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?
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