We were making dinner and I (Peggy) made the mistake of trying to get her to change her clothes because the snow pants she had on were way too small and pulling on her shoulders and riding up. I showed her the pajama pants and she shook her head yes and let me help her change and then immediately changed her mind and wanted her old clothes back on. She quickly got them back on and then went into the kitchen and started to cry. I held her and she just kept saying she wanted to go back with the other children. She wanted us to call the taksi to take her back. So we called Elona and asked her to talk with Akvila and try to calm her down and that if she really wanted to go back we would take her. So after a few minutes she got her boots and coat on and was ready to go out the door, but not without her Disney Princess backpack we got her. I think she thought I was going to take it away because I looked inside to see what she had brought with her. I reassured her that it was hers and then she gave grandma a hug and we went outside to meet the taksi. She was using the flashlight we brought her and continued to have it on inside the dark taksi while we drove back. I think she blinded the driver more than a few times and we apologized to him but he said no problem.
When we got there we took her inside and went up to her group and she had us help her change out of her snow pants and in to her skirt, and then she went into the children's playroom and was happy back at home. It broke our hearts a little to have to take her back but it was the first time she had been outside the orphanage other than for doctors and such. I imagine its like any other child leaving home to spend the night without their parents for the first time, they usually change their mind and call to come home.
Akvila wants us to come back tomorrow so we hope she will be willing to come and spend the day with us at the apartment and around town rather than us having to just visit for a few hours at the orphanage. But we will leave that up to her.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Day 4 - Akvila has come to the apartment
She is a little scared, but she is trying to help momma with dinner. We have 2 hours with her (until we can take her back), unless she loses it.
More to come on this post later.
More to come on this post later.
Day 4 - Pictures
For this early post, I will just post pictures.
<Top> Picture outside Catholic Church
<Top> Picture outside Catholic Church
<Top> Picture outside Catholic Church
<Top> Picture down the alley from Church
<Top> Outside of the little grocery store
<Top> Not sure which street this is
<Top> Another church, not sure what kind
<Top> Some street signs, The red "X" I think is a bus stop.
The big "P" is for parking for 10, 20 50 minutes?
<Top> Another alley way down from a church
<Top> Building
<Top> Vokiečių Gatvė (German Street)
<Top> Vokiečių Gatvė 10 (There is a driveway under flags)
This is were we are staying.
<Top> Old Town Square (Outside from where we are staying)
<Top> Theresa and Peggy (It is like -7° C)
Behind them is where we are staying; it is 9am in this picture.
<Top> Wayne and Peggy (9am, we didn't sleep well)
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Day 4 - Early Random thoughts
Last night, we had dinner very early, 16:30. I was so hungry, I haven't been able to eat or think straight. We were sitting around the dinner table talking about what happened on Sunday, and all I could keep thinking about was that I could not understand my daughter. So after dinner I broke out the English-Lithuanian dictionary and was trying to remember key words. The words I have so much trouble trying to say and remember is "prašau", which means "please". "Labai ačiu" means "Thank you very much", and lastly "nėra už ką" means "You are very welcome."
So a few minutes ago I came back in from smoking and I am looking around the courtyard and I start to think. I have not seen any Ford/Lincoln/Mercury or even Chevy vehicles. I know those would be "foreign" here, but it is so odd since we see them all the time in America. Now I have seen some Mazda's and Nissan's, which I am not too surprised about. The takis are mostly VW and Mercedes. There are a few cars that I know we used to have in the States at one time, but you do not see them as much is, Peugot and Renault. There are a couple others which just have a "symbol", but I am not sure what they are.
These are just a couple of things that I am thinking about... trust me there is about a thousand more that I could type in all morning.
We are going to see Akvila again this morning... takis is picking us up at 09:45 hrs and we should be able to spend 2 hours with her today. During that time, she will decide if she wants to come back to the apartment with us.
So a few minutes ago I came back in from smoking and I am looking around the courtyard and I start to think. I have not seen any Ford/Lincoln/Mercury or even Chevy vehicles. I know those would be "foreign" here, but it is so odd since we see them all the time in America. Now I have seen some Mazda's and Nissan's, which I am not too surprised about. The takis are mostly VW and Mercedes. There are a few cars that I know we used to have in the States at one time, but you do not see them as much is, Peugot and Renault. There are a couple others which just have a "symbol", but I am not sure what they are.
These are just a couple of things that I am thinking about... trust me there is about a thousand more that I could type in all morning.
We are going to see Akvila again this morning... takis is picking us up at 09:45 hrs and we should be able to spend 2 hours with her today. During that time, she will decide if she wants to come back to the apartment with us.
Day 3 - We meet Akvila
Ok, we finally got to go see Akvila, break out the kleenex. But lets start from the beginning.
