Verners

Great news. We just received our final, notarized home study!! On Tuesday morning Crissy will hand deliver it to Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) with our completed I-600A (“Orange”) form and several other important documents (birth certificates, marriage certificate, proof of health insurance & copies of our most recent tax return and a $545 money order…). We would go tomorrow but they only handle the adoption business on Tuesdays. Within 2-3 weeks we will have an approved I-171H document. This form declares that we are eligible to receive an adopted child from China. We will travel with it to China. We’ll need to guard it with our lives for the next year or so.

We’re excited about this step because it is the first thing we’ve done that actually connects us to our future daughter in China. It’s also the last piece of information we need to complete our dossier. If all goes well, we will be sending a certified and authenticated dossier to China within 1 month!

Technorati Profile

When we tell people about our adoption to China, one of the first questions people seem to ask is, “when will you get your baby?” At that point we tend to elaborate on the complexity of the adoption process… We thougt we’d sit down and commit to paper (blog) what we’ve accomplished so far in this very long and arduous process.

Wednesday, June 7, 2006
We begin working on application for America World Adoption Agency (AWAA)
www.awaa.org

Monday, June 19, 2006
Mailed completed application to America World

Friday, June 23, 2006
Application approved by America World!

Thursday, June 29, 2006
Received America World adoption packet

Monday, July 10, 2006
Contacted Family Connections Adoption Agency (FCAA) for home study
www.fcadoptions.org

Saturday, July 15, 2006
Attended Adoption Preparation Class #1 at FCAA

Monday, July 17, 2006
Home study intake at FCAA with Jan Noll

Monday, July 17, 2006
Sent completed agreement (and 1^st payment) to America World

Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Began (25 page!) “self-study” for home study

Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Crissy drives to San Diego county clerk to get birth certificate & marriage certificate

Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Cory and Crissy fingerprinted (“live scan”)

Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Received employment verification letter from christianaudio

Thursday, July 20, 2006
Crissy goes to DMV to request reports for us

Thursday, July 20, 2006
Cory applies for birth certificate from L.A. county “vital records”

Monday, July 24, 2006
Received dossier packet / paperwork from America World

Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Cory goes to Kinko’s to get passport photos & goes to post office in Escondido to apply for passport

Friday, July 28, 2006
Received employment verification letter from Dr. Nick

Saturday, July 29, 2006
Submitted completed home study application and initial payment to FCAA

Saturday, July 29, 2006
Prep class #2 and #3 at FCAA (an all day class)

Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Crissy gets physical and blood work

Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Personal references sent out by FCAA

Sunday, August 6, 2006
Crissy finishes “self-study” for home study!

Monday, August 7, 2006
Cory finishes “self-study” for home study!

Monday, August 7, 2006
Cory gets physical and blood work

Friday, August 11, 2006
We find out that our friends the Clarks are also in the middle of an international adoption to Russia! They are using AWAA & FCAA!

Saturday, August 13, 2006
Adoption photo shoot for dossier

\Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Contacted “buddy-family” to talk about our adoption

Thursday, August 24, 2006
Home study checklist complete! We’re assigned a social worker for home study.
This is a big step. This list included no less than 31 to-dos to just begin the written study phase. Some of these have already been mentioned. A few of the other things we had to provide: 5 references, proof of auto and heath insurance, therapist questionnaire, 1040, W2’s, sibling info sheet, parenting profile form, CA child abuse and neglect quiz, buddy form, school release forms and more.

Friday, August 25, 2006
Started a blog to chronicle our adoption story

Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Individual interviews with our social worker Jaida

Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Cory applies for police report at San Diego County Sheriffs Dept.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Social worker – Jaida – (who is very nice) home visit

Thursday, August 31, 2006
Crissy applies for police report at San Diego County Sheriffs Dept.

Monday, September 4, 2006
Our home study is completed

Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Home study goes to FCAA main office in Modesto for approval

Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Crissy goes to post office in San Marcos to apply for passport
(She pays extra to rush her passport!)

Thursday, September 7, 2006
Cory begins learning Chinese

Monday, September 11, 2006
Final payment to FCAA for home study

Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Home study goes to America World for FINAL approval!!!!!

Washing my hair…

Luke: Dad, why yourm hair not get wet?

Dad: My hair is wet.

Luke: But, why yourm hair not get down in your face?

Dad: Oh, you mean why doesn’t Dad have hair there? (pointing)

Levi: Luke, some people are born that way, God just makes them like that. Errm, or they just come out without hair. (pause and thinking) Right Dad?

Dad: (Smiles) Well some people loose their hair when they get older.

Levi: Yeah Dad, I like your hair, it’s spikey!

Luke: YEAH (in low rough tones) SPIKEY’S AWESOME!!!!

Dad: Thanks guys.

My friend John captures similar conversations on his blog – http://flagrantdisregard.com/ His blog is worth reading.

