This morning, we completed another big step in the adoption process. Our home visit is now behind us. A social worker from our adoption agency visited us this morning and spent a few hours talking about our backgrounds, life experiences, and our hopes/plans for the future. We also talked about which country we will adopt from.
Now we can focus on things like gathering copies of birth/marriage certificates, police background checks, child abuse clearances, FBI fingerprinting, physical exams, and other paperwork — steps that are required by various government agencies. And that’s just the first round. There’ll be another round for immigration later in the process. We’re not complaining, though. We understand the paperwork for the country we’ve chosen is much lighter than other countries!
And that brings us, finally, to today’s big news. We are pursuing adoption from South Korea.
Assuming the process goes somewhat according to plan (things are always changing in the world of international adoption, it seems!), we are hoping to bring home our infant child (possibly 8-9 months old) sometime in early 2008 — maybe even between defending our dissertations and graduation!