Last night we could not sleep. I don't know if was because of the time change or since we knew we were going to the orphanage, but our brains would just not shut off. So, this morning when Peg got up, she made some breakfast and we got ready to go to the orphanage.
On the way there Elona tells us there is a chance that we could bring her back to the apartment and keep her here until our court date on Friday. This surprises us!! The orphanage is under quarantine to outsiders. No one inside is sick, they just don't want the kids to get sick, because a couple of years ago a couple of kids had died. So we may not be able to go inside. But it is Akvila's choice if she want to come to the apartment or not.
So when we arrive, they allow us inside and we go upstairs to her part of the orphanage. Elona speaks to the case worker in Lithuanian that Akvila has guests. She comes out wearing the jumper (zip up sweater) that we had her name put on (Thanks to Bowen Embroidery in Mt. Juliet, TN) and she goes straight to Peggy and says "Momma" and gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. After a couple of seconds of hugging she comes to me and says "tėtė" which means "dad" and gives me a hug. She then goes back to Peg and hugs her again. In an orphanage, children rarely see men, so she is not used to me yet. After the hug she stands back to a wall and speaks to Elona and says "momma is very beautiful and dad is very strong and big." The other kids that are there want to play and see what Peg has in the bag. So we finally get to move to another room (Akvila hand in hand with Peggy) and we can play and talk without the other kids.
Akvila starts to play around and we get a couple of pictures. Peg gives Akvila the bag, which has a teddy bear (after closer examination, it is a cat) and a package of cookies. Elona then talks to Akvila asking questions about what she likes (food; which she loves bananas) and what she likes to do (play with dolls, help the other caregivers and color). After about a half an hour, Elona asks Akvila if she would like to go to the apartment with us. Body language explained it all to us. She shook her head no and she got very quite and kept her head down. Elona spoke to her a lot, but Akvila would not say why she did not want to come; it took a few minutes then Akvila told her something. Elona explains to us that she really wants to come, but since we do not understand what she is saying and "visa-versa" she is scared. We told Elona to tell her we understand, we will come back and see her tomorrow and that we will practice our Lithuanian and try to understand her more. So it is her lunch time and visiting hours are over.
She goes in and eats while we spoke to Elona. Elona is very surprised she did not want to come. She got to pack her stuff (on Friday); what she could bring and was all ready to go. We told Elona we understand and were not upset by what had happened. We told her we don't want to force anything on her just yet, not until we have to. After lunch, Akvila came to the room we were waiting in to say goodbye. We hugged and kissed some more... well me not as much. She was happy and she knew she would see us again tomorrow.
So we left the orphanage about 12:40 hrs and came back to our apartment without our little girl. :-(
Here are a few pictures that we took. Some are a little blurry because she was running around alot and some are a little darker because of the sun shining in the room.
So, I hope you all have enjoyed today's installment. I myself am almost in tears just thinking about how this day went. It saddens me some that she didn't come with us. But soon she will be with us all the time.
Oh BTW, today is our Anniversary. I am a little confused by the times here and in the states. I thought yesterday was the 30th of January.
Last night we could not sleep. I don't know if was because of the time change or since we knew we were going to the orphanage, but our brains would just not shut off. So, this morning when Peg got up, she made some breakfast and we got ready to go to the orphanage.
On the way there Elona tells us there is a chance that we could bring her back to the apartment and keep her here until our court date on Friday. This surprises us!! The orphanage is under quarantine to outsiders. No one inside is sick, they just don't want the kids to get sick, because a couple of years ago a couple of kids had died. So we may not be able to go inside. But it is Akvila's choice if she want to come to the apartment or not.
So when we arrive, they allow us inside and we go upstairs to her part of the orphanage. Elona speaks to the case worker in Lithuanian that Akvila has guests. She comes out wearing the jumper (zip up sweater) that we had her name put on (Thanks to Bowen Embroidery in Mt. Juliet, TN) and she goes straight to Peggy and says "Momma" and gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. After a couple of seconds of hugging she comes to me and says "tėtė" which means "dad" and gives me a hug. She then goes back to Peg and hugs her again. In an orphanage, children rarely see men, so she is not used to me yet. After the hug she stands back to a wall and speaks to Elona and says "momma is very beautiful and dad is very strong and big." The other kids that are there want to play and see what Peg has in the bag. So we finally get to move to another room (Akvila hand in hand with Peggy) and we can play and talk without the other kids.
Akvila starts to play around and we get a couple of pictures. Peg gives Akvila the bag, which has a teddy bear (after closer examination, it is a cat) and a package of cookies. Elona then talks to Akvila asking questions about what she likes (food; which she loves bananas) and what she likes to do (play with dolls, help the other caregivers and color). After about a half an hour, Elona asks Akvila if she would like to go to the apartment with us. Body language explained it all to us. She shook her head no and she got very quite and kept her head down. Elona spoke to her a lot, but Akvila would not say why she did not want to come; it took a few minutes then Akvila told her something. Elona explains to us that she really wants to come, but since we do not understand what she is saying and "visa-versa" she is scared. We told Elona to tell her we understand, we will come back and see her tomorrow and that we will practice our Lithuanian and try to understand her more. So it is her lunch time and visiting hours are over.
