Thursday, April 27, 2006

The Second Trimester

The second trimester paperchase has officially begun. My homestudy is complete and has been turned in to both the placement agency and the INS (immigration). The placement agency has officially transferred me from the family finders team to the China adoption program team, and I have a whole new mountain of paperwork to deal with. It's actually not too bad, though, because a lot of it got done while I was preparing for the homestudy. I still have a few loose ends to tie up, and we have to wait for the INS to approve me.

Once I send the last of that back, then I start The Wait. WACAP will authenticate all of my documents and then send my dossier to China for approval and formal matching with Xiao Tian. They said it'll be 3-5 months to travel from that point. So now we know for sure that I'm looking at late summer or early Fall, which is absolutely perfect, because school will be in session by the time he gets home and he can start associating with other deaf kids and picking up the language soon after arriving.

I'm in the process of learning some Chinese sign language. Beautiful coincidence--I ran into the pastor of the OTHER deaf church in my area, and she asked how the adoption process was going. I mentioned the switch from Russia to China, and she got all excited. Seems that she knows a seminary student from China who had something to do with putting together an instructional DVD on Chinese sign. This lady had actually given her a copy of it, and she was willing to send it to me! So I now have this wonderful DVD. The only minor problem is that it was geared for Chinese people to learn sign, not English speakers, so the instructor is babbling in Chinese to explain the sign she is teaching, while the English subtitling gives only the word she is teaching. But I'm still getting a little bit of it. I gotta get me some Chinese friends!

I also found a couple of listservs for people adopting from China. One is for general adoption, and the other is for singles adopting. I am amazed how many singles are out there adopting! A number of them are in the same boat I am--haven't met the right person for that forever commitment yet, but want to build their families before they get much older. Some neat people and lots to learn from them.

The next update will probably come when I'm in the DTC status (I think that stands for Dossier To China), just wanted to let folks know where things stood for now. Peace out!