It's probably over the ocean right now...

We (finally) got our corrected documents from the home study agency, and we drove up to Tallahassee yesterday morning to get them apostilled at the Secretary of State. It was an uneventful trip and they did not have any trouble verifying our notaries. So yesterday afternoon I made lots of photocopies and sent our documents "Global Express" straight to Russia. They should arrive within 5-7 business days. Since it doesn't look like accreditation will happen before then, we are in good shape. the documents are good for about a year, but hopefully we won't need to worry about that!

Interestingly, the national news has picked up on the Russian adoption delays. There have been several stories this last week, I guess because the last couple of agencies' accreditation finally expired. Although this didn't really affect anything, newspapers picked up on the fact that now there are NO accredited agencies in Russia. The only international adoptions occurring there are those that had already started proceedings for a particular child before loss of accreditation, or those whose agencies work in a few regions that don't require accreditation (but are risky in their own way). USA Today decided to write that Russian adoptions had been "stopped", as if the last expiration were instead a new law in Russia banning adoption! That's not the case at all. This is just a long bureaucratic delay, and there's no indication that Russia is going to prevent accreditation. The fact that they have asked for extra documents, while frustrating, suggests that they are paying attention to the agencies' applications in some way.

We'll let you know when there is an update! For now, I'm trying to get through the last couple weeks of the semester....tests to write, papers to grade, tests to grade...plenty to keep me busy!