Hooray for bureaucracy!

Yesterday was our big day of bureaucracy, and it went remarkable smoothly.

It all began when we left the house around 6:30 a.m. and drove up to Jacksonville (2 hours) to give fingerprints at the INS office (now under "Homeland Security"). I was expecting a big stone building in the downtown area...trying to find parking, dealing with mean immigration officers, etc. Basically, I was expecting the Milwaukee office (we went there a few times for Rob's immigration stuff since he's Canadian). Well, in Jacksonville it is instead a one-story building in a business park, with its own parking lot. It reminded me of Rob's engineering firm in Madison! At the door, we were met by an officer who told us to put basically everything but paperwork back in the car (fine) and then we went in through a metal detector to find a place that looked remarkably like a DMV. They gave us a number and we just waited there, ready to renew our driver's licenses...er...give fingerprints for our adoption application.

While we waited, I noticed two large photos framed on the wall - George W. Bush and Michael Chertoff (the Homeland Security guy). It reminded me of my semester in the Middle East in 1997, where every place in Jordan had a picture of (at the time) King Hussein. I also know that some Catholic places have pictures of the Pope on display. I didn't feel like these guys really measured up, but oh well. Rob was less fascinated by this than I was. He had a Tolkien book with him. Anyway, they called our names and we gave our prints, and that was that! All told, it took maybe 45 minutes. Fantastic! Now we wait for an approval from the INS for our adoption -- we don't need this approval until our second trip to Russia, so there shouldn't be any problem getting it on time.

We then headed over to Tallahassee to the Secretary of State's office where they apostille documents (i.e. verify that the notarizations are legitimate). We were making such good time that we even stopped for a fairly leisurely brunch at the Cracker Barrel. As we got close to Tallahassee, I figured we'd need to head downtown to a big office building, find parking, etc. Can you believe....it was outside the city, in a business park, with its own parking lot! I guess I didn't realize how different bureaucracy is down here -is this a Southern thing? There was no line in the office, and they looked through all our documents - 24 of them - and stapled approvals on them. It took less than half an hour...and a bargain at 10 bucks each (ugh).

We immediately went to a UPS store and made multiple copies of everything (we ended up making about 150 photocopies!) before sending our packet off to Valerie, our adoption agency caseworker. She will receive them all tomorrow. So, do you think we forgot anything? We hope not. But actually, Valerie already figured one thing out....she asked if I remembered to include the first part of the fees to be paid to the Russian government. Ooops! That check will be sent express mail tomorrow!

If everything is on the up and up, our packet will go the umbrella adoption agency with which our agency is affiliated, get approved, and will then go over to the Omsk Department of Education (DOE). This processing should take about a month. Sometime soon after that we should get permission to travel. I just learned today that we probably will NOT get a particular child's picture/info before we go, but that we will arrive and meet someone at the Omsk DOE who will show us information on a particular child they've chosen for us - we can agree to meet the child or ask for a different referral if we have some kind of concern (such as medical issues). Once we meet and confirm our intentions to adopt a particular baby, then the ball starts rolling for the Russian government to organize the adoption - so we will come home babyless to wait, and go back a month or two later when everything is ready.

For all you pray-ers out there:

* pray that our documents are all in order

* pray specifically that the umbrella agency will accept some documents that were signed in black ink, which we've just been told were supposed to be in blue ink (I wish I were kidding - no one had told us about the importance of non-black ink, which helps them know it's not a photocopy). It wouldn't be too bad to do these forms over, since they are among the few that don't require notarization/apostilles, but it would still be a delay.

* pray for my work, as I need to do some catching up from my travel day on Wednesday

* pray that our baby is doing all right in his/her crib right now!

* also, we thank God for some very sweet new friends who (unfortunately) are moving away and (fortunately) have provided us with a crib, rocking chair, and dresser for the baby! How nice to have one less thing to think about (or really, three less things...)

Thanks again for so much support - please feel free to leave comments (you can do so anonymously, without an account, by clicking on any set of comments and then adding your own).

We'll let you know as soon as we have heard more about whether our packet is confirmed to be complete!

Sarah