POST FROM E-MAIL

I'm testing blogger's ability to post from e-mail, rather than logging into blogger itself.

This is a pretty cool feature - if it works!

Coming to a blog near you - or at least this one.

Every now and then, I go back and re-read some of my old posts. A couple weeks ago, I realized that I would occasionally say write like - "more on that later" or "maybe I'll explain that more later on." So, I'm sortof preparing re-visit some of "that" in February. Sometime there-abouts we'll be in a waiting period of some sort, so updates will be largely about things not directly linked to the process, like getting the room ready, and upcoming "Guatemala night" (more on that later - hehe).

I also noticed that I've been providing more technical updates and fewer "reflections." This will be remedied in the coming months to be sure.

SO, here's a preview of the things I would like to blog about.

1) The "Language" of adoption. This is in some ways a really big deal and in other ways no big deal at all. We're not the least bit obsessed with worrying about political correctness and the like - I always refer to myself as unoffendable. At the same time, there are ways of talking and writing about adoption that one needs to consider. I've learned that some adopting parents are hyper-sensitive to these types of things, but I've also learned that one must speak clearly about the adoption itself so as to accurately explain what's going on. The title of this blog - for instance, might imply that I consider CJ to be a thing, a commodity, to be "gotten" so to speak. But really, I'm talking about how to go about finding a daughter with whom I will share my love by bringing a family together. There are entire chapters of books written about the language of adoption.

2) That brings me to my next future topic - our required readings. We're all finished up with those, and now are supposed to share them with friends and family. Luckily for us - the one we disliked the most is the one we didn't actually buy for ourselves -we borrowed it. The one's we have on our home and ready to lend out are Cross Cultural Adoption and Raising Adopted Children. You might find these at your local library as well, but let me know if you'd like to borrow our copies.

3) Incorporating Guatemalan culture and history. This is something I'm very much looking forward to, not just because of the food, but because history and ancestry intrigues me anyway. I've spend some time researching my own Huguenot background - so why shouldn't Carmen learn about her roots as well? Of course, our roots will be her roots as well. Should be fun!

4) Why a birth mother (specifically a Guatemalan woman) might choose adoption. There are chapters and books written about subjects related to this as well. I can never put myself in someone else's shoes, but it's important to at least try to understand something about the adoption from the birth-parent's perspective.

Tamale training

OK a looooong time ago, I posted on this blog that I wondered if I'd someday be making tamales for my Guatemalan born daughter.

Looks like I'll be making them even before actually becoming a father. Today, we bought the 2 main ingredients required for making tamales - corn husks and and corn flour for making masa. In fact, we've got 50 husks and a big bag of corn flour. This will allow us to make several batches, and hopefully get pretty good at it over time. The process is known to be difficult and time consuming - but quite fun and rewarding also. I'm pretty sure it'll be rewarding, as tamales are one of my favorite foods. Once we actually try this in a couple of weeks, I'll post our results here and on the my food blog - with differing points of view of course. More adoption news related to tamales will be revealed in the next month or two so keep in touch!

Tamales are actually are actually an ancient Native American food - common among the Maya in Guatemala. One of the major differences from the Mexican version would be that Guatemala tamales often use banana or plantain leaves. Not sure if we'll be able to find those readily, so we'll stick with corn husks for now. The meat can be made with pork, chicken, or beef, and the sauce can be red or green chili, mole, or one of many variations.

We're going to approximate this recipe for Tamales Colorados de Navidad - yup Christmas Tamales!!!

Nifty Links

As you might expect, we're really getting into learning about Guatemala - it's Geography (of course), food, people, history, and music.

I added a few links of places I visit regularly that have allowed me to feel somewhat connected to our daughters country of birth. I would also like to point them out.

Here are 2 links that are part of the Daily Photo Blog ring. This is pretty cool actually, people literally take photos of a place that folks in another part of the world hold dear. Maybe you'll find some place important to you.

Antigua is an ancient and colonial city in Guatemala's highlands. It's known for it's pleasant climate and beautiful architecture - generally considered one of the most gorgeous cities in Central America. Here's the Antigua Daily Photo site.
Also - here's the same kind of site for Buenos Aires - considered the Paris of South America for many of the same reasons. I had the opportunity to visit there many years ago (as has one of this blogs faithful readers).

Here's another awesome site with photos at Trek Earth Guatemala.

Check out a few shopping sites that offer hand made Guatemalan goods.
10,000 Villages - which has store locations around the US, including Ephrata and Philly.
Mayan Traditions - which offers cool items over the web.

Lake Atitlan is an awesome volcanic lake that is apparently a growing tourist attraction that would welcome any US visitor.

Tikal is considered one of the most impressive archaeological sites on the Western Hemisphere. And I'm pretty much a wanna-be archaeologist.

ENJOY!!!