She goes in and eats while we spoke to Elona. Elona is very surprised she did not want to come. She got to pack her stuff (on Friday); what she could bring and was all ready to go. We told Elona we understand and were not upset by what had happened. We told her we don't want to force anything on her just yet, not until we have to. After lunch, Akvila came to the room we were waiting in to say goodbye. We hugged and kissed some more... well me not as much. She was happy and she knew she would see us again tomorrow.
So we left the orphanage about 12:40 hrs and came back to our apartment without our little girl. :-(
Here are a few pictures that we took. Some are a little blurry because she was running around alot and some are a little darker because of the sun shining in the room.
So, I hope you all have enjoyed today's installment. I myself am almost in tears just thinking about how this day went. It saddens me some that she didn't come with us. But soon she will be with us all the time.
Oh BTW, today is our Anniversary. I am a little confused by the times here and in the states. I thought yesterday was the 30th of January.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Day 2 - Getting settled
So today, we got up at 10:30; we were soooo tired. We knew we had to try and locate mom. From e-mails from last night we thought she might be arriving in LT today at 13:40.
So Peg made some breakfast. She cooked up some eggs and heated some meat that looks like salami, it wasn't, but it was good. We had also bought some bread so we made "breakfast" sandwiches. We got ready to go to the airport and find mom.
Where ever we go, we call Elona. She contacts the takis for us and tells them where we need to go. So she called and minutes later it was there.
So while at the airport, the plane has already landed, but we don't see mom. After about a half an hour later she walks out with an airport employee; her bag has also been misplaced. She gives us a big hug, and tells us what has happened to her. This is an e-mail she wrote to her friends and family.
So we call Elona to be picked up to head back to the apartment. We get back, get mom situated and then Peg and I (mom didn't want to go) head out to "Akropolis" (http://www.akropolis.lt/akropolis-vilnius). This is a huge 150 shopping mall with a very large supermarket (Super Wal-Mart is what I am calling it). We go through the aisles trying to decifer the LT language and get what we needed. The interesting thing is they do not bag your groceries and they charge you for the "plastic bags." So once again we call Elona and she calls a takis for us; and we head back to the apartment.
So we decided to have spaghetti with ground meat in the sauce for dinner. We checked the package to our dictionary to make sure it actually was "ground beef", which we were in luck; it was. This is the pictures that Peg took.
So after dinner me and Peg went out to the ATM and the little grocery store because we forgot a couple of things at Super Wal-Mart. Peggy snapped a couple of pictures.
Sorry some are a little blurry, because we had a "bum" following us begging for money.
This is a view of the apartment. We are on the second floor, behind this tree, the 4 windows are to our apartment.
I forgot to mention this earlier in the blog, but this morning as I am checking my e-mail I see an e-mail from a "Family" site that I used to go to. Inside the e-mail states "Happy Anniversary Wayne and Peggy Griffith". Oh, its our anniversary; I chuckle and look over at Peg and tell her "Happy Anniversary".
One last thing before I sign off for the night, Peg took some pictures of our "money".
So Peg made some breakfast. She cooked up some eggs and heated some meat that looks like salami, it wasn't, but it was good. We had also bought some bread so we made "breakfast" sandwiches. We got ready to go to the airport and find mom.
Where ever we go, we call Elona. She contacts the takis for us and tells them where we need to go. So she called and minutes later it was there.
So while at the airport, the plane has already landed, but we don't see mom. After about a half an hour later she walks out with an airport employee; her bag has also been misplaced. She gives us a big hug, and tells us what has happened to her. This is an e-mail she wrote to her friends and family.
Dear Friends Family,
We are finally here to adopt Akvile. It was a disaster getting here. Ginny took me to Cleveland and stayed with me until it was time to check in to board. Then the fun begins.The plane was delayed and then they told us to board and then they kept us on board for a couple hours because there were problems with snow in Newark and there were too many planes in the air so they waited for a release to say we could fly. The trip itself was 1 hr & 10 min.Whoo Hoo! Now I in Newark New Jersey.The first flight time was to be like 2:00 and then after numerous delays, we finally board for a departure time of 11:55 PM. When we are all on board, the Captain (a woman) gets on the mike and tells us she has been in the air and now scheduled for too many hours, so she said it was against regulations and she must walk off the plane., She said for us not to disembark, as they would try to find a pilot who has not flown too many hours that day. About twenty minutes later, they announce that all pilots are tapped out and we need to disembark, as we will not be flying that night. We would have to find a comfortable spot to rest in the airport as there are not hotels available. So about a half hour later, they brought out oranges, apples, orange juice and cookies and mini pretzels for us to eat if we were hungry. Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the delays was because thay needed the plane fixed. Things didn't look good, so they had switched us to another terminal to board. Then they finally called us to come back to the first terminal because the plane had been repaired. The next day we were to fly to Frankfurt at 10:30. They had another flight going to Frankfurt at 9:30. I kind of knew they wouldn't do two in an hour. And they didn't. It was rescheduled for 5:30. I decided To check at the Continental terminal to see that all was OK and was advised that I would have to reschedule flights, as there would not be a connecting flight to Vilnius, Lithuania. So I went to Copenhagen and then went to Vilnius by Scandanavian Airways. Only I more hitch no suitcases. Wayne & Peggy didn't get theirs either. Theirs are in Detroit. Only God knows where mine is, we haven't found out yet. I should fly home on Feb 17th. I hope it only takes 2 days instead of 3.
