USCIS

We mailed out our I600A form to the USCIS this afternoon. According to their website they process these adoption forms on an accelerated basis so hopefully we will hear back from them soon. From this point forward we will be waiting on other people or agencies to process our documentation. This is a little frustrating as we feel like we have no control. But I guess all the delays in the process happen for a reason. There is a little baby girl out there somewhere (probably not even born yet) that is meant to be our daughter, if the process went any faster or slower she would not be placed with us.

Homestudy

We got our approved homestudy document back from our agency on Friday. Our next step in the process is to send the homestudy document, the I600-A form and copies of our birth and marriage certificates to the USCIS(INS). Once they get our documents they will set up an appointment for us to come into Boston to get our fingerprints taken. The fingerprints are sent to the FBI for background checks on us. Once we check out OK, they will send us another form called the I171 which is our official document giving us permission to bring our daughter into the country. The I600-A form is interesting, it is 6 pages long, the first 4 pages are instructions about how to fill out the form. We also recently found out that the fee for filing the form will increase by $20 on Wednesday. We are planning to delay filing the form until Wednesday and pay the increased fee so we don't have to rush and try to get it in by the deadline. Hopefully we will get our approved I171 sometime in late November to early December.

Chinese Culture Workshop

Will this rain ever stop.....We attended a Chinese Culture Workshop at the Boston Children's Museum today. This was an event that was sponsored by our adoption agency and an organization called Families with Children from China. There were about 100 people there, all at different stages of the adoption process and some that have had their little girls home for many years. It was nice to talk to these couples and hear about their experiences and have someone who can relate to what we are going through. In the morning, a professor of Chinese Studies gave us a presentation on the 4000 year history of China, this was a little condensed as the presentation took about 45 minutes. Then a Chinese Language teacher gave us a quick speaking lesson. She mostly taught us phrases that will be helpful when we travel to China such as "where is the bathroom". We butchered all of the pronunciations and don't remember any of them but we have handouts that we can refer back to before we travel. They were supposed to have a catered Chinese lunch but that didn't happen and we just had sandwiches. After lunch they gave each table a Chinese object which they had to learn about and then tell the rest of the groups what the object was used for. Our table was given some Chinese New Year decorations that give the families luck for the year. The last event of the day was a showing of a Chinese movie called "To Live". This was the story of a regular guy in modern China. It had subtitles but from what we could tell it was a drama/comedy. Wo zou le. Zaijan....That means goodbye.

Homestudy is almost complete

Our social worker sent us our completed home study document earlier this week for us to review. We had a few corrections to make and Jen met with her today to go over those corrections. She is now sending the document to our adoption agency so that they can review and sign it and then we get it back. We assume at this point we have been approved but I guess it is official when we get the signed form back from our agency. Once we get it back we send it along with a few other documents and forms to USCIS to get approval to adopt from the US government. Woohoo!!!!! Things seem like they are really moving now.