Ready...set...go!

Well, we've done it! For several reasons (primarily because of reports that Taiwan adoption wait times are growing rapidly), we decided to just go ahead and start our Taiwan adoption! I emailed Marci with ASIA, and she sent us the application form. The first big step.....!!

First we went out to dinner at Dragon Inn, a local Chinese restaurant, to celebrate. Then Chris painted in the first eye of our Daruma doll. Then we filled out the application! We are officially on our way!! I just got done emailing Nancy Bean, who is a local social worker I've communicated with before regarding doing a home study. I am a bit worried about the home study portion, just because it is going to be rather indepth (and means we will have to do a LOT of house cleaning soon!). So we will start working on that portion, as well.

Wish us luck!!

Getting closer....

We are now only 20 days from starting the adoption process! During a recent trip to Epcot we purchased a Daruma doll for our bio baby and one for our Taiwan baby. Daruma are Japanese wishing dolls--they have blank eyes, and one is supposed to fill in one of the eyes when one makes a wish (in our case, when we start paperwork for our Taiwan baby) and then fill in the second eye when the wish comes true (when we bring her home!). It is something I have wanted to do for a long time :) I'm glad they still had the Daruma dolls at the Japanese pavillion!
On a side note, I have been hearing rumors that some Taiwan agencies are switching to SN only. I am going to email ASIA to make sure we are still cool to move forward in just a couple of weeks!

New start date

So we were thinking about our timeline, and realized there really isn't any reason for us to wait any longer to start the adoption process than our 5th anniversary (May 31). Once we reach that milestone, nothing else is really going to change for awhile. We figure we'll have saved enough money for the initial costs, we're already starting way before we need to, we kinda want to get the initial homestudy out of the way anyways, etc, so why not? So we're going to get things rolling earlier than we had previously anticipated. We will still have to wait until our future bio baby is at least 6 months old before the homestudy can go to Taiwan, so our overall timeline isn't changing any - we just get to start earlier :) I updated our ticker, which was quite satisfying - what with jumping forward in time considerably!

Taiwan presidential election

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/presidential%20election/2008/03/23/148413/Jubilation-over.htm

So it looks like the KMT party won the presidential election....I don't know how this will affect things in Taiwan, but I know that KMT is somewhat more "pro China" than the opposition party--so there probably will not be any huge disputes between the mainland and Taiwan anytime soon, so that is good.

ASIA?

So now we are considering an agency called ASIA (Associated Services for International Adoption). I'll post their website link under the 'agencies we are considering' area. I think they may work out really well...they work with the orphanage Chung Yi, and the process is a little bit different. I'm still learning, but as I find out more I'll post about it! Marci, the woman with ASIA that I've been talking with, is really nice and responds really quickly to my emails - that is always a good sign :)

No more FHSA for us :(

So I got an email from the Florida Home Studies and Adoptions agency (who I have been in contact with several times so far in 2008), telling me that since January of this year they are only working with residents of Florida. WTF? They tell me this in March?? So I'm disappointed, as they were our front runner. Right now we're down to one option now (Commonwealth), and that makes me uncomfortable. I am off to research other agencies so we can hopefully have two options once again..........

Confucius Institute

For anyone local to the Kansas City area, the KU Confucius Institute sounds really awesome! They have Chinese New Year and Dragon Boat celebrations, summer school culture and language classes for kids, language classes for adults, etc. In the month of March they are having a Chinese film festival on Saturday mornings which is just a couple blocks from our house! Check out their website, I'm excited to have found it (I heard about it on NPR):
http://www.confucius.ku.edu/index.shtml

I also found a link about the Chinese garden that is being planned for Kansas City! http://www.chinagardensociety-kc.org/ChineseGarden_KC.htm
I don't know where it will be located exactly, but it definitely sounds like it's going to happen! I'm really excited about that.

And I also found a website for the Kansas City Chinese Association which sounds really neat: they are hosting the film festival http://www.kcca-ks.org/main/home.html
I am very happy to have so many Chinese cultural things here in town that my family can go to and experience :)