Hoa Binh

Despite the fact that adoptions in Vietnam are overseen by the Vietnam Department of International Adoptions (DIA) in Hanoi, the agencies still work with particular provinces. Our adoption agency works with the province of Hoa Binh. On their website, our adoption agency describes Hoa Binh as follows:

Hoa Binh is a mountainous province in Northern Vietnam with an estimated population of 77,004 persons, comprising eight different ethnic minorities of whom the Muong group accounts for 70%. Over recent years, the peoples’ living conditions have improved considerably, reaching GDP average income of VND 3,000,000 per capita, or USD 200/year. The peoples’ lives have been improved, public works have been upgraded and constructed, and social policies have been applied, in particular assistance programs for handicapped persons, orphans, and the elderly. They also enjoy a governmental nurturing allowance, but only VND 50,000/month per capita, or 3 USD.

For more information go to Hoa Binh.

Additionally our adoption agency describes their Vietnam program and the role Hoa Binh plays.

As an update on our progress...all of the Home Study documents that we have control over (all except references) are complete (including our physicals)!! And, our last home study visit is on Tuesday!! In other news, Nate's passport came on Wednesday, BUT it had his name spelled incorrectly! So, needless to say, that must be corrected. (Luckily, that is a Dossier document and not a home study document, so we do not need it as quickly.) Anyway, Nate sent it back today and requested expedited correction (2 weeks), so we will see...

Also, we have been listed in the family to family directory of the Families with Children from Viet Nam website (in the section devoted to people that are in process of adopting). The link is listed to the right.

Making Progress!

We are making progress! Martine had her last lab visit today for her physical (Nate's labs are done). We got our arrest record letters from the Police Department. The house is is now owned by us in our married names (thanks to a quit claim deed), and we have a letter from the county regarding ownership. The refernece letters are coming in (thanks to those of you that are getting those done!). And, Martine's passport came today! (We are not sure why it got here before Nate's, as we applied for them at the same time, but hopefully Nate's is coming soon!) Our next (and last!) home study visit is on Nate's Birthday, Halloween (and we are hoping to have our home study documentation done by then).
So, we are getting there...
We are also ording all sorts of books and magazines on adoption and Vietnam. We will have quite a library by the time we get done with this. If anyone is interested in reading about either topic, please let us know. We are happy to loan out our books or recommend titles.

Celebrity Adoption...

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Ewan McGregor, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rosie O'Donnell, Meg Ryan, Sharon Stone, Diane Keaton, Calista Flockhart... all have adopted children. And as Madonna joins this list of celebrities, it is interesting to see the reactions of the media and other groups to the news. Matt Lauer on the Today show called international adoption "the latest celebrity accessory" and he is not the only one to make that statement...if you google that statement with the words "international adoption", you get a long list of articles using the phrase.

All of this has caused quite an upsurge in activity on the adoption list serve that we have joined. Many adoptive parents and will-be parents seem to feel that this is the media callously passing judgment on the acts of celebrities (which may be getting special treatment and exceptions to adoption laws) without much consideration for the effect that their comments have on other (non-celebrity) adoptive parents and, more importantly, their children that are old enough to watch and hear these debates on the daytime television.

Madonna's adoption seems to also be stirring a huge debate about whether international adoption, which the media is portraying as an option open to only wealthy people, is really what people ought to choose or whether they are choosing this option at the expense of the many children in the United States public welfare system.

So, I have given these issues quite a bit of thought lately. I am going to lay out my thoughts, and I welcome any debate. I do not mean this to read like a rant, I really have tried to consider the other sides of the argument. However, if you feel I have ignored some key factor, please chime in...

My (Martine's...although I think Nate agrees) thoughts are:

(1) This seems to me like a very personal issue for the media to be opining on, but if they are to opine on it, I would ask whether they ever question whether an American that gives birth to a child is doing so at the expense of the children in the public welfare system that they could have adopted instead. While I do feel that it is wonderful that people are adopting children that would otherwise be in the United State public welfare system, it seems odd that we would not judge all people that do not do so rather than just those that have chosen to adopt from another country. I think that if they did, they might see that there is some absurdity in the analysis.

(2) Additionally, it also seems silly to me that the media is really going to imply that a child in the U.S. public welfare system is somehow is more deserving of Madonna's love (and money) than a child that it is an African public welfare system.

(3) I do think that the media's concern about puling the African child from his culture is valid, but I also think that many adoptive parents try very hard to incorporate an appreciation for the child's birth culture into their home. While this is clearly no substitute for living in a culture, I am not sure that loss of culture is really a strong enough argument to leave a child in an orphanage (especially in the case of a celebrity that can likely afford to allow the child to visit their birth country and still maintain a connection and appreciation for that birth culture). Also, if we really want t discuss pulling someone out of a birth culture, I think that it is important to acknowledge that the United States consists of many cultures, and domestic adoption does not ensure that a child will grow up in the same "culture" that they would have known if they had stayed with their birth parents.