Ok, I’m learning Chinese again.  I was happy to find out that only 5,000 (of almost 80,000) Chinese characters are commonly used. 

Thanks to those who commented & emailed suggestions for keeping on keeping on.

We’ve just finished hosting two (wonderful) Japanese exchange students in our home over the last couple of weeks. The students – Aya and Miki – are sweet girls who were here learning English at Cal State San Marcos through Home Stay Intl. We learned about the HSI program a couple of years ago and applied right away but just now had our 1st students.

It was such a great experience; I highly recommend it. We all learned a lot about Japanese culture. They carried over what must have been ½ suitcase full of Japanese snacks and gifts. We learned the art of Japanese paper folding (Origami – our living room table looks like Noah’s Ark), learned to eat tofu cold right out of the box, to make a peace sign in every picture and ultimately realized we could stand to eat a bit less!

They tried surfing, cruised the SD Harbor to Coronado on a ferry, attended a (cousin’s) wedding, visited Old Town, went to Universal Studios, Disneyland and went to church with us(!) among many, many other things.

They were happy to offer their impressions along the way which were often amusing…

1. Everything here is big. This was a common theme that came up well before our trips to Costco and Frys.
2. We “eat a lot!!!”
3. Mexican food is really good
4. Tacos are better than burritos
5. Everyone here is very freindry
6. English is very hard to learn and
7. Crissy drives very fast

It was really difficult to see them off this morning. We are so glad to have spent this time with Aya and Miki and hope we’ll be able to see them again should they return to the U.S. or should we go to Japan.

As I’ve mentioned in a past post or two, I’ve been listening through a biography on Mao Zedong for about a month now.  The book, titled Mao: The Unknown Story, is 830 pages long!  That amounted to no less than 25 CD’s of listening.  I stumbled across the book at the San Marcos library and picked it up for reasons mentioned in past posts.  We want to learn as much as we can about China to connect our lives with the people of China.

The book represents a significant amount of research on the part of the authors, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, who claim that Mao was personally responsible for well over 70 million peacetime deaths and was willing to sacrifice half of China become a nuclear superpower.  Some of the claims of the book are presently under heavy debate outside of China (the book is actually banned in China).  However according to the authors the book “includes interviews with hundreds of people who were close to Mao Zedong at some point in his life and reveals the contents of newly opened archives”.  If this is true at least some of the claims of the book must be factual.

Despite the controversy it is a compelling account of a people who seemed to have suffered greatly under Mao’s regime.  Frankly, I found it almost impossible to fathom much of the book.  I thought a lot about what it must have been like for those who experienced life under Mao.  According to the authors hundreds of millions of Chinese lived for decades on the brink of starvation.  Tens of millions were separated from families, tortured, murdered and exiled.  China’s rich cultural heritage was all but obliterated in no less than five years.

By the way I do plan to read another account of Mao’s life…one that is approved by the Chinese government.  I would like to hear the “pro Mao” account as well.

Went to the Vista library earlier today and picked up a set of “Chinese (Mandarin)” learning tapes. Whew! Decided to quit learning Chinese about ten minutes later. Feeling better tonight. May start up again tomorrow.

One of the more daunting aspects of an international adoption is learning about the culture of the country you’re adopting from. Our family knew little to nothing about Chinese culture prior to beginning our adoption 3+ months ago. Since then we have been reading books, watching documentaries, videos and searching online to find out as much as we can about China.

It could be counted as over-zealousness, I suppose, to be already diving into Chinese culture with our daughter’s arrival 14+ months out. I’m not sure it is. Imagine what can be learned in a period of months or years. I wonder what it might mean to our daughter when she’s old enough to understand why we’ve spent years learning about China. We’re doing this so she will know that she is important to us. We’ll eventually learn with her but why not get a head start. As we develop a love for China, teaching her to have the same feelings will be so much more natural.

Obviously there are reasons beyond wanting our daughter to see our love for her. We believe it will be important to teach her about Chinese culture. We all have an innate, possibly God given, desire to know our roots. It’s part of the community we all desire. We don’t want our daughter to miss out on this important aspect of her life just because she was adopted into another culture.

And we want to increase our family’s view of the world. We want our children to know that not everyone thinks as we do, eats what we do, has what we have. This broadening of our horizon will be an immense blessing to us as well. And we’re encouraged about the possibilities. There seem to be a growing number of resources available for families who have adopted children from China. I read an article this morning on this subject that prompted this post.

Well, for now I think we’ll just take it a step at a time. I’m planning to start some language learning CD’s in the next week or so. This week I’m also starting a biography on Hudson Taylor who was a missionary to China in the early 20th century. I just finished the MAO biography which will be the subject of future posts I’m sure.

Please let us know if you hear of anything that will help us to connect our lives with China.

Grace and Peace.