The Adoption Wait and Travel News

When we were adopting Reuben, the wait to be matched with a child was 6-8 months.  Six months came along and the wait was bumped to 12 months.  Things change, people in key offices both in Korea and the U.S. are replaced and have to be trained, families within Korea are choosing to adopt more, and other events happen that slow down or speed up the process for us.

This time, our wait was 12-18 months at the beginning.  Then it was bumped to 18 months. 

THEN, I got an email from our social worker last week giving us an update on the wait times.

She wrote, "We've received 6 referrals since the beginning of July, but three families are still waiting since December 2009."

We have been waiting since February 2010.  So I did some basic math and realized we are only 3 months behind these families and they will be matched any day.  I emailed our worker back... 

"So does that mean our 18 month wait just went down to a 9 month wait?  Which I know could slow down again, but we could possibly have a referral in 3 months?"

Later that day she wrote back, "Oh dear.  Actually, Alison meant to write December 2008... not 2009. I'm so sorry about this typo."

My emotions that day were very confused as I figured out our wait had been cut in half and we could be matched in 3 months, and then, not really, our wait is still the same.  Twelve months to go.

It was exciting for the three hours between emails there.

In other adoption news, I am taking on some daycare/babysitting jobs that recently presented themselves to me.  Why comes and what for??  To earn money and save for two more plane tickets to Korea!  I am very excited about this.  

Paul and I have decided to bring Peter and Reuben with us to Korea this time, if I can earn enough for their two tickets.  So, this longer wait until we're matched with a child has its positive angle:  the longer it takes to be matched, the more time I have to earn and save.  Yahoo!

How exciting for them to be a part of this.  I think it will be so valuable for both of them - to know Korea better, to be introduced to international travel (they were both babies when they traveled overseas before), to understand adoption more fully...  They will be nine and five years old when we go, so they won't remember a ton from the trip, but they will know that they went and we will have pictures to talk about and snippets of memories to recall.  We'll call it a field trip.

But, we're not really telling them in case circumstances come up and we cannot bring them after all.  We will know better as our travel date gets closer.  In 2012.  Sheesh.