Adventures in Homestudies...

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.