you know she was a Comet right???
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
and drew being a rocker, AND a Guidance Counselor
See, there's funny stuff happening too in our lives.....
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Where it's at...
(not a post about 2 turntables and a microphone)
I know a lot of you have been quasi following our adoption journey. Some more than quasi. In a nutshell, for now, here's the rundown.
We began the process in July 2007. Shortly after, our agency closed their Vietnam program because of some upcoming changes in federal & international laws, agreements, etc. So we caught the tail end of that.
This fall we completed our homestudy and were fingerprinted by Homeland security (as well as the FBI for another part but I digress--weren't they supposed to streamline these government entities???). In December we began assembling the documents for our dossier. An adoption dossier is a stack of papers required by the foreign government for them to process the adoption over there. Think of it as our application to the Vietnamese government. Thus far all of our applications have been to US agencies.
Typically the last document acquired for the dossier is called an I-171H..... or NOTICE OF FAVORABLE DETERMINATION CONCERNING APPLICATION FOR ADAVANCE PROCESSING OF ORPHAN PETITION (for short). In realspeak, this means the US government will allow us to bring an orphan from a foreign country BACK into the USA. Because when we return from the foreign country, we'll have a non-citizen that is legally ours in the eyes of the foreign government, but not yet in the eyes of the US government. Basically the child is adopted twice, once abroad and once at home.
So, on January 28th, at 4pm I received a call from our agency saying that unless we had a complete, sealed and authenticated (more on that later) dossier in their office by Feb 6th, we were out. Out of the program, out of the pursuit, basically not able to continue the adoption with Vietnam.
I called it a paper miscarriage. You can imagine our sense of loss and grief. You know, you start to get this picture in your mind of your future kid, and even if it's not growing in your wife's belly, you wonder what they'll look like, and what they'll be into.... all that future parent stuff. So instead of a doctor telling us bad news, it was a phone call while lying on the couch.... sucks.
WHY the February 6th deadline you ask? Why then and why now? Well here's part of it:
http://www.travel.state.gov/family/adoption/intercountry/intercountry_3939.html
Basically, the Vietnamese government requires an MOU between the countries it will adopt children out to. The current MOU expires on 8/31/2008. The US government, in order to better protect children from exploitation wants some things changed in the current MOU before they will renew it.
But, this is February, not August..... what's the deal???
Here's the deal: Our agency is taking a fairly conservative view of this development and is of the opinion that all adoptions need to be completed and parents on the way back from Vietnam before 8/31/08. At the time I spoke with our agency, there were 55 families ahead of us in line. They think that they will be lucky to get referrals (a offer for a specific child) to all of them before that time. First come, first serve and we're running out of time......
SO NOW COMES THE EXCITING PART
So we pretty much knew we wouldn't get our I-171H in time, it typically takes 2 months, and that would have had it to us on Feb 20th. Well, Wednesday we came home from the Y, and guess what's in our mailbox? Guess...... besides junk mail..... yeah.
So, i call Rite Aid at 6:57:
"Do you do passport photos?"
"yeah"
"Can I get them right away?"
"Yeah but I leave at 7."
"OK, I LITERALLY live 3 minutes away, will you stay?"
"Yeah"
Now we have passports, but one of the 15 or so documents in this dossier requires 6 passport photos of each of us........ So thank you to AMBER at Rite Aid for staying late.
We cruise back home, call Office Max because i need 2 things color laser printed for this dossier. They're open until 9....great! I've got enough time to eat 5 bites of stove top stuffing (oh yeah at this time i am still recovering from oral surgery but that's a whole other post) before we go there.
And we need a notary. So Suz calls JoAnne who calls Rod who knows everyone who does everything....he's a notary and says he's on his way over to our house....but we're not there!!!! So she calls him back and then he says he'll come by around 930 or 10.
At 10, Rod shows up and notarizes the 8 or 10 things that still need notarizing....
So by 1010pm on Wednesday night we've got the dossier complete and notarized...done right?............nope not yet.....
We set the alarm, sleep poorly and by 630am Thursday morning are on our way to Greensboro to have our agency look over and approve the dossier before heading to Raleigh to have to "sealed" by the Secretary of State in Raleigh. They open at 830, we're there by 745, go get some coffee and are waiting outside their door by 810. At 815 Allie lets us in and we explain. She looks it over, says it's good and tells us good luck, go get it state sealed. (there's more and we know it but I'll let the suspense build)
The document we have says if we're there (Raleigh) by 10:00 you can have it back the same day. It's 856, 1 hour to Raleigh. On our way we call and they inform us that the computers have been up and down all week so they may not even be able to do it. We tell them we're coming anyways.....
Driving, ahem, rapidly but safely, we arrive in Raleigh...... the computers are up for now, except they want one more thing notarized..... which we were never told it would need to be but whatever..... so we walk 3 blocks to the credit union, have it notarized, walk 3 blocks back and turn these documents in to be sealed, along with a check for $100............ told to come back by 3.............