We're in the system

More good news for those of you worried about us shady characters. Not only did we pass our various background and drug tests - but now the Department of Homeland Security's United States Citizenship and Immigration Office has our fingerprints! So, if we ever return to our life of crime, we'll have to start wearing gloves.

Yup, we've been fingerprinted- which is part of the requirements for gaining approval to bring a foreign born orphan into the country. And in our case, it's part of the requirement for CJ to gain her own citizenship by classifying her as an immediate relative (our daughter) - this all part of the I-600 process.

We had 2 options for places to have these fingerprints taken, Philadelphia and York. If anyone out there has to decide which place to go, don't even hesitate - drive to York. It's right off the bypass, the office is in a neat little farmhouse, and the people there were extremely nice.

Don't get me wrong, they've got some cool technology. Fingerprints are not done with ink anymore. They have this nifty scanning device. They spray some special solution on your fingers, wipe off the little scanner pad, stick the finger there, click a foot pedal and you're in the system. All fingers, thumbs, plus 4 fingers at once - both hands. The coolest part? The one lady was in a particularly good mood - all of their visits that day were from adopting parents!

Now, we wait for final approval of the I-600 and completion of the home study report.

The BIG visit

I'm thinking this might be a great time to put our house on the market. The house has never been cleaner, more organized, and certainly never been more "set-up". What I mean by setup is that each room is now totally defined. We've got 4 bedrooms, plus a family room and den just for the 2 of us - so previously we've always had at least 1 room as a complete mess with the door closed, and another room not really setup for anything useful - often just a storage area. Now, we've got all the rooms actually defined for a specific use. We've also got the new sidewalk referenced here, and I also recently finished replacing the last of the old windows (only took me 6 years!).

But, alas, it was all a big preparation for our home visit - the last truly scary portion of the home study. This to me was the part of the process that worried me the most. For some reason to visit someones office and agree to be interviewed is a more intentional step, thus - not nearly as worrisome. But for someone with so much control over our pending adoption to visit our home and judge it worthy or not for raising kids seems like an intrusion.

Let me tell you - not only do I have further confirmation that our social worker from Bethany is simply the best, not the least intrusive. For anyone out there considering this process, there really isn't anything to be scared of. It's not easy, but it's not as scary as it seems either. Jessica arrived just a few minutes early, and we introduced her to Penny, our mutt of a pooch. Then we gave her what amounted to a 15 minute tour of our house. Yup - just 15 minutes. No peaking in cabinets, no checking behind shower curtains, didn't even care to see the furnace or really inspect anything for safety. The main purpose literally was to determine if our home was large enough to support a family. Geez what a load off, but as some of our friends and blog-readers have recently confirmed - big re-organization, painting, and cleaning projects are more than worth it in the long run.

Once the tour was over, we spent some time talking about what the area and neighborhood are like. We discussed educational and cultural opportunities, as well as locations of shopping, fire departments, and parks. The required readings were discuss during this chat as well - I'll post more commentary on that later - but Jessica really seemed to value our opinion. We also discussed ways in which we plan to incorporate Guatemalan and Latino culture into CJ's life. More on that later on as well. {side note - I'm really hoping the waiting period is short - but it will provide me with time to ponder these topics}

Finally, Jessica reviewed our paperwork, provided some guidance on next steps, and pretty much declared the process in her court as we've done all of our paperwork at this point, and now that the home visit is in the bag, she can work on our home study report. She was unable to stay for lunch - but gladly accepted a "to go" order of Melissa's tasty quiche and lemon bars.

So, what are the next steps you might ask? Well..

1) Get fingerprinted by the department of homeland security. This is part of our approval for bringing a foreign born orphan into the country. that process will wrap up about a month after the fingerprinting.

2) Take our homestudy to Harrisburg for authentication. Yup, now that we have all the official documents - we have to take them to the state so they can tell us that they are official - yet again. The difference is, then they become like gold. No messing around - these are the documents that will be passed around between our agency, the Guatemalan government, and the American embassy in Guatemala City.

3) Wait for "final approval" from Bethany, who will then put us on the waiting list for a little girl. Yah, it's getting close, but still probably about 6-8 weeks before we're on that list.

That's it for now folks - there are more tiny updates, but I'm hitting the sack now after a long couple of days. Thanks so much for all your support and prayers. We welcome any words of encouragement as we get prepared to wrestle with more bureaucrats!

Who are we?

Well, I can tell you exactly who we are! In fact, We've got so many government agencies asking us to prove who we am that I'm pretty sure postman is wondering what's going on (tip to the red-head on that little joke).

We've got some government agencies asking us to ask other government agencies to prove who we are. Then once we do that we have to ask another government agency to authenticate the proof we just obtained from the second agency. Later, well send the proof and authentication to the first agency.

