Once upon a time, not so many months ago, our agency led us to believe we would be home in Canada with our new child by Christmas. Then, around the time we started this blog, our expectations were adjusted to where we thought we might be in Kazakhstan for Christmas, either ours on Dec. 25 and/or theirs on Jan. 7. We have since abandoned expectations and are resorting to estimates, averages and guesswork.
Our latest guess (emphasis on guess) is that we might actually be in Kazakhstan to celebrate the New Year.... theirs, not ours! While Kazakhstan observes New Years on January 1, they celebrate the New Year on March 21 with a holiday called Nauruz (Persian for New Year). It celebrates the end of winter and the coming of spring and is commonly referred to as the Kazakh New Year.
This blog has not captured the random bits of information that when combined with other random bits of information and the passing of time culminate in the changing (or abandonment) of previous expectations. Sometimes it’s as simple as turning the calendar from November to December and declaring with a rare certainty that we won’t be travelling in November. More often, however, we glean random bits of info from our daily perusal of a handful of online user groups and blogs devoted to adopting from Kazakhstan. Then we have to connect the dots and decide how much applies to us.
Recently, there have been online discussions about how adoptions from Almaty are requiring a longer in-country stay (up to 3 months!) than from other regions. This seems to be due to local families being given new priority over foreign families in the scheduling of court dates.
In addition, today we read that at least one agency in the US has announced a two month delay for their clients travelling to Almaty. This delay is apparently due to an interruption in registering children as available for adoption in that region.
We can only assume that these bits of information are relevant to us since we are now targeted for Almaty. We emailed our agency this morning asking for confirmation and clarification. Hopefully we will have a response by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, I wonder if there’s a Kazakh version of Auld Lang Syne....
2 comments:
Yes, this is a difficult process, but you seem to have a good attitude about it. I recently found your blog, and will enjoy reading it. Its amazing how blog stalking can help you see a broader picture of what is going on in this adoption realm.
Hang in there—there is movement. But you're right, it seems more and more like we have to connect the dots, rather than our agency doing that for us. I don't know why that is, but I'm thankful for blogs like yours and user groups for keeping me in the know.
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