Here comes some real work

So, it's taken the last week for some of this to sink in, but, we're actually going to Ethiopia in January.

We scheduled our shots; there's like 8 of them over 4 weeks.
We've called the travel agent.  Trying to schedule the trip so we're gone as few days as possible, but also recognizing that we'll be flying through Europe, and this may be a one-in-a-lifetime trip for us (the Europe part, I mean).  We're also trying to figure out how we can use the 200,000 skymiles my Mom offered (my Mom Rocks!)

It may be a little dicey, but I think we can squeeze in an overnighter in Italy to collect on a bet from my business partner who said he'd buy me a great Italian dinner.  And anyone who's been to Ohio knows you can't get one of those here.  So why not go right to the source.  Turns out it may be cheaper to stop over in Italy on a Saturday night than to flight straight through to Africa.  We'll see.

We've filled out, but haven't mailed our Visa applications yet.  There's some question as to whether it makes sense to mail our passports to Washington when we can just get them in Addis when we land.  We're worried they'll get lost in the mail or in someone's in-box in DC.  Don't have much confidence in the DC people.

We still have to update our wills and powers of attorney, but that's scheduled.
We still have a bit of a cash shortfall, but we're certain that'll work its way out before trip 2, which is probably not 'till March.

Yep, lots to do.
It's no longer waiting.
It's doing!!!

BIG NEWS!!!

Within 24 hours, we received our approval (I-171) from USCIS (Immigrations) and Holt gave us our court date!  January 12, 2011!!!!!

That's just 71 days from now!  "Excited!" doesn't half cover it. 

The funny part is the 171 says "it has been determined that your are able to furnish proper care to an orphan..."  Ya think?  That's the government talking.

We were just starting to get antsy since it'd been a couple weeks and we were seeing all the 2010 trip dates get handed out.  The really nice thing is Jenny and I can spend her birthday in ET meeting our son for the first time.

Signs you're family is excited about adoption

A rose by any other name...

We've all been wondering about the derivation of Tommy's name.  We're not supposed to share it here; at least not until after ET court.  But, we took note of the fact that his surname was different from both his mother's and his father's.  So we hunted around for Ethiopian naming conventions.  Here's what we found:

When an Ethiopian is born, the child receives a given name from his/her parents or grandparents. The child’s second name is her/his father’s name and a third name—the child’s paternal grandfather’s given name – is tacked on to the end.

There are no ―last names‖ or ―surname‖ as is the practice in many cultures throughout the world. Most Ethiopians use just their given name and father’s name for everyday use but will use all three names when more formality is appropriate.

When a woman marries she does not change her ―last‖ name to that of her husband but rather keeps her fathers name.

People are universally addressed by first name rather than by last name. In formal address, the name is always preceded by title. For a man, the common title (comparable to ―Mister) is ―Ato. For a woman the common title is ―Woizero (Mrs.) if married and ―Woizerit (Miss) if single.

I'm just sayin'.....

Got our fingerprints done this morning for the Citizenship and Immigrations Service (what used to be called Customs or INS, and by the way, a tip for my friends in Washington DC: just changing the name of a monolithic, bureaucratic, bohemoth government agency does not make it either 1) more efficient or 2) more appealing).

Our I600 application (to classify Tommy as an immediate relative) was mailed six weeks ago.  I sent it by FedEx on 9/17 (a Friday).  FedEx says they got it on 9/20 (Monday).  In the 9/24 mail, we got (a very official looking I-797C) written notice they were processing our paperwork and we should expect written instructions regarding what to do next.  We got two copies by the way; one for Jenny and one for me.

About a week later, we got another one...no, actually two more I-797Cs.  These told us to go get fingerprinted on 10/26, almost exactly one month later.  Thinking it was an awfully long time to wait for fingerprints, I wondered whether we could move it up.  So, I looked for a phone number on the notice.  There wasn't one.  I looked for a phone number on the website; again nothing.  A bunch of research and digging later indicated the only option for changing your appointment was to mail the form back and wait for another I-797C with a new date (bet $1,000 it wouldn't have been an earlier date either).

So being good instruction-followers, we waited the month.  Now, I'm going to completely skip over the silliness (and expense) of taking six weeks and mailing 4 letters to schedule us for fingerprinting....at least for now.  What I'm completely bothered by is how we waited calmly for our delayed-six-weeks appointment only to arrive this morning to a huge, empty facility with several (very nice) employees patiently waiting for something to do.  The whole "we're so busy we couldn't possibly get this done sooner than 6 weeks" facade of their circa-1943 scheduling and communications system was a complete sham!  The ladies there told us we could have come sooner--just shown up any day--and they would have taken us....AAAAAAAAHHH!

Healthcare by the federal government anyone?

It's called waiting...

...as if that's all we're doing.  There's been no down time since we started this journey back in February.  Sure, it was pretty slow at the beginning, as we learned about the process and contemplated involvement.  But since the day we said yes, it's been a whirling dervish, so saying we're waiting is sort of a misnomer.

We're actually running, as fast as we can toward our son.  It's just that the road we're sprinting on is a long and winding one.  He's 7,500 miles away, and there's two long plane rides, a judge and two country's worth of immigration rules, and about $14,000 keeping us apart.

Although the waiting permeates our world, it's not like we're just standing around.  We’re filling out, and filing, papers with just about everyone; immigrations, State Dept., adoption-related foundations.  Thankfully, it feels like we’re writing fewer checks now.  There was a period of time where it felt like we're just going from place to place, getting in some long line, meeting someone new, and writing them a check.  It was almost likes you didn't really want to know exactly what it was for, just that it was done so you could move on to the next one.  But, we're all done with that now.

Now, we’re gathering resources, trying to get smarter on the medical side, and doing research on the education side.  We’re trying to figure out what our priorities should be, for him, and for all of us, once he gets here.  We’re trying to decide which language, and how much of it, we should learn to best communicate with Tommy; both when we meet him in Ethiopia, and when he comes home to us in America.  We're trying to figure out which "experts" we should listen to, about his medical condition, about his emotional condition, about his psychological condition.  We're trying to figure out priorities, because there's just soooooooo much to do.

.....oh, and we're waiting.

How could we not???

Over the weekend, the question was raised, "...but there are plenty of kids who need help in America; why go to Ethiopia?"  Well, here's one reason:

this is poverty in America

and this 

and finally, this...

Whereas 

THIS is poverty in Ethiopia

and this...

and this 

and this...

and finally, when we learned what happens when

people who can help (like us) don't

"aged out" is the term used to explain what happens if no one adopts a child before they reach 12 or 14 years old; they are turned out of the orphanage

to live (or die) on their own.

So, when people ask why we're adopting from Ethiopia,

I simply share with them what we (and now you) know about

how poverty affects kids in Ethiopia and then ask them...

HOW COULD WE NOT?