Done right? WRONG AGAIN! Remember I said "authenticated" earlier? That means that these 10 documents, which have been notarized, and now sealed, need to be authenticated by the Embassy in Vietnam. Apparently the other 2 versions of authenticity are not enough. SO, we call the courier in DC who will take the docs to the embassy, pick them back up and ship them back to us. We explain the situation. Expedited service ($700) typically takes a week. We've got Friday, Monday and Tuesday until the embassy closes for Tet the Vietnamese new year. he first says "no way" we explain, he says, well you can try...... luck and prayer........ We even consider driving them up there that night if it will help. He says no, plus there's a snowstorm coming in.........
So, at 130 we go back, kill some time in the museum, go there at 2 instead of 3, and they're done. We go to Kinkos, copy everything, and Fed ex it to DC. We go back to Greensboro to give them the other half of our dossier which did not need to be sent to DC so that when it comes back to them they can put both parts together and send them to Vietnam. By the 6th.
Drive home, collapse, watch the LOST premiere, eat pizza, drink a scotch. A big one.
Friday entails calling senators and reps in hopes of bumping the embassy along..... Weekend is a wait, Monday is a wait... Tuesday is a call to the courier around noon.
Nope.
Currently these documents are in the closed for Tet embassy awaiting the all important authentication..... they'll open back up on the 12th or 13th..... hopefully they'll be back in Greensboro by the 15th. Nine days too late.
I haven't yet been called by the agency for them to remind me that we missed the deadline. Being the connected person that i am (online package tracking, etc) i typically know more about it than they do and well before..... I'm sorry but they're a little bit dinosaurish in all this.....
So, to answer the original question of where it's at...... good question.
The disputed MOU is supposed to be renegotiated in March.... whether things go well enough for them to re-sign it is unclear.
I've been talking to another agency that feels that if our dossier is registered in Vietnam before the 8/31/08 deadline, they will consider it in process and we can complete even if this MOU is not renewed. This agency is smaller and works with fewer provinces (you have to be licensed in a specific province, not just the country) so they have less referrals which means it would take longer and most definitely be after the 8/31/08 deadline. So we might go with them.
We might pursue a domestic adoption. Know anyone who's pregnant and willing to consider adoption?
Surrogacy is on the table too.... Know anyone with a womb to donate?
So a lot of prayer and thought and consideration have to guide us next. Thanks for reading this far.... you can imagine the tumult if you had to live all this instead of just read it......
We'll keep you posted
I know a lot of you have been quasi following our adoption journey. Some more than quasi. In a nutshell, for now, here's the rundown.
We began the process in July 2007. Shortly after, our agency closed their Vietnam program because of some upcoming changes in federal & international laws, agreements, etc. So we caught the tail end of that.
This fall we completed our homestudy and were fingerprinted by Homeland security (as well as the FBI for another part but I digress--weren't they supposed to streamline these government entities???). In December we began assembling the documents for our dossier. An adoption dossier is a stack of papers required by the foreign government for them to process the adoption over there. Think of it as our application to the Vietnamese government. Thus far all of our applications have been to US agencies.
Typically the last document acquired for the dossier is called an I-171H..... or NOTICE OF FAVORABLE DETERMINATION CONCERNING APPLICATION FOR ADAVANCE PROCESSING OF ORPHAN PETITION (for short). In realspeak, this means the US government will allow us to bring an orphan from a foreign country BACK into the USA. Because when we return from the foreign country, we'll have a non-citizen that is legally ours in the eyes of the foreign government, but not yet in the eyes of the US government. Basically the child is adopted twice, once abroad and once at home.
So, on January 28th, at 4pm I received a call from our agency saying that unless we had a complete, sealed and authenticated (more on that later) dossier in their office by Feb 6th, we were out. Out of the program, out of the pursuit, basically not able to continue the adoption with Vietnam.
I called it a paper miscarriage. You can imagine our sense of loss and grief. You know, you start to get this picture in your mind of your future kid, and even if it's not growing in your wife's belly, you wonder what they'll look like, and what they'll be into.... all that future parent stuff. So instead of a doctor telling us bad news, it was a phone call while lying on the couch.... sucks.
WHY the February 6th deadline you ask? Why then and why now? Well here's part of it:
http://www.travel.state.gov/family/adoption/intercountry/intercountry_3939.html
Basically, the Vietnamese government requires an MOU between the countries it will adopt children out to. The current MOU expires on 8/31/2008. The US government, in order to better protect children from exploitation wants some things changed in the current MOU before they will renew it.
But, this is February, not August..... what's the deal???
Here's the deal: Our agency is taking a fairly conservative view of this development and is of the opinion that all adoptions need to be completed and parents on the way back from Vietnam before 8/31/08. At the time I spoke with our agency, there were 55 families ahead of us in line. They think that they will be lucky to get referrals (a offer for a specific child) to all of them before that time. First come, first serve and we're running out of time......