So we call Elona to be picked up to head back to the apartment. We get back, get mom situated and then Peg and I (mom didn't want to go) head out to "Akropolis" (http://www.akropolis.lt/akropolis-vilnius). This is a huge 150 shopping mall with a very large supermarket (Super Wal-Mart is what I am calling it). We go through the aisles trying to decifer the LT language and get what we needed. The interesting thing is they do not bag your groceries and they charge you for the "plastic bags." So once again we call Elona and she calls a takis for us; and we head back to the apartment.
So we decided to have spaghetti with ground meat in the sauce for dinner. We checked the package to our dictionary to make sure it actually was "ground beef", which we were in luck; it was. This is the pictures that Peg took.
So after dinner me and Peg went out to the ATM and the little grocery store because we forgot a couple of things at Super Wal-Mart. Peggy snapped a couple of pictures.
Sorry some are a little blurry, because we had a "bum" following us begging for money.
This is a view of the apartment. We are on the second floor, behind this tree, the 4 windows are to our apartment.
I forgot to mention this earlier in the blog, but this morning as I am checking my e-mail I see an e-mail from a "Family" site that I used to go to. Inside the e-mail states "Happy Anniversary Wayne and Peggy Griffith". Oh, its our anniversary; I chuckle and look over at Peg and tell her "Happy Anniversary".
One last thing before I sign off for the night, Peg took some pictures of our "money".
For the picture above; the coins on the right, starting from the top
20 centu
10 centu
5 centai
2 centai
The Bills are
200 Litas
100 Litas
50 Litas
20 Litas
10 Litas
and the coin under the bills is a 5 Lita coin; no bills for a 5.
Good Night All, we are going to visit Akvila tomorrow!
Day 1 - We are in Lithuania!
As you may see, I am switching from "Step" to "Day".
So our contact in LT was at the airport waiting for us. That was good. So after we left our contact info for the "missing" baggage, we board the taxi (takis) and head for the apartment. We are talking with our contact Elona in the takis and she asks us when do we want to go to the orphange. Time for the tears to start... I ask Elona if they told her when we were coming and the answer was yes. She is waiting for her Mum and dad.... I am sure she is still wondering where we were. We don't plan on going until tomorrow (Sunday) because we have no luggage and nothing to wear.
So last night we came to the apartment (if you want to call it that) got the tour and then we went down to the local shopping area and got some stuff we needed. Our "guide" Elona took us down there and also showed us were the ATM was as well.
We came back to the apartment and got situated after Elona left. We changed out of our clothes (into whatever we had packed, for me it was pant long john and a clean shirt. For Peg it was a clean shirt and pant long john) and started to relax some. We checked our bank account, checked our e-mail and had a snack and worked on the blog I posted last night.
We finally went to sleep at 00:30 (that is after midnight, everything here is in Military time) and that would have been 3:30pm CT.
<update, the time difference is 8 hours; Central time to LT time> So when I wrote this I put the wrong time above, the time would have been 4:30 CT
So our contact in LT was at the airport waiting for us. That was good. So after we left our contact info for the "missing" baggage, we board the taxi (takis) and head for the apartment. We are talking with our contact Elona in the takis and she asks us when do we want to go to the orphange. Time for the tears to start... I ask Elona if they told her when we were coming and the answer was yes. She is waiting for her Mum and dad.... I am sure she is still wondering where we were. We don't plan on going until tomorrow (Sunday) because we have no luggage and nothing to wear.
So last night we came to the apartment (if you want to call it that) got the tour and then we went down to the local shopping area and got some stuff we needed. Our "guide" Elona took us down there and also showed us were the ATM was as well.
We came back to the apartment and got situated after Elona left. We changed out of our clothes (into whatever we had packed, for me it was pant long john and a clean shirt. For Peg it was a clean shirt and pant long john) and started to relax some. We checked our bank account, checked our e-mail and had a snack and worked on the blog I posted last night.