(4) International adoption is expensive, and for that reason it is probably more likely an option for the upper middle class than those who make less money. We do not enter the international adoption process without some respect for the fact that we are privileged to do so. That being said, international adoption is open to a broader range of families than many of the media articles that I have read have implied. There are many adoption financing options out there. Additionally, the U.S. government itself does not distinguish between international and domestic adoption in allowing a family a large tax benefit ($10K) for adoption (if the family has an annual income under a certain dollar amount...I think $150K, but don't quote me on the exact amount).

While I think that all of these concerns warrant debate, I think that I have to agree with many of the emails from concerned parents that have written on the list serve, the media is not always approaching this issue rationally.

To conclude, there are certain things that are frustrating about celebrity adoptions, like the special treatment celebrities are able to obtain. Madonna is getting special treatment. However, I think we should also focus on the good that has come of this. From what I have read, she has also donated approximately $3 million to Malawian charities. To me, the good that comes out of her interactions outweighs any concerns that I have about the special treatment she has received. I think that in general, her actions are positive.

2 Down, 1 To Go...

We had our second home study last night. Of the three visits with a social worker, one visit has to be at our home (and the social worker must tour our home). We had our home visit last night, and it went very well. It was actually quite a bit nicer to answer personal questions at home than it is to do so in an office.
Other GREAT news is that we got our marriage certificate copies from St. Lucia. We were just getting ready to send another request (because they had told Nate over the phone that they did not have our most recent request). But, just as Nate was leaving the house, a Fed Ex came from St. Lucia!!
On another good note, we got my employment verification letter from Wells Fargo!
We did not have all good news though. I got our phisical exam documents notarized today, but we then realized that not enough tests had been completed....so, back to the doctor for more lab work...
Otherwise, things seem to be progressing...

Vietnam Facts

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLARE AND DAD!!!!

We have our home study tomorrow. So, I am picking up the house and getting it ready for inspection. However, to take a break from that, I am researching Vietnam. I thought I would share some facts...

Vietnam Facts According to the CIA World Factbook

Country name:
conventional long form: Socialist Republic of Vietnam
conventional short form: Vietnam
local long form: Cong Hoa Xa Hoi Chu Nghia Viet Nam
local short form: Viet Nam abbreviation: SRV
Government type:
Communist state
Capital:
Hanoi (12 hours ahead of Washington, DC during Standard Time)
Population:
84,402,966 (July 2006 est.)
Age structure:
0-14 years: 27% (male 11,826,457/female 10,983,069) 15-64 years: 67.1% (male 28,055,941/female 28,614,553) 65 years and over: 5.8% (male 1,924,562/female 2,998,384) (2006 est.)
Median age:
total: 25.9 years male: 24.8 years female: 27.1 years (2006 est.)
Population growth rate:
1.02% (2006 est.)
Birth rate:
16.86 births/1,000 population (2006 est.)
Nationality:
Vietnamese (singular and plural)
Ethnic groups:
Kinh (Viet) 86.2%, Tay 1.9%, Thai 1.7%, Muong 1.5%, Khome 1.4%, Hoa 1.1%, Nun 1.1%, Hmong 1%, others 4.1% (1999 census)
Religions:
Buddhist 9.3%, Catholic 6.7%, Hoa Hao 1.5%, Cao Dai 1.1%, Protestant 0.5%, Muslim 0.1%, none 80.8% (1999 census)
Languages:
Vietnamese (official), English (increasingly favored as a second language), some French, Chinese, and Khmer; mountain area languages (Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian)
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 90.3% male: 93.9% female: 86.9% (2002)

More facts can be found at: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/vm.html#Govt

Paper Chase Continues...

Sorry for the break in postings. I (Martine) was in Vegas for work most of the week and have not been able to figure out how to post using the internet functions on my blackberry (PDA). This may be extra long in order to catch up:)

We are currently in the "Paper Chase" phase of our adoption according to what seems to be the jargon of the international adoption. (In connection with that lingo, there are "Paper Pregnant" T-shirts available for sale for people who have completed the Paper Chase phase and have sent off their paperwork, but we certainly are not there yet.)

