Visa Application

I submitted our Visa application today. Not sure how long it will take to get the visas. They are only good for 3 months. We do not have our travel approval yet either, but I decided that I had to get the visa application into the China's Consulate Office in NYC anyway. I cannot imagine that we won't be to and back from China within the next 90 days!

I Need TWO Agencies?

We live in NJ. Our adoption agency is in NY. Houston, we have a problem. We are required to have a home study done, but it must be done by an agency that is licensed in NJ since that is where we live. This is just terrific because now I need to find an adoption agency in NJ to get this done.

One year before officially embarking upon this adoption journey, we went to an information meeting at an agency in NJ. We did not particularly care for them. The director made some inappropriate comments to a woman in the audience who was asking why she couldn’t adopt an infant. (She was 50 and her spouse was 55). There are ways that things could be phrased so as not to sound offensive. The director didn’t choose the high road and it turned me right off. I didn’t like them because they were a very small agency. If I was going to be in China, I sure as hell wanted to know that there was going to be someone in my corner and wanted the reassurance that a larger agency could give me.

Anyway, we decided to use this small agency for the homestudy. It was conveniently located to us. NOTE: convenience is not a reason to pick an adoption agency. More on that later.