We finally went to sleep at 00:30 (that is after midnight, everything here is in Military time) and that would have been 3:30pm CT.
<update, the time difference is 8 hours; Central time to LT time> So when I wrote this I put the wrong time above, the time would have been 4:30 CT
Step 6 of the Journey - Traveling
I would have posted this on the 28th, but we were just too tired…
Well, today January 27th we got up at 6am and could not go back to sleep. We were both so excited. We got everything looked up on the web. I printed out maps for Detroit and Amsterdam
Our cab arrives and we head to the airport. Checked our bags, smooth. Got to security…. Extra smooth. Had an hour and a half wait for our plane to arrive. I (Wayne) found a smoking area in the airport, (yes bad habit)… it cost me $4 to go inside, but I needed it. I came back to the terminal waiting for the plane to arrive. We watched the plane arrive and then a few minutes later there is announcement “there is a problem with the plane. There is a computer that is not functioning and there is no part in this airport.” The swarm to the counter begins. We hear that the part will be coming from Atlanta
So we waited and waited and then around 2pm we hear that it could be another hour or more before departure. So we got back in line again because now we knew we would likely miss our connecting flight in Detroit Amsterdam Frankfort to Vilnius so he worked on getting us to Frankfurt in time to make that connection. So we boarded the extremely late flight to Detroit and landed there around 6:45PM Eastern. The flight to Frankfurt , Germany Detroit to Frankfurt, on the screen it showing our arrival time fluctuate with the wind changes praying that we make it to Frankfurt to meet up with mom and get on the plane to Vilnius at 10:50AM Frankfurt . The one funny thing about this is mom has no idea that we have been rerouted to join up with her. Peg says she is probably going to cry when she sees us. She was very nervous about having to fly alone. Well the movie is coming on and we need to get some sleep. Hopefully this post will end with us landing in LT when planned.
Uhhh, no that didn’t happen. We arrived in Frankfurt and ran through the airport like crazy people only to get to the gate for our connection to Vilnius Vilnius Tallinn , Estonia
2 hours later we land in Tallinn
After corresponding e-mails with my sister-in-law and a trying to track down my mother in-law (we hope she is going to arrive today at 13:40 LT time); we started to relax. Until the plane to Vilnius
We ARRIVE in Vilnius Detroit , MI , U.S.A.
More news to come later.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Step 5 of the Journey - All Packed and ready to go!
I am so glad that our bosses let us take today off. This morning we booked our flights and then we ran around downtown, getting the rest of our "Rubber stamps" and didn't get home until about 3pm. We then started to check our packing lists. Thank goodness we double checked everything, because we found out there was 2 documents that were not notarized. This didn't freak us out too much, because our next door neighbor is a notary; so she came over and did this for us. Our good friend also came by for moral support and she also bought us dinner. Yeah we almost forgot to eat because we were so stressed out.
So we finished packing, 3 suitcases that will be checked and 2 carry on bags. Seems like quite a bit for 2 people, but we hard to pack all of our daughters clothes too. Our flight arrives in Detroit tomorrow around 1pm local time, but they are calling for 70% chance of snow. So hopefully there will be no delays.
So we finished packing, 3 suitcases that will be checked and 2 carry on bags. Seems like quite a bit for 2 people, but we hard to pack all of our daughters clothes too. Our flight arrives in Detroit tomorrow around 1pm local time, but they are calling for 70% chance of snow. So hopefully there will be no delays.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Step 4 of the Journey - When do we leave? continued....
So, I had to have some dinner and calmed down some. We both are very happy that all of our co-workers and friends who we spoke to today were very happy for us. This is going to be an exciting and scary journey for the both of us. New parents, not raising a newborn, but a child who is already 6 years old, who does not know any english and going to a country we never thought we would ever be going to.
Today after we got the news it was a lot of running around, trying to figure out what to do next? Packing is on both of our minds. We need to make sure we have all of the clothing. As I type this, it is currently 21° F in LT and it is 4:19am. Sounds like home right... oh and it is also lightly snowing, just like there expecting here tonight. Besides clothes we also need to make sure we have ALL the paperwork we are going to need; including passports.
So, as far as Airline flights it appears we are going to be leaving Here on Thursday and flying into Detroit. Plane transfer and then flying into Amsterdam.... and no I don't think we are going to be hitting any "Coffee Shops." From Amsterdam, Netherlands and then into Vilnius, LT. We arrive in Vilnius on Friday @ approx. 1pm, so if we are in luck, going to see our Daughter at the end of this week. As I told some of my co-workers today, I will be trying to post pictures, but there might be some rules about pictures in the orphanage.
The next time I should be posting is when we are in Vilnius. Thank You All and you will here from me as soon as I can get on!