SO NOW COMES THE EXCITING PART
So we pretty much knew we wouldn't get our I-171H in time, it typically takes 2 months, and that would have had it to us on Feb 20th. Well, Wednesday we came home from the Y, and guess what's in our mailbox? Guess...... besides junk mail..... yeah.
So, i call Rite Aid at 6:57:
"Do you do passport photos?"
"yeah"
"Can I get them right away?"
"Yeah but I leave at 7."
"OK, I LITERALLY live 3 minutes away, will you stay?"
"Yeah"
Now we have passports, but one of the 15 or so documents in this dossier requires 6 passport photos of each of us........ So thank you to AMBER at Rite Aid for staying late.
We cruise back home, call Office Max because i need 2 things color laser printed for this dossier. They're open until 9....great! I've got enough time to eat 5 bites of stove top stuffing (oh yeah at this time i am still recovering from oral surgery but that's a whole other post) before we go there.
And we need a notary. So Suz calls JoAnne who calls Rod who knows everyone who does everything....he's a notary and says he's on his way over to our house....but we're not there!!!! So she calls him back and then he says he'll come by around 930 or 10.
At 10, Rod shows up and notarizes the 8 or 10 things that still need notarizing....
So by 1010pm on Wednesday night we've got the dossier complete and notarized...done right?............nope not yet.....
We set the alarm, sleep poorly and by 630am Thursday morning are on our way to Greensboro to have our agency look over and approve the dossier before heading to Raleigh to have to "sealed" by the Secretary of State in Raleigh. They open at 830, we're there by 745, go get some coffee and are waiting outside their door by 810. At 815 Allie lets us in and we explain. She looks it over, says it's good and tells us good luck, go get it state sealed. (there's more and we know it but I'll let the suspense build)
The document we have says if we're there (Raleigh) by 10:00 you can have it back the same day. It's 856, 1 hour to Raleigh. On our way we call and they inform us that the computers have been up and down all week so they may not even be able to do it. We tell them we're coming anyways.....
Driving, ahem, rapidly but safely, we arrive in Raleigh...... the computers are up for now, except they want one more thing notarized..... which we were never told it would need to be but whatever..... so we walk 3 blocks to the credit union, have it notarized, walk 3 blocks back and turn these documents in to be sealed, along with a check for $100............ told to come back by 3.............
Done right? WRONG AGAIN! Remember I said "authenticated" earlier? That means that these 10 documents, which have been notarized, and now sealed, need to be authenticated by the Embassy in Vietnam. Apparently the other 2 versions of authenticity are not enough. SO, we call the courier in DC who will take the docs to the embassy, pick them back up and ship them back to us. We explain the situation. Expedited service ($700) typically takes a week. We've got Friday, Monday and Tuesday until the embassy closes for Tet the Vietnamese new year. he first says "no way" we explain, he says, well you can try...... luck and prayer........ We even consider driving them up there that night if it will help. He says no, plus there's a snowstorm coming in.........
So, at 130 we go back, kill some time in the museum, go there at 2 instead of 3, and they're done. We go to Kinkos, copy everything, and Fed ex it to DC. We go back to Greensboro to give them the other half of our dossier which did not need to be sent to DC so that when it comes back to them they can put both parts together and send them to Vietnam. By the 6th.
Drive home, collapse, watch the LOST premiere, eat pizza, drink a scotch. A big one.
Friday entails calling senators and reps in hopes of bumping the embassy along..... Weekend is a wait, Monday is a wait... Tuesday is a call to the courier around noon.
Nope.
Currently these documents are in the closed for Tet embassy awaiting the all important authentication..... they'll open back up on the 12th or 13th..... hopefully they'll be back in Greensboro by the 15th. Nine days too late.
I haven't yet been called by the agency for them to remind me that we missed the deadline. Being the connected person that i am (online package tracking, etc) i typically know more about it than they do and well before..... I'm sorry but they're a little bit dinosaurish in all this.....
So, to answer the original question of where it's at...... good question.
The disputed MOU is supposed to be renegotiated in March.... whether things go well enough for them to re-sign it is unclear.
I've been talking to another agency that feels that if our dossier is registered in Vietnam before the 8/31/08 deadline, they will consider it in process and we can complete even if this MOU is not renewed. This agency is smaller and works with fewer provinces (you have to be licensed in a specific province, not just the country) so they have less referrals which means it would take longer and most definitely be after the 8/31/08 deadline. So we might go with them.
We might pursue a domestic adoption. Know anyone who's pregnant and willing to consider adoption?
Surrogacy is on the table too.... Know anyone with a womb to donate?
So a lot of prayer and thought and consideration have to guide us next. Thanks for reading this far.... you can imagine the tumult if you had to live all this instead of just read it......
We'll keep you posted
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Crap
http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/intercountry/intercountry_3939.html
http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/intercountry/intercountry_3940.html
so for now this means............ we don't know
http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/intercountry/intercountry_3940.html
so for now this means............ we don't know
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)