Homestudy Saga Contines...

So, this is the weekend we had originally planned months ago to do the homestudy. It has come and will soon be gone, but with no homestudy. After the laborious attempts to book a ticket for this weekend we rescheduled for one month from this weekend. The prices were half and with more than a month's notice we could probably get it scheduled. As we learned previously, the HS guy had to book his own ticket. Great, he showed us the price and itinerary he found and we agreed on it. Or so we thought. We hadn't heard anything from him so we sent him a quick e-mail to let him know that we re-sent the child abuse clearances requests to him (all 3 that he supposedly submitted were never heard from, the 1 that we submitted was responded to... hmmm) and asking if he had booked his ticket. His response was a list of itineraries-- that resembled NOTHING like we had agreed on. Suddenly he wanted to only come on weekdays (fine, but why have we been planning since January for him to come on a weekend?) and the prices were triple the price of the ticket we had talked about and higher than the original weekend tickets (which is one of the reasons we changed our dates in the first place). Also, he had originally said he needed 3 days with us. Fine, but now he was planning to only come for 24 hours. Sure, we're happy not to pay for 3 nights in a hotel, but why suddenly will it take only 1 day? I painstakingly composed an e-mail (and checked by my husband, who has more tact than I) quoting e-mails from HIM that outlined what he was going to do and requesing that we would like to go with the original plan as stated in HIS e-mails (rather than switching to this itinerary that he pulled out of who knows where-- ok, I didn't say that).

Are we being unreasonable? First, he says he wants to come for 3 days, Thurs-Saturday. Great, Friday/Sat is our weekend. Then he says, hey, I'll go to a nearby country too on Saturday! Sure, we'd share on flight expenses with the other family, but why should we lose him on our only 100% free day when we started the plans in the first place. And, why will suddenly what was supposed to take 3 days take under 2 now? Ok, so he scraps the plan to travel to an other country and we try to buy the tickets. That was a no-go (see previous post) and he finds an itinerary that is a great time/price. We agree that due to the April difficulties we'll do this in May with the agreed price/itinerary. Suddenly he changes all of the above and we are starting from ground zero again. Every time we think we have an agreement, it turns out we don't. At this point, I'm not sure even if we could arrange a schedule for him to fly out here we would want him to come. We don't trust him, since he seems to forget everything we agree on. And, I don't think he's a great fan of us either since we don't get overly excited about his random changes of course. He's supposed to recommend us to China, not sure if he can do that right now.

He says he's willing to recommend other HS person to help up. I think we might have to do that. I'm hoping that my research was incomplete and that there actually are more people than I thought who can do this. We'll see.

Truly in God's hands. Nothing more we can do at this point.

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.

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?

Medical Adventure...

