Thanks to a person (whom I've never met) that I was introduced to by another person (whom I never met) on a Yahoo group.....we have NEW pictures!
Her family is in VN to pick up their little girl this week from the same province as Audrey & Quynh. So, her husband spent time with our girls snapping some photos.
Q&A - 2007.02.28
Well, we are still waiting to hear final travel dates. Apparently, the meeting to request the ceremony date will be held today or tomorrow, so we should know something very soon.
In the meantime, here is a video our agency took when they were in Vietnam recently (can be seen at www.adoptionbuzz.org). The orphanage is indeed where Audrey & Quynh are, maybe you can catch a glimpse of them.
In comparison, this is a very small orphanage with about 14 babies @ that time and 6 caretakers.
Happy Lunar New Year! All this means is another week of wait time for us!
The process goes like this...
Under Vietnamese Law, the referral process is 120 days (excluding identification of an orphan child eligible for intercountry adoption). Of this 120 day period, 90 days is designated for compilation of the baby dossier and 30 days is designated for Review/Approval from the DIA and Province (in 4 steps): 1) DIA approves adoptive family dossier; 2) Province approves Dossier and presents baby dossier to DIA; 3)DIA approves baby dossier and confirms match to the approved family; 4)Provinces approves the family/baby and assigns the hand-over ceremony.
We have completed the 90 day period and are in the 30 day Review/Approval period and have completed step 1. Now our dossier is in the province, but Tet (Lunar New Year) will cause it to sit there an extra few days while the country celebrates.
So, we (not so) patiently wait to hear our travel dates. Hopefully we are only delayed by a week.
Not much to update everyone on. We received confirmation that our Cable 37 was received by the US Consulate in Hanoi. That's very good news as it seems all our paperwork goes into this black hole and we never really know where or when it is received. Cable 37 is the receipt of our USCIS approval notice by the US Consulate in Hanoi. And, it also confirms that we are allowed to adopt 1-2 infants from Vietnam. So, one more little step completed. It seems that now everything follows a very specific sequence. We are still awaiting our ceremony date and until then, we can't make any air/hotel reservations.
More soon!