In one case I ordered a document online (way to go technology!) - then I FedEx-ed it back to the EXACT SAME OFFICE BUILDING to be stamped by a different agency within the same branch of government. Why? Well, because one agency is responsible for issuing the document, and the other is responsible for authenticating it. The document requester is the only one who can request authentication, which can only be done after the document has been delivered to the requester. Got all that?

Something tells me these folks have never heard of concept of Business Process Management - much less put any effort into improving those processes. As silly as all this is for us - I can't imagine how crazy it must seem to an insider. I will say this, the absolute most efficient agency by far has been the Department of Homeland Security. They turned around our request around in less than a week. OK, enough of the PM soapbox for now.

QUICK NEWS FLASH (literally after having seen a delivery reported via FedEx tracking)- the update portion of this post is that we've successfully obtained ALL of these documents. This is a major hurdle early in the process.

Here's a brief list of the ways in which we had to prove we exist, prove we are healthy, or prove we were not frauds.

1) Birth Certificate (one for each) - newly issued - proves we were born.
2) Marriage License - proves we were approved to be married.
3) Marriage Certificate - proves we actually went through with it.
4) References - I suppose these prove we know at least a few people who feels sorry enough for us to write something remotely nice about us.
4) Affidavit of names - lists all the names we've ever been known by (think all nicknames and formal derivations of names - this is a lot harder for married women). No, doufus and geekwad are not included in my list (Neither is Pat Sajak or Wink Martindale - hehe only some of you know what that's all about).
5) Medical report - proves we still exisit today. Actually, it's to show that we fooled a doctor into believing we're healthy.
6) HIV test - The interesting thing here is that I cannot actually find any document that says we would be disqualified if the test had come back positive.
7) Drug test - proves we don't eat poppy seed bagels or train with Barry Bonds.
8) Criminal background check - proves we never got caught.
9) Child abuse clearance - not going to make a joke here.
10) Employment letter - proves someone doesn't pay me enough for all my hard work!
11) Photos - yup pictures of ourselves and our home. This proves we are not Amish or Hobos. The coonidence of those 2 words in the same sentence may have never happened before in the history of the English language. That fact is not to be construed as me insuating the are related.
12) Passports - this essentially proves nothing given all of thee above!
I'm sure I missed something!

That's it for now - our social worker from Bethany will be visiting next week. Soon after that the dossier will be complete, and we'll be getting finger printed, and creating the formal packet to send to Guatemala. We're looking at 1-2 months before we get on the waiting list though -so let's not get ahead of ourselves!

My Watchword Text

Every year at the first Sunday worship service, each congregant chooses a personal watchword. These are usually single verses or brief Bible passages that provide some valuable insight or inspiration. This is a longstanding tradition similar to the use of daily texts that a regular opportunity for the same. In fact, many organizations within the church also choose watchwords - youth group, choir, boards, etc.

To be honest, usually the watchword is a nice proverb that seems interesting, but I forget about it by the end of January. This year, M & I were working the kitchen in prep for our pork and sauerkraut supper- with yours truly being in charge of mashed taters. Luckily, or good friend brought the watchwords downstairs and reminded us to choose one for ourselves. Getting back to the point - my watchword this year just might stick with me.

The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps. (Proverbs 16:9)

No doubt we'll need to keep this in mind during in 2007 as we continue the process to bringing home Carmen.

Truckin along!!!

We had our individual interviews this morning. I can't say enough about our social worker, Jessica. She just has a pleasant and comforting way about her - truly ensuring us that she's guiding and helping us through a process, rather than hunting for issues that might disqualify us.

While the red-head was being interviewed, I watched a video that discusses the adoption triad. Birth parents, child, adoptive parents. We're learning a lot about this concept, and the video highlighted the joys and pains experienced by all three after an adoption is complete - even many years after the fact. More on that some other time - I'll have lots of time to post about these kinds of things once we go into the waiting period.

In less than 2 weeks, we'll be having our home visit. This is where Jessica will actually come to our home to continue discussions and take a tour. I'm betting this won't be so scary either.

Meanwhile, we're prepping our I-600A application to the US Citizenship & Immigration Service. This will lead to the feds approving us to adopt and bring a foreign orphan into the United States of America. It will truly be the first step informing the government that we intend to bring home CJ. This approval will be referenced many many months from now while we're at the US Embassy in Guatemala City holding her as she becomes a US Citizen and our daughter.

According to the social worker, we're completing paperwork faster than most people. It doesn't seem like it to us, but she had previously told us that this part of the process will move as fast as we want it to move. Hopefully no one out there gets the impression that we're going to be bringing home a child next week! In reality, all of this work will get us onto the waiting list earlier, which is good, but they don't call it a waiting list for nothing! To recap the estimated time-line - we could expect to end up on a waiting list some time in March - April. That wait will be 3-6 months - so it will be Summer-time before we receive a referral.

Take care all - thanks for your thoughts and prayers.