This AM my husband and I dragged our 2 little ones to the hospital to get our medical reports done for our homestudy/dossier. Now, I have 2 little girls, so I have spent too much time at the hospital so it has become routine for me. BUT, perhaps you would be interested in a hospital adventure over here in the middle east.
First, it took me a while to realize that when someone was going to the hospital, it was not necessarily a major problem. Here, you go to the hospital (or to hospital, as they say) for everything. There are private doctors, but most of them are affiliated with one of the major hospitals. There are two hospitals that are frequented by westerners. The one we went to is the one I gave birth in both times. It used to be the main hospital in town until the newest one opened about 4 years ago. Now, most of the westerners go to the new one. I actually prefer the old one. Sure, there are no appointments but when you get there you receive a number and you know exactly how many people are in front of you. The new hospital takes appointments (assuming they decide to answer their phone the day you call, but that is rare) but somehow intermixes the appointments and the drop-ins. It is not uncommon to wait 3 hours there- with an appointment! And, the new hospital has a beautiful kids waiting area complete with a TV playing cartoons, toys and colorful chairs. There is one MAJOR problem with this seemingly wonderful setup. The well kids intermix with the sick kids and I have never seen them clean it. So, we stopped going there after the 3rd time my kids came down with a sickness that was worse than what we were there to see the doctor for.
So, this AM we were off to the City Clinic Hospital. We got there just after 8AM and my husband checked in and then I did. Apparently one of the other receptionists logged a patient between my husband and I so we had to wait for someone between us. There was only one person waiting in front of him, but that took a while. First the 4 of us hung out in the men's waiting room. Yes, men and women have different waiting rooms. Although you rarely see them mix, I think it is kind of ok for a woman to be in the men's area but it is not ok for a man to be in the woman's area. There was a TV playing an Indian soap opera, I think. We had a stroller with us full of toys and snacks to amuse them but in the end the best entertainment was to walk the halls. The setup was circular so we could follow the halls around and end up back at the waiting rooms. Eventually they called my husband and he went in while I went with the girls to the women's waiting area. We cause quite a spectacle wherever we go, particularly in enclosed areas like a waiting room. Actually, the girls were well behaved and we sat and read books and they ran around pushing their dolls in the doll stroller. I think we can get away with stuff like that here more than in the US.
Anyway, it looks like our medicals will be easy to do. Turns out that the doctor is Italian and married to a Palistinian. They are wanting to adopt from Gaza, although they aren't sure if that can even happen. What are the chances of finding a doctor in the middle east who wants to adopt!? Very small! There is no concept of adoption in this part of the world so very few people do it. So, she did the exam and tried to claim most of the tests to our insurance. She pointed out to us that it would be difficult to claim the Hep and the HIV tests as "necessary" since that would look bad for us in the adoption process. So, fortunately for us, it looks like we'll be able to get insurance to pay for much of the physical. yea!

Training... and a rant

Right now we're focusing on the training...
The Hague Treaty requires a certain number of hours for training. Our agency says 10 hours, our homestudy guy says 30. We still need to check with him about hose extra 20 hours. We've finished reading Adoption Parenting and taken an exam on it... 95%! Actually, it's set up for you to succeed. Fortunately, you aren't required to memorize everything. The book is more of a resource. That's good, because by the time we come home with our little girl, there is no way we are going to remember what we read years before.
Now we've moved on to the National Council for Adoption Training. This covers either 8 or 10 hours of our required training (again, something we need to confirm). It's a course that both the husband and wife need to complete. We'd like to do it together, but I'm a very fast reader and my husband is a very slow reader. You have to click through pages of reading, click on Internet links and open up articles to read. Also, there are several videos that you need to view. Actually, part of the reason I'm working on this blog right now is because the videos take so long to load that I can do other things while I wait.
I'm both encouraged and discouraged by the training. The risks are high. We have been blessed with two biological children who have no delays or problems. Really, the biggest problem we have had medically is that our second daughter was almost always sick with a cold or flu the first year of her life. So, that means we have also spent the first year of her life sick as well. I believe I have had the stomach flu 6 or 7 times in the past 14 months, ugh. Of course, there are no guarantees with biological children either, but it sounds like the risks of adopted children are much higher. I suppose it is better to be prepared for anything than surprised by something. But the way this training makes it sound, our child will be significantly developmentally delayed due to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but at minimum due to institutionalization. In addition, there could be major attachment issues and our child will never really attach to us as her parents. Would we love our biological children less if they have physical or mental delays/problems/issues? No. So, it might be tough, but I suspect it will be worth it.

