The Eagle Has Landed!

We received notification that our dossier, all 1.2 pounds of it, months in the making, was successfully delivered today to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!  Now it will go where it needs to go to be reviewed and matched with a referral.  Right now, there is a bit of a slow down in country, so to date the 3-5 month timeframe for a referral still holds but may change at some point.  

Waitlisted...It's a Good Thing!

Mark and I just received the following:

"Dear Mark and Shira,

Kate informed me that your dossier is being sent to Washington D.C. for final authentication.  This means that you are officially placed on waitlist to receive a referral!   Adoptive parents have waited up to three to five months (on average) to receive a referral.  Please keep in mind that this timeline is an estimate and is subject to change at any time. Congratulations on making it through the tedious dossier process!"

Embassy and Myths

This is a picture of the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC.  We received word today that our dossier should arrive here in the next week or two for translation.  Then, it will be sent to Ethiopia for a match.

We have been reading a lot of books on adoption and international adoption.  I came across a list of Adoption Myths that I liked, and here it is.  This list was compiled by Dawn Davenport (her credentials can be found at the bottom of the list), who wrote "The Complete Book of International Adoption".  I just finished this book and it is full of good info.  Of course, other lists can be found, but this is a good one for starters.  If we were to add one myth to this particular list or others, it would be that adoption is pursued after other options have failed.  People are led to adoption through a variety of personal experiences.  In our case, adoption has always been an option that we have considered when talking about starting our own family.  

And Last But Not Least...

Through a turn of niceties, the past three days have been quite...well, nice.  After checking the mail almost daily for the past seven weeks (much like I did as a kid when I sent away for something off of the back of a cereal box) and seeing nothing in the form of an approval letter, I started to get concerned.  I was concerned because we fingerprinted in the York office and our paperwork was all being sent through the Philadelphia office.  So, on Monday I decided to call down to Philadelphia to check on our application.  I used a direct number I had gotten through an email from another adoptive family that is in the same part of the process as we.  The first time I tried I got an answering machine that clearly indicated this number was for emergencies only and leaving a message other than one that is not emergent was clearly forbidden.  Needless to say, I didn't consider our situation an emergency so I hung up.  I figured I'd try once more later in the day.  A man answered who immediately gave me the "this is for emergency issues only, we don't have the resources to check on application status, you just have to wait" speech.  Then he asked me when we sent the paperwork in and I told him.  Then he asked me for our last name.  When I told him, he said, "Wait a minute, I recognize that name...hold on a minute."  He put me on hold, came back and told me we had been approved on the 29th and should see our letter within the next couple of days.  How nice!  The letter arrived today so I called the bank to try to get it notarized within the next day or two.  The bank offered an appointment with the notary after hours so we could accomplish this.  Also very nice!

That's it - the last piece of paperwork needed for our dossier.  Tomorrow, I will send it FedEx to KBS Dossier Preparation and then the entire dossier will be sent to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington D.C. for translation.  After that, it's off to Ethiopia for a match.