Today after we got the news it was a lot of running around, trying to figure out what to do next? Packing is on both of our minds. We need to make sure we have all of the clothing. As I type this, it is currently 21° F in LT and it is 4:19am. Sounds like home right... oh and it is also lightly snowing, just like there expecting here tonight. Besides clothes we also need to make sure we have ALL the paperwork we are going to need; including passports.
So, as far as Airline flights it appears we are going to be leaving Here on Thursday and flying into Detroit. Plane transfer and then flying into Amsterdam.... and no I don't think we are going to be hitting any "Coffee Shops." From Amsterdam, Netherlands and then into Vilnius, LT. We arrive in Vilnius on Friday @ approx. 1pm, so if we are in luck, going to see our Daughter at the end of this week. As I told some of my co-workers today, I will be trying to post pictures, but there might be some rules about pictures in the orphanage.
The next time I should be posting is when we are in Vilnius. Thank You All and you will here from me as soon as I can get on!
Step 4 of the Journey - When do we leave?
Well, since I did not post anything yesterday you all can figure out we did not receive anything in the mail. It was a pipe dream that we would get something that quickly.
Today started out like any other day, get up, get ready and go to work. When I got to work I received 3 e-mails about undeliverable mail from our adoption service. We had e-mailed them yesterday to ask some more basic questions. Since we didn't hear from them, my wife decided to e-mail the Officer from USCIS to see what the status was on our paperwork. After about an hour we received a response back; "your paperwork will be processed in the order it was received. If you have any questions or comments feel free to write back." Ohhhhh I wanted to write back SOOOO bad, but I knew that if I did we probably would have gotten shuffled back down to the bottom of the pile. So I continued on with work, trying to stay calm. After talking to a few people, who helped me relax I went back to my desk.
Well to my surprise I received an e-mail back from USCIS with an attachment and the e-mail states: "
Please let us know if you have further questions or comments. Thank you!
It was our approval paperwork!! We are leaving for Lithuania this week!!! I immediately called my wife to see if she was crying. When she answered the phone I asked her
'are you crying?'
She said "why?"
'Have you not checked your e-mail?'
Then she was so ecstatic!
The day that started so crappy, turned out to be the best news day we could receive. So we are currently taking off work until we leave... which should be either Thursday or Friday. I just got home from work, but I will be writing more later tonight.
Today started out like any other day, get up, get ready and go to work. When I got to work I received 3 e-mails about undeliverable mail from our adoption service. We had e-mailed them yesterday to ask some more basic questions. Since we didn't hear from them, my wife decided to e-mail the Officer from USCIS to see what the status was on our paperwork. After about an hour we received a response back; "your paperwork will be processed in the order it was received. If you have any questions or comments feel free to write back." Ohhhhh I wanted to write back SOOOO bad, but I knew that if I did we probably would have gotten shuffled back down to the bottom of the pile. So I continued on with work, trying to stay calm. After talking to a few people, who helped me relax I went back to my desk.
Well to my surprise I received an e-mail back from USCIS with an attachment and the e-mail states: "
I wanted to follow up with you to let you know that I was able to render a favorable decision on the extension in question. Due to your time constraints, I have attached a copy of your approval notice for your convenience. In addition, I will also send the attached to the National Visa Center (NVC) via email and copy the appropriate post abroad. Our office will send the send the actual file in question to the NVC via express mail shortly.
It was our approval paperwork!! We are leaving for Lithuania this week!!! I immediately called my wife to see if she was crying. When she answered the phone I asked her
'are you crying?'
She said "why?"
'Have you not checked your e-mail?'
Then she was so ecstatic!
The day that started so crappy, turned out to be the best news day we could receive. So we are currently taking off work until we leave... which should be either Thursday or Friday. I just got home from work, but I will be writing more later tonight.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Step 3 of the Journey - The Wait for a Court Date to travel
SO, July 2010 we get the referral for Akvile and the wait begins. All of the Home Study Paperwork that we had done now has to be translated into Lithuanian. This takes a little while, when it is finally completed it is sent to the Adoption Service (AS) in LT. They then have to make sure we have everything they need according to there Laws. We receive information back, that we need to fill out some more paperwork. This is completed; sent to our adoption service, and that is translated back into Lithuanian and sent back to AS in LT. Once that is all done the AS in LT hires Lawyers for our case.
Weeks go by and we are asking questions. What is going on? Does it always take this long? Questions about Akvile? Finally in October 2010, we receive paperwork from the Lawyers; but not a court date yet. We need to review the case and make any changes. We also need to provide a letter requesting the waiving of the 40 day waiting period. In LT adoptions there is normally 2 trips you have to make. The first one is the court date. From there the judge will decide to waive the 40 day waiting period; if they do not then a second trip must be made to finish court documents and bring a child home.
