Whenever I read up on adoption, the homestudy always seems like such a basic part of the process. All you need to do is get a local homestudy agency/social worker to come by your house for a few hours of meetings and then they write up your homestudy for submission with your dossier. Well, with the new Hague laws, the homestudy providor must be affiliated with an approved agency. Well, there is no concept of adoption under Sharia (Islamic) law. So, hence, there are no agency-affiliated social workers here. Apparently some people who live here used to be qualified, but the new laws took away their qualifications. Ugh, bummer.
So, our choices have come down to 2. Yes, two people in the entire world. Both of them live in Germany. We chose one because he was the most helpful at the beginning helping us try to figure out if we were qualified at all to even adopt because we are overseas. Seems like the conclusion we all came to was "probably". Yes, we are still not 100% sure we can even do this. But since "probably yes" is about as certain as you get in this part of the world anyway, we are comfortable moving forward with the plans that we believe God has for our family.
If I was a social worker, that would be my job. These two men travel the world doing homestudies for people. Awesome.
Of course, easier said than done. We have to fly this guy out here and put him up in a hotel. We finally nailed down a date with him which took forever to do. Then as we were trying to book tickets, he said "oh, how about I also go to a nearby country and you can share costs." Sure, sounded good, but then everyone (except us) decided he would not be here on Saturday. Hmmm, that's our main day off work so that was the day we wanted to do MOST of the work. I got a bit huffy and in the end, the other family canceled. Actually they just completed an adoption and wanted to start an other one. They aren't really in a hurry since they are still getting settled with our first. So, we were ready to buy his ticket here. We went online, clicked on the flights/prices we wanted and entered the credit card to purchase it... denied! What!??! Apparently my credit card moved me from Citibank to Bank of America (I have one of those U Promise credit cards, LOVE IT, 1% of everything I spend goes to my kids' college funds!). The UPromise website assured me that this would not affect me and my card would work as normal. Well, apparenly Bank of America did not agree, canceled my card (and I assume everyone else's) and issued me a new one. Slight problem. I DONT LIVE IN THE USA! My statements go there, but I do everything online so how would I know that my card was cancelled 4 months before the expiration date printed on it? Called them, nothing they could do. So, tried a second credit card. DENIED! What?! Apparently that transaction got flagged by the fraud department since I was buying plane tickets from Europe to the Middle East. Got that cleared up. So, 2 1/2 hours later we got the credit card to work. Up pops a new window with a brand new addition to the terms and conditions (yes, I did read them originally): "One of the travelers must be the holder of the credit card used to purchase this plane ticket, if you accept this policy click OK, if not, click on BACK and enter a new credit card." What! ? At this point it was 11PM here and we called the US branch of Etihad airlines (I never call the local branches here, the US call centers are MUCH better... tells you how bad they are here, doesn't it?). Nope, nothing we could do. The traveler must present the credit card used to purchase the ticket in order to board the plane. Might have been helpful if they had told us this 3 hours ago!
So, long story long... Still no plane tickets. We emailed our HS guy and asked him to buy this plane ticket. There were only 2 more seats on the flight we wanted. Surprise, surprise. He spent the entire AM on the task (so he says) and couldn't get them. Price went up, itinerary gone. Good news, maybe. If we wait until may the airline price is 1/2. Is it worth it? Maybe.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Police Clearances...
We're getting there. We got our FBI clearance. You would think such a major clearance would have some extensive explanation attached or something. No, they just stamp "no record" on the back of the application... nice. Anyway, with FBI clearance in hand, we headed down to the US embassy to get a notarized letter from them saying we had no record in the US. Gotta love bureaucracy. While we were there, we got our medical certificates notarized (silly cover letter method, we write a note that says "The attached is true to the best of my knowledge" then the notary stamps it). My question is, do doctors in the US generally have a notary just sitting around to notarize their signature? Or, do adoption applicants just bring their own notary? Our instructions make it sound like it's normal to just get your doctor's signature notarized when he/she signs it. Well, our only notary in the country is in the embassy so we'll be doing lots of cover letters.
So, how to get clearance from our country of residence? We asked the notary at the embassy and he suggested that we just get my husband's company "mandoup" (a fancy word for "gopher") to do it for us. Perfect! Apparently in the last couple years, after we moved here, they decided to enforce a law already on the books for years that requires all foreigners to get police clearance before they start a job. So, this guy does this process every day! Yea! He submitted the paperwork and has already received back our FBI paperwork. Now, we are just waiting for our final clearance. Almost done!
Sure, FBI was easy, but California didn't like our fingerprints. We apparently used the wrong card stock. Yeah, so because our paper was wrong (not the form, just the paper it was printed on) we had to go to the embassy get an other fingerprint request letter (and pay 2 more notary fees!) get our fingerprints done again and send them off to CA. We actually forgot about the paperwork for about 2 weeks. oops.. it was done just not mailed off. I broke our copy machine/printer so we can't just run off copies so I guess I forgot to ask my husband to copy them at work and since I always copied them he never thought to suggest it. Oh well, an other 4 weeks for CA but since I don't expect our homestudy will be done in less than 2 months I'm sure it will be fine.
We gave our homestudy guy the paperwork to submit for our child abuse clearances at the end of December. Still have not heard anything. I have no idea how long it should take to get child abuse clearance. I keep asking if he has submitted it, but no response. I sure hope he has. Perhaps I'll e-mail him again about that today.
Speaking of child abuse clearances, we're still at a loss as to what to do with local child abuse clearances. There is no tracking of child abuse cases in this country. But, we need child abuse clearace. What to do? Here's my idea: My husband and I write a letter saying something like "Child abuse cases are not tracked in this country, if there were any record of child abuse, it would be found in the police clearance." Then we pay our notary guy to notarize it. Sound official enough? What do you think?
So, how to get clearance from our country of residence? We asked the notary at the embassy and he suggested that we just get my husband's company "mandoup" (a fancy word for "gopher") to do it for us. Perfect! Apparently in the last couple years, after we moved here, they decided to enforce a law already on the books for years that requires all foreigners to get police clearance before they start a job. So, this guy does this process every day! Yea! He submitted the paperwork and has already received back our FBI paperwork. Now, we are just waiting for our final clearance. Almost done!
Sure, FBI was easy, but California didn't like our fingerprints. We apparently used the wrong card stock. Yeah, so because our paper was wrong (not the form, just the paper it was printed on) we had to go to the embassy get an other fingerprint request letter (and pay 2 more notary fees!) get our fingerprints done again and send them off to CA. We actually forgot about the paperwork for about 2 weeks. oops.. it was done just not mailed off. I broke our copy machine/printer so we can't just run off copies so I guess I forgot to ask my husband to copy them at work and since I always copied them he never thought to suggest it. Oh well, an other 4 weeks for CA but since I don't expect our homestudy will be done in less than 2 months I'm sure it will be fine.
We gave our homestudy guy the paperwork to submit for our child abuse clearances at the end of December. Still have not heard anything. I have no idea how long it should take to get child abuse clearance. I keep asking if he has submitted it, but no response. I sure hope he has. Perhaps I'll e-mail him again about that today.
Speaking of child abuse clearances, we're still at a loss as to what to do with local child abuse clearances. There is no tracking of child abuse cases in this country. But, we need child abuse clearace. What to do? Here's my idea: My husband and I write a letter saying something like "Child abuse cases are not tracked in this country, if there were any record of child abuse, it would be found in the police clearance." Then we pay our notary guy to notarize it. Sound official enough? What do you think?
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