Paper work and mandatory "training"...

Hi all,
Well, this past week has been busy! We are working on the first set of paperwork, which is the application. Here is what is included in the application...

• Service agreement
• Fee policy (notarized)
• Financial statement (notarized)
• 1040 copy, notarized cover sheet
• medical exam forms
• photos of house
• directions to house
• employment letters
• birth and marriage certificates
• 4 references (one neighbor)
• release – photos and related mat’ls
• risks in Intercountry adoption
• philosophy and discipline (agree to no spanking policy)
• civil rights compliance
• autobiographies (6-11 pages each person)
• child conditions (what medical conditions we will accept-a detailed list of 80 items for which we must answer yes, no, or unsure)
• important disclosures about adopting from vietnam (notarized)
• PA child abuse and criminal clearances

Believe it or not we are almost done with the application. We finished our autobiographies last night. Mine was 11 pages and Dave's was 6 pages (this probably makes sense to those of you who know us well!). The next thing we need to do is clean up the outside of our condo so that we can take some pictures. If all goes well, we will have our home visit in May. We still have a long time to wait, and it is very doubful that we will get matched with a child before next year. But at least we feel as if we are making progress now.

We attended an all-day required course this past Wednesday with other prospective adoptive parents. It was extremely helpful and the agency (Pearl S. Buck) did an excellent job trying to prepare us for this huge commitment! The agency strongly encourages prospective parents to embrace the culture of their child. So, we spent a lot of time covering cultural issues. I am trying to convince Dave to learn Vietnamese now that he has become almost fluent in Spanish! It is a challenging language to learn though, so maybe the best we can hope for is to learn some key words(?) Also, we spent time going over our adoption fears and how to handle them. Finally, we spent time on common issues that adopted children have, mostly psycological. It is a huge adjustment for the child-imagine being removed from everything you know and flying on a plane to live in a new country! It is very confusing for the child and it may take a while for the child to calm down and bond with his/her new parents. The agency suggested limiting visitors until after the baby bonds to his/her parents, which could take several weeks.