Where in the world....

Are we now?

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The Odyssey to the Heart of Kaz (literally!)

Naming this blog was an omen I guess.

Remember that dossier thing? It has apparently been busy of late... I called our adoption coordinator last week to see what was up, cause it had been in the Ministry for a while and it seemed something should have happened by now. She told me it hadn't moved at all, but hopefully it would soon.

So, we have been planning to leave the first week of March, travel to Berlin with Bruce for a conference, and then on to Kazakhstan. Now I start to worry that maybe we won't have the paperwork in time. We can't get our visa's until we get the "Letter of Invitation", what would we would we do if we don't have the LOI in time? Hm.

Monday (yesterday) I call the coordinator back to ask if there is a possibility of getting our visas in Berlin if the timing becomes a problem. Alla, our coordinator, informs me that we shouldn't have a problem getting our paperwork in time, in fact, she thinks we will be traveling in mid-February... WHAT?!?!

Well, I didn't waste a minute panicking, I started immediately. It looks like we may leave as soon as the 15th or 16th of February. Of course, that leaves a large mountain of things to do before then, the first of which is to accelerate the wrapping of the minds around it...

I then find out we will be going to a town of about 25,000 people called Arkalyk, that is in the middle of the Kazakh Steppe. It will be a flight to Frankfurt, a 7 hour flight from Frankfurt to Almaty, an overnight in Almaty, then a 2 hour flight to Astana, followed by a 16 hour train ride to Arkalyk. Yes, you read that right. As I was explaining to our coordinator that Jaden has travelled with us a lot, but never on a trip THIS big, it occured to me that in this day and age there just aren't that many places in the world you can go that ARE this long of a trip. It will truly be the adventure of a lifetime, in so many ways.

The enlarging of our family is imminent.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

The beginning of something big...

Well, this isn't exactly the beginning, but we certainly are a long way from the end! We started this journey well over a year ago now, when we made the decision to add a child to our family through adoption. And then we started (well, mostly me) researching the options. Dozens of countries, dozens of adoption agencies, Yahoo groups, and about a zillion opinions.

Finally, finally, we decided on Kazakhstan. It has a rich cultural history and a beautiful landscape. At -30 in the winter and 110 degrees in the summer, the climate is a bit moody,... but most importantly, the children are reportedly well cared for and they have an adoption process we really liked. So, we found an adoption agency we felt good about and signed on the dotted line. Not that doing so ended the trepidation we have felt, but it was an exciting beginning!

Next came the paperwork. And it just kept coming. Stamps and signatures and notaries and apostilles, followed by multiple copies, collating, trimming pages to exactly the proper size, and lots of FedEx'ing. Not to mention the 5 sets of fingerprints- the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Homeland Security. Our life of crime is over. And it sure makes you wonder- why can't these 3 figure out how to share?!? The whole thing seemed endless, and the goal very far off.

While we were slogging through the paper, creating our "dossier", we started reading and researching Kazakhstan. The more I learned the more interesting it seemed. And then came Borat. Ugh. At the beginning, no one knew anything about Kaz, in fact many had never heard of it. Now everyone has heard of it, but it certainly is a skewed perspective! While some apparently appreciate the humor of Borat and all it's subtlety and faceitousness, I need to think up a clever answer for all of the people who will inevitably default to Borat when our son says he is from Kazakhstan.

We have also been learning about the potential "growth opportunities" and rewards of parenting an internationally adopted child. In addition to the range of unique challanges adopted kids face, those who are transracial adoptions have another set of issues that may arise. There are a couple of books on these issues, and a wealth of opinions in the various Yahoo groups I inhabit. I have learned some interesting things about what we might come up against, but at this point it has all raised more questions for us to contemplate than answers. We know quite a number of families with children who were adopted internationally, so look forward to having a good local support group when we return.

Now, our dossier (read: LARGE stack of paperwork) is in Kazakhstan! I just received an email 2 days ago, saying that it has already been approved by the Embassy, and is currently being reviewed in Kazakhstan. We are anticipating leaving sometime in February or March, which seems so incredibly soon all of the sudden! We will be gone for between 6 and 8 weeks, although I am anticipating it being closer to 8 weeks. Of course, Jaden is coming along, so it will be a huge adventure for all of us, in so many ways.

We will not meet our new son until we arrive in the region we have been assigned to in Kaz. We will be introduced to several children, and will need to trust our guts to guide us to the child that is meant to be our son. By far, the most daunting part of the process to me. We will then spend 2 weeks visiting him in the orphanage every day, before we can start the court process (which will take another 3+ weeks). Once the court process is done, we will have to travel to Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, and complete the paperwork necessary for us to bring him home. Plus we (well, mostly Bruce) have designs on skiing at a local resort near Almaty, so we might need an extra day there :).

This is the overview- I will post more as time and progress allows, and look forward to sharing our journey and experiences with you all- our friends and our families.