The State of Things

Our dossier is nearly complete. It would be fully complete if not for one document snafu that’s gumming up the works. It appears New York now requires a county certification before they can authenticate a document, in this case my birth certificate. But that should be in our mailbox today. Tomorrow we have a “sit down” with our case worker at Bethany. If all goes well, she’ll give the dossier her blessing and forward the thing to the home office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, along with several hundred of our dollars. Once there, the individual documents get sent to the appropriate Chinese embassy or consulate for translation. Since we have documents from Texas, New York, Maryland and Virginia, that probably means three different consulates (Houston, New York and DC). In 2003, it took about three weeks between the time we sent our dossier to Grand Rapids to being DTC (Dossier To China), an important date after which there will be much rejoicing. A (hopefully) short time after that the dossier will be logged in at the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) and then we…wait some more. It's hard to say when a referral will come. In 2003, the wait was 12-13 months, but was down to nine months when we received Ally's referral. Right now, it's about a 13-14 month wait, so we'll see.

Last time, we got our dossier off the day before we left for a vacation with my family at Disneyworld. This time, nothing so elaborate but we are heading to New York for my sister’s annual pig roast; that is unless Ernesto washes out our plans. Right now it looks like Saturday is going to be the wettest, which is when the porcine BBQ is supposed to take place, but it can be moved to Sunday if need be. Then back home on Monday. So blogging will be light to nonexistent over the weekend.