So after reviewing the case and making slight changes; like a name change for the child and other facts of our case. We send this back; once again since there are changes, translation has to happen again. In late November, early December 2010 we receive word that we cannot schedule a court date until they receive a copy of our tax information from 2009. This frustrated us, since our taxes were completed before April, we should have been warned that this was needed. There is a chance that we could already have Akvile home if we would have known about this sooner. But that is now the past, so we send a copy of our taxes.
While that has been sent we are informed that our USCIS paperwork that we completed in December 2009 is about to expire. The paperwork is only good for 1 year and then you have to do most of it all over again. By this time we are about to lose it. So in December we start the process all over again... Doctor's app't, background checks, Interviews, and more. So we get this all completed in December 2010 and mailed back into USCIS.
Now we are waiting on USCIS for our fingerprinting to be scheduled. While we are waiting, we receive word that a Court date has been set; February 4th, 2011 in Vilnius, LT. So our adoption service contacts USCIS to see if they can expedite our paperwork request. The canned response we receive is "it will be processed in the order it was received." What kind of response is that? We try to remain calm, knowing at the time it was going to be close. We planned on traveling at the end of January, but since we do not have all of the required paperwork, we have not bought our plane tickets yet.
At the start of January 2011 we receive a letter from USCIS with our Fingerprinting Schedule; January 26th. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! We planned on flying out January 27th, there is no way we can get our fingerprints and have the required paperwork in order to travel. So once again our case worker contacts USCIS to find out if we can reschedule or just "show up early." The response we receive this time is that they cannot reschedule, but we could attempt to show up early and hope they will process us. Ughh! On January 6th, 2011 we arrive at the fingerprinting location and they accept us to have this done; whewwwwww.
January 15th, 2011 we get mail from USCIS. We are excited! We are done! Nope, it is a letter stating that there is "Missing Evidence." WTH!!! They require an interview; home visit interview is not present in the update. Since it is a Saturday the only thing we can do is e-mail our Adoption Case Worker. Then we find out, there office is closed on MLK Holiday, so we have to wait for a response until Tuesday.
On Tuesday we finally hear from our case worker and she tells us that USCIS has never required this in the past. She doesn't know if the USCIS worker did something wrong or if there has been a procedure change. She comes out that day to do the "Home Interview." She does her thing and leaves, sends a copy to her Home Office for review and then it is mailed out overnight to USCIS. USCIS should have received this paperwork on Friday January 21st, 2011.
Now, here we sit again, waiting on our U.S. Gov't to process our paperwork. The short of this is, if we do not receive the approval form by January 27th, 2011 we will not be able to make our scheduled court date.
If we do not receive the paperwork in time there is two things that could happen.
1. The lawyers in LT will reschedule the court date; approx court dates are
end of February, beginning of March.
2. When the lawyers try to reschedule, the judge might not set a date until
we have received all of the required paperwork. Which could mean
March or later.
Weeks go by and we are asking questions. What is going on? Does it always take this long? Questions about Akvile? Finally in October 2010, we receive paperwork from the Lawyers; but not a court date yet. We need to review the case and make any changes. We also need to provide a letter requesting the waiving of the 40 day waiting period. In LT adoptions there is normally 2 trips you have to make. The first one is the court date. From there the judge will decide to waive the 40 day waiting period; if they do not then a second trip must be made to finish court documents and bring a child home.
So after reviewing the case and making slight changes; like a name change for the child and other facts of our case. We send this back; once again since there are changes, translation has to happen again. In late November, early December 2010 we receive word that we cannot schedule a court date until they receive a copy of our tax information from 2009. This frustrated us, since our taxes were completed before April, we should have been warned that this was needed. There is a chance that we could already have Akvile home if we would have known about this sooner. But that is now the past, so we send a copy of our taxes.
While that has been sent we are informed that our USCIS paperwork that we completed in December 2009 is about to expire. The paperwork is only good for 1 year and then you have to do most of it all over again. By this time we are about to lose it. So in December we start the process all over again... Doctor's app't, background checks, Interviews, and more. So we get this all completed in December 2010 and mailed back into USCIS.
Now we are waiting on USCIS for our fingerprinting to be scheduled. While we are waiting, we receive word that a Court date has been set; February 4th, 2011 in Vilnius, LT. So our adoption service contacts USCIS to see if they can expedite our paperwork request. The canned response we receive is "it will be processed in the order it was received." What kind of response is that? We try to remain calm, knowing at the time it was going to be close. We planned on traveling at the end of January, but since we do not have all of the required paperwork, we have not bought our plane tickets yet.
At the start of January 2011 we receive a letter from USCIS with our Fingerprinting Schedule; January 26th. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! We planned on flying out January 27th, there is no way we can get our fingerprints and have the required paperwork in order to travel. So once again our case worker contacts USCIS to find out if we can reschedule or just "show up early." The response we receive this time is that they cannot reschedule, but we could attempt to show up early and hope they will process us. Ughh! On January 6th, 2011 we arrive at the fingerprinting location and they accept us to have this done; whewwwwww.