There are several videos in this training done by adoptive families telling about their experiences. There is one thing that has struck me and I want to write about. Warning: This will be a bit of a rant... One reason we have chosen to adopt internationally is that we are a very internationally-minded family. We have traveled extensively and currently live overseas. We have always had a diverse group of friends as well as enjoyed learning about other cultures and people. It seems like a child from an other culture and background would be a good fit with our family. In fact, none of our children have been born in the US. First two were born here in the Middle East and now our third will be born in China. One thing I noticed about these families in the training who have talked about their experiences is that almost all of them have rarely or never traveled overseas. I'm not sure if any of them ever traveled to their child's country prior to starting the adoption! On our agency paperwork, one of the things on their "to do" list is to apply for a passport. It amazes me that they would assume that we have no passport and don't instead say "make sure your passport is up to date". Why in the world would anyone who has never had a passport want to adopt a child from overseas!? It's true, I have never had to deal with the agony of infertility and gone through the choices that one must make if that is a factor. But, if you have never had the experience of being the weird looking person in a country, or at least feeling lost because you cannot talk to people or read the signs, can you really help your child when she comes home with you to a white environment where there aren't any people who look like her? I have blond hair and blue eyes. I have spent time in China as only one of 2 white people in a particular city. We had people follow us, touch us, stare at us. Even here in the Middle East, people are particularly facinated by my blue eyed, blond haired little girl. My second daughter doesn't get as much attention, but when they look closely at her they see her blue eyes and are just as facinated.
I just watched a video of a family who was talking about their experience in the orphanage with their child and they mentioned his birth name and actually rolled their eyes when they said his name! Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to change a child's name. We have decided to decide about whether or not to change her name when we actually hear it and meet her. But, the disrespect these families show for their children's birth countries and their lack of interest in anything international shocks me. They give lip-service to the stuff about their children's birth countries but I wonder if these families really have a clue about international issues. For the most part, it seems like these families consider the travel portion of the adoption as a "necessary evil" of the adoption process. Our first daughter who is not even 3 has already needed extra pages in her passport... She's been to the USA, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Jordan. Sure, we know that the trip to China will be a challenge with both girls and then returning with 3, but we would never consider leaving them home (wherever that may be at the time). I cannot imagine them missing the experience of picking up their sister from China.

A bit more paper chase... Medicals...

Now, for the medical tests... Really, it's not that difficult: Go to the doctor and get a physical and have him/her fill out the form. Issue: we have never been to the doctor here. Sure, the pediatricians know us well (we're one of the few western families that uses that particular hospital and when you have little babies, you are always there for sicknesses or vaccines), but as for Brett and I we haven't really needed a doctor. So, Brett went to the hospital the other day to check things out. I might mention here that everyone goes "to the hospital" for basic medical stuff. All the outpatient things here are connected to hospitals. It took me a while after living here to get that. At home in the US, you only go to the hospital for the emergency room. Here, your regular doctors are at the hospital. So, based on my many visits there, I told him where I thought he should go. An other problem: our insurance does not cover "preventative medicine". If you are sick, fine but if you want to just make sure everything is ok, not fine. So, since Brett was a bit sick anyway we thought it would be a good time to get him into a doctor. The receptionist spoke excellent English and understood what he wanted, but said that the doctor he needed to see was only available in the AM. I should mention a few other things: they don't take appointments so you just show up and take a number AND they operate on a split schedule 8-12, 4-8. Turns out our physical with all the tests will cost about $300. Not bad considering in the US it would be much, much more I think. We could go to the public hospital for free, but as Brett describes it, that would require "a pound of flesh". So, how much is that worth?

NCFA and comedy relief...

I think doing this adoption process with two little ones already running around makes things a bit more challenging, and sometimes more amusing... I'm sitting here right now registering for our NCFA training. It fulfills 8 of the 10 required Hague hours for parent training. My 1 year old is running around the room (ok, waddling might be more accurate) pushing a doll stroller and wanted to be picked up. So I set her on my lap and she went straight for my credit card. Sure, anything works as a baby toy and she can't do too much damage to that. Then of course, she wanted to get down. Always a bit distracted, I put her down, credit card in her hand. Then my 2 year old had a tantrum over not wanting to get dressed and preferring to run around in the cold naked. So, after getting a bathrobe on her I settled down to finish the registration process. Hmmm, my credit card. Oh, the baby. By this time she was happily moving on to something else. I eventually tracked down the credit card: in the tent full of plastic balls. Yea!