U.S. started again. Our agency is hopeful that the interim agreement could be in place in the next 9 months. I am skeptical, especially since that will put us at 2010, and I can see the U.S. saying, let's just wait for Hague compliance in 2011. But either way we are advised to keep our USCIS approval in affect and up-to-date. So who knows what may be in store for VN in the next year?