Monday, April 2, 2012

What Happens Next

I am still over the moon excited that our emigration permit has been submitted!

This is a big step in the Korean adoption process and it signals that after 14 months of our acceptance paperwork sitting on a desk somewhere, the Korean government is finally ready to make progress toward YH joining our family.

Many people have asked: what happens next?

In short, we spend the next three to five weeks in a frenzy of "getting ready" activity waiting for our phone to ring with the official travel call. This call will come from our US agency and it will tell us that YH is paper-ready to join our family. We will have one to two weeks to get to Korea and officially take custody of him.

The plan is for all four of us, plus my mom, to travel. We will need about 7 days to get everything in order on the home front--pet sitter, a sub for Sean at work, letting the kids' school know, packing...and so on.

We hope to travel on a Thursday, arrive in Seoul on a Friday, and spend the weekend exploring/recuperating. On Monday we would have our first meeting with YH and Mrs. S., hosted at our Korean placing agency. The kids will spend time with my mom while Sean and I go to the meeting. We will dress nicely and do our best to assure Mrs. S that we will parent this child with all the love that we have. There will be tears--so many tears.

Depending on how the first meeting goes our social worker may arrange a second meeting later in the week, or she may recommend that we take custody of YH the night before our scheduled departure.

We hope to return to the US on a Thursday or Friday, after spending a full week in Korea.

It all feels surreal right now.
Our friends threw the most amazing and fun and fantastic toddler shower for us (that gets its own post!) and so now I sit surrounded by YH's things--his things--and try to imagine the little boy who will soon be playing with/wearing all this cuteness.



2 comments:

  1. Wow! Your ideal travel plans are very similar to ours! :) Can't wait to see those two special letters on your blog....T...C!!!! :)

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  2. Hope to see you there when we are getting Juno!!!

    ReplyDelete