And the winner is.....

After a great deal of research and discussion we finally settled on Kazakhstan and Adoption Ark International Adoption Agency. We were leaning strongly towards Vietnam but with changes in China's program felt a lot of people were going to be switching to the Vietnam program. In hindsight it turns out we were smart to change our choice of country. Not only did the Vietnam program become more popular but there are grumblings about the program being put on hold temporarily. All we can do is hope and pray that we have made the right choice. We submitted our USCIS I600A application on Jan 9th and have officially selected Kazakhstan...so, unless there are some major issues, there is no turning back now.

When the time comes to go to Kazakhstan, we will have a “blind travel” process. This allows us to meet several of the children at the orphanage (they call them baby houses) and discover who we feel a connection with. This will be tough, but we feel it’s a more natural process, and many parents say that the child actually chooses them! We like that Kazakhstan requires a bonding period, where adoptive parents routinely visit with the child in the orphanage for 2 weeks before taking custody and going through the court process in-country. This initial trip can last up to 6-8 weeks from selection to court date for approval of the adoption. We are required to stay in country until that time. Once the adoption is approved we will come home while they do a mandatory appeal process that lasts 2 weeks and our in country coordinator processes the bulk of the in country paper work. We will then travel back for a second trip (6-10 days) to pick up our new addition and process the US paperwork at the US Embassy.

Be sure to check out the Links of Interest section and the information on Kazakhstan in the bottom right section of our blog.