January 15th, 2011 we get mail from USCIS. We are excited! We are done! Nope, it is a letter stating that there is "Missing Evidence." WTH!!! They require an interview; home visit interview is not present in the update. Since it is a Saturday the only thing we can do is e-mail our Adoption Case Worker. Then we find out, there office is closed on MLK Holiday, so we have to wait for a response until Tuesday.
On Tuesday we finally hear from our case worker and she tells us that USCIS has never required this in the past. She doesn't know if the USCIS worker did something wrong or if there has been a procedure change. She comes out that day to do the "Home Interview." She does her thing and leaves, sends a copy to her Home Office for review and then it is mailed out overnight to USCIS. USCIS should have received this paperwork on Friday January 21st, 2011.
Now, here we sit again, waiting on our U.S. Gov't to process our paperwork. The short of this is, if we do not receive the approval form by January 27th, 2011 we will not be able to make our scheduled court date.
If we do not receive the paperwork in time there is two things that could happen.
1. The lawyers in LT will reschedule the court date; approx court dates are
end of February, beginning of March.
2. When the lawyers try to reschedule, the judge might not set a date until
we have received all of the required paperwork. Which could mean
March or later.
Step 2 of the Journey - Request for Akvile
Now that we have approval from USCIS, we need to submit a request to adopt Akvile. We are on the waiting list for Lithuania (LT) we feel we have a good chance to adopt this little girl, who at the time we have no idea how old she is, if this is even a new picture.
So we verbally state that we want to adopt this child, and now more forms must be completed. A letter stating "Why" we want to adopt her. How she will adapt in our lifestyle, why we think we are the couple for her.
So after a couple of weeks, we learned that we were not the only family (from our agency, that we are aware of) has requested to adopt this little girl from LT. We learn that these other families have not completed there USCIS paperwork yet (bonus for us, heart breaking for the other families), but we continue to wait.
Finally in July 2010, we learned that we have been approved to adopt this 5 year old girl Akvile.
Here is the photo we received after learning we were approved.
So we verbally state that we want to adopt this child, and now more forms must be completed. A letter stating "Why" we want to adopt her. How she will adapt in our lifestyle, why we think we are the couple for her.
So after a couple of weeks, we learned that we were not the only family (from our agency, that we are aware of) has requested to adopt this little girl from LT. We learn that these other families have not completed there USCIS paperwork yet (bonus for us, heart breaking for the other families), but we continue to wait.
Finally in July 2010, we learned that we have been approved to adopt this 5 year old girl Akvile.
Here is the photo we received after learning we were approved.
Step 1 of the Journey - Paperwork
For any new adopting families that might read this, you will need a lot of patience with the paperwork. I eluded to it in my first post. Now I am looking at this as a "International" adoption and domestic might be different. After we had filled out our questionnaires about ourselves, there was forms about our health, our finances, our backgrounds and our home. Some of these are fairly easy to fill out, but it is very time consuming.
Once we get all of these done (there are other paperwork things like Doctor visits and seeing a shrink; I didn't really talk about), everything has to be Notarized, then approved by the County Clerk that these notarise are still eligible and then it is of to the State Capital for Appostille's; which is the Secretary of State's Notary (thank goodness we live near the Capital). Then all of these have to be copied in triplicate and you cannot remove the staple's. So single page after single page making all of these copies.
Then a copy gets sent to the Adoption service for approval and get a few more forms from them (information that they have to get, i.e. Business License). This then gets mailed off to our USCIS - United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. If your paperwork is all correct they then mail back our approval to adopt this child from another country.
However in our case, there was a couple of applications that were not filled out entirely and a signature was forgotten, we received a letter in the mail to fix these problems. Ughhh! Once that was completed and resent to them, we then received another letter stating to get our fingerprints completed. Ok, we are moving in the right direction now!! We get that done and less than a week later we have been approved and our form was sent to us; December 2009!
Once we get all of these done (there are other paperwork things like Doctor visits and seeing a shrink; I didn't really talk about), everything has to be Notarized, then approved by the County Clerk that these notarise are still eligible and then it is of to the State Capital for Appostille's; which is the Secretary of State's Notary (thank goodness we live near the Capital). Then all of these have to be copied in triplicate and you cannot remove the staple's. So single page after single page making all of these copies.
Then a copy gets sent to the Adoption service for approval and get a few more forms from them (information that they have to get, i.e. Business License). This then gets mailed off to our USCIS - United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. If your paperwork is all correct they then mail back our approval to adopt this child from another country.
However in our case, there was a couple of applications that were not filled out entirely and a signature was forgotten, we received a letter in the mail to fix these problems. Ughhh! Once that was completed and resent to them, we then received another letter stating to get our fingerprints completed. Ok, we are moving in the right direction now!! We get that done and less than a week later we have been approved and our form was sent to us; December 2009!
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