For our Paper Chase efforts, we have been doing the following this week:

1. Photo Layout: A special thanks to Meghan who spent a day last weekend with me taking photos of our neighborhood, local schools, local parks, the art center, our house (both inside and out), and Nate and I. All of these photos are needed for a "photo layout". Incidentally, we also need pictures with our extended family. So, if any of you family members have good family pictures (I prefer posed rather than action shots) that include our sisters, brothers, parents, neices and nephews, I would beVERY grateful if you would email them to us at martineandnate@yahoo.com (or any of our other email addresses for that matter). We have limited room (6 pages of 3x5 pictures) to get all of that info in, and we have big families, so pictures that include many people are prefered to those that have only a few people in them. (Also, the photo layout is a section where we can be creative if we want to ... many people use scrapbooking materials to make the presentation more colorful. I have never "scrapbooked", so I have yet to decide whether I will attempt it or whether I am better off just pasting pictures on regular computer paper... hopefully the Vietnam government will not care whether I have scrapbooking skills:))

2. Physical Exams: Nate and I both got our physicals this week. Now, we are just waiting for our blood work to come back before we have our doctor sign and get it notarized. In connection with that we are starting the immunizations that are recommended for Vietnam travel.

3. Property Statement: This is a letter from the Polk County Assessor about our home. This sounds easy, but we have complications. The house is in Nate's name (but we did not change his name on the deed when he changed his name to Olson-Daniel). So, we need to do a Quit Claim deed to put the deed in our married names...I am working on that.

4. Employment Letters: Letters verifying our employment and likelihood or continued advancement. Here we found a big difference between working for a small company and a large company. Nate's letter is done (in the exact format requested) by the Human Resources Director. My letter request went to the Employment Verifcation Group within the centralized Human Resources Group, and I had to speak to them to try to convince them to use my form rather than the standard company Employment Verfication letter...I still do not know the status despite having sent in the request two weeks ago...little more complicated in the big company bureaucracy.

5. References: A HUGE thanks to those of you who have agreed to write those letters for us. These are not your standard reference letters. In these letters and interviews people are asked to discuss philosophies on punishment, trans-racial issues...

6. Marriage Certificate: As you can see in the timeline, we requested it close to a month ago from the government of St. Lucia. Nate called yesterday and they have not recieved our request. Nate now believes me that mail sent abroad ought to be sent via Fed Ex (or other such carrier). We are resending.

7. Local Police Clearance: Requested two weeks ago...have to follow up as neither of us has ever been arrested, so it should be an easy request.

There are MANY other documents we need to put together, but those are the issues we are working with this week.

In addition, I have been working on the Notary Public issue. Almost every document needs to be notarized, and it needs to be notarized by a Notary whose commission does not expire within 12 months of the signature (not usually a requirement in U.S.). So, I decided that rather than beg different notaries to sign documents throughout the whole process, I would make a notary. Special thanks to Meghan for agreeing to let me make her a notary. I had Meghan fill out the application last weekend. She got her commission number yesterday. So, I ordered her a stamp. We should have our very own notary by the end of the week. I plan to then drag Meghan around town (first stop doctor's office) next week notarizing documents.

Well, now I think you are up to speed on the exciting issues we are working through. We have our home study home visit on Tuesday, so one of our weekend activities is installing the required Carbon Monoxide detector and checking our fire detectors and extinguishers... so that our house will pass inspection. Also, Thanks, Nate for cleaning house while I was in Vegas!

Our First Baby Gift!

We just got home after our first of three visits in the home study process. Beth, our case worker, was very nice to arrange her schedule to meet with us on Sunday, because otherwise we would have had to wait until the 17th to have our first meeting (I am out of town for business most of this week).

Beth had given us a home study worksheet to fill out before our first visit. So, last night after dinner, we sat down to do it and did not finish until 12:30am. It was long and made us think through many issues like: descirptions of our childhood; how we were disciplined; defining events in our lives; our relationship; how we handle conflict, criticism, grief; our finances; our budget; our feelings about adoption; trans-cultural issues; our feelings about the birth parents; our thoughts on religion; our careers; our education....

Then, this morning, we met with Beth at the adoption agency, and we talked about many of those issues with her. It was more draining than I expected. Beth is great, but it is more stressful than I expected to tell a virtual stranger all of the details of your life. We just got home, and I was feeling really tired. But, when we got home, our neighbors (who have adopted 2 girls from China and knew that we were having our first home study visit this morning) had left us a gift at our door. They left us a vase with pink and white roses and a hand made changing pad (for changing diapers)! The changing pad is really soft with a water proof layer and is made by a woman in Des Moines. It is our first baby gift!! It really made me feel better about doing all this work to go through this process.

We have our next home study visit at our home on the 17th, and then our final visit is on November 1. By that point, I hope to have all of the home study documents done (including financial statements, a property statement from the county, employment verification letters, physical exams...). Once Beth finishes drafting the home study (and gets all the documents from us), she will send it to the CIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service) and it will complete the I-600A that we sent to CIS last week. Once the CIS has the home study, we will wait to get our fingerprint date and after the fingerprinting is complete and check, we will wait for our I-171H (U.S. government permission). The I-171H and the home study are then included in an even larger package of documents (our Dossier) that is sent to Vietnam.

Beth also gave us a video tape of required education on adoption issues: transcultural families, attachment and bonding, and adjustment issues. So, we will start our education!

Adoption Rocks T-Shirt

So, I bought a really cute "Adoption Rocks" T-shirt at a local maternity store called Urban Belly. If you want to see their adoption apparel, click on the link and check it out!

Why Vietnam?

As promised, we are going to try to explain what has led us to our decision to adopt from Vietnam. One question that I have heard quite a bit is "Why Vietnam? Aren't there children in the United States that need homes?"

There are actually a lot of factors that contributed to our decison. After a lot of resaerch it was clear to us that there were big differences between domestic and international adoption processes. Different aspects of the different programs are both appealing and unappealing and there is no process that is clearly the best. However, ultimately the factors below are the ones that we gave the most weight to.

First, we know people that have had wonderful experiences with international adoptions. So, we naturally thought of international adoption as an exciting option.

While it is true that there are children in the U.S. that also need homes, the processes for domestic adoption are very different from the processes for international adoption. From what we have read, domestic adoption typically is done through (i) participation in the foster care process as foster parents, (ii) through a domestic agency process (which involves working with an agency to create a profile that birth mothers can look at to find the couple they choose to parent their child), or (iii) independent adoption (which is not legal in all states, and involves prospective parents activly finding a birth mother by placing ads or rely on networks of friends or others to find a birth mother). While we have heard some great stories of successful domestic adoptions, we have also heard many stories of situations that did not work out. Many birth mothers change their minds within the legal time frames allowed, and many of the laws dealing with foster care seem to favor reunification with biological parents. (see How to Adopt Internationally by Jean Nelson Erichsen and Heino R. Erichsen for stats) According to our research, many of these legal issues are not common in the international adoption process. In addition, couples do not have to worry about being chosen by a birth mother that may be looking for certain qualities. Instead, prospective parents go through a intense process to prove to the government that they are fit to parent, but once they show that fitness they are often entered into a queue of qualified parents and matched with children as they become available for adoption.

There are many international adoption programs. We researched China, Korea, Guatemala, Russia... However, each country has its own requirements and there are many programs that we do not qualify for. For example, Korea requires a longer marriage than 2 years and China requires that we both be 30 (Martine is still 29).

We are fascinated with Vietnam, its culture and traditions! We feel that we will be able to give a Vietnamese child a home and family, share our traditions with that child and also promote education and participation in Vietnamese culture. TheVietnamese babies are adorable, and babies have been adopted from Vietnam at younger ages than in some other countries.

The Vietnamese program was recently reopened (when the U.S. goverment and the Vietnamese goverment signed an agreement in 2005) after years of being closed for reform. Due to the fact that the reformed process is so new, we have a lot of uncertainties about timelines and issues we may encounter. From what we have read, babies in Vietnam are often given up for adoption, because of stigma associated with single motherhood in Vietnam or due to economic pressures. We have spent a lot of time thinking about how our decision to adopt fits into a more global context and wondering how Vietnamese people view adoption by foreigners (a topic for a future post).

The decision to adopt from Vietnam was not one that we took lightly. We read a lot of books and asked a lot of questions. Ultimately, different adoption options will appeal to different people, and Vietnam appealed to us. We are excited about our choice!

Our Big News!

Hi All!

This is a the first of what we hope will be many posts that chronicle our adoption journey. For those of you that have not already heard, we have recently completed our first steps toward adopting a baby from Vietnam! Our goal is to post our ideas, experiences and will keep you posted on our progress through the stages of international adoption (below are the stages...as we currently understand them):

(1) Application with Agency (DONE!)
(2) Application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service
(3) Home Study
(4) Dossier Completion and Submission to D.C. for translation and then to Vietnam
(5) Adoption Education (this is ongoing throughout the process)
(6) WAIT (read books on parenting; decorate nursery etc., childproof etc.)
(7) Referral (Vietnam sends photos and information about the child we are matched with!)
(8) WAIT
(9) Travel to Vietnam for Adoption
(10) Post-bAdoption Tasks (More Detail on this later...We can't think this far ahead at this point)

Please note that we are keeping a timeline (a general one) on the right of this blog. We do not know how long it will take us to complete the process (the Vietnamese adoption process has recently been reformed and reopened, so we hope for the best).

There is so much about this decision and our experiences (even thus far) that we want to share with all of you. (Unfortunately, it is late, so most of that will need to wait for future posts.) In our next postings we will try to answer the big questions like: Why Vietnam? However, in the meantime, feel free to email us any questions or thoughts.