We have really great news, we’re leaving for India in a week!
It’s been almost 17 months since we started this process. Hard to believe it’s been that long, but the last six weeks or so have really been a blur. Maybe for the first time in this whole process, time really went by very fast. We have struggled to keep all of our friends and family up to date with everything that’s happened because we’ve been so busy, but that is part of the reason we decided to keep a little bit of a blog. Fortunately, we were able to catch up with many of you at the gathering that Ed and Joanne hosted and update you in person. For those we haven’t been able to catch up with recently we have quite a bit more detail below.
Last time we posted, before Christmas, we had just found out about our first court hearing in India on January 21. We didn’t know what to expect, but we were hoping to hear something good from the orphanage. It was a hard month of waiting, but at least we had days we could count down. On the morning of the 21st, we got up and checked the online court app to see if there was any news. Typically, they don’t post many details on the app, just whether a case was disposed or what the next hearing date is. There were no updates, so we went on with our day hoping to hear from our case manager, Brianna. We have not had any direct contact with the orphanage, so we’ve just been relying on her. Later in the afternoon Leah checked the app and did see our case was updated, we had the next court date… March 8. That seemed so far away, we had to wait 6 more weeks! We actually felt pretty defeated and were not sure how we were going to pass the time. All we’ve done is wait and wait. Well, that feeling lasted about 12 hours, because we got an email from Brianna that said we had been summoned to court for the second hearing. The judge wanted us to appear in person! All of a sudden 6 weeks felt a lot shorter, and we had to plan trip halfway around the world.
The hardest part of all of this is that we’re not really sure how long the trip will be. To make a long story short, showing up in court is not the end of the process for us. We will first need verbal approval from the court, then the court has to issue written orders, then we need to get his birth certificate so we can file for a passport, once we get his passport we travel to Delhi for exit visa appointments. It’s a lot to get done, and there is no certainty about how long it will all take. There are basically two options we have:
1. Show up for our court appearance, turn around and come home, wait for all the paperwork to clear and go back to pick up Gaurav on a second trip.
2. Show up for our court appearance, stay in India and take custody of Gaurav, push along the paperwork to speed things up, and come back home once everything is finalized.
Both of the options have advantages and disadvantages. However, we would much rather just take a single trip to speed things up, even it it meant it would be a long trip. So that’s our plan, one long trip. In fact, we’re planning around the trip taking about a month, things could go faster or slower though. We will probably get a better idea about how long the process will take once we show up in court. If we get discouraging news about having to wait in country for a long time we might have to make the very hard decision to come home and take a second trip back. We’ll meet Gaurav shortly after we arrive in country so it would be extremely hard to come back home without him.
There could be some really great advantages to us staying for an extended period in India. We would get to see and live Gaurav’s culture first hand, which could really help us share a part of it with him someday. We would get some time to start bonding with him, away from all the things that fight for our attention at home. It might really be a once in a lifetime opportunity that we don’t want to miss.
Both of our jobs have been very flexible and understanding about us taking extended leave. Leah is planning to take 12 weeks FMLA leave from Meriter. I have enough vacation and sick time saved up that I can probably swing about 6 weeks of paid leave. To complicate the matter some, we’re going through a some transition at my office. I can’t elaborate too much more than that. It should be very good in the long run, but in the short term it’s going to be a very hard time to be gone.
There is reason to hope that we won’t be stranded in India. We have plenty of examples of people going and only being in the country for 3 or 4 weeks, still a pretty long trip obviously, but manageable. We’ll change our plans as needed if things don’t go as fast as we’d like.
It really has been a strain to plan this trip. We’re heading to Bilaspur, which is a city located in the state of Chhattisgarh, which is not exactly a transportation hub. Our itinerary on the way there is an 8 hour red eye flight from O’Hare to Amsterdam, 5 hours layover, an 8 hour flight from Amsterdam to Dehli (arrive at 1am), a 4.5 hour layover, and then a 2 hour flight to Raipur, Chhattisgarh, then it’s a 2-3 hour drive to Bilaspur. It’ll be over 30 consecutive hours… I’m tired already…
The logistics have driven me pretty crazy… booking flights, finding and booking a hotel, hiring a driver to get us from the airport to the hotel, working with our employers on leave, finding someone to look after the house and pets, getting Visas, figuring out communication when we’re in India, I could go on. We have had some help from a non-profit travel agency specializing in adoption airfare and our agency has an in-country liaison/travel coordinator that will help us out as well. Quite a bit of this will be on our own though. There are just so many unknowns, but I think we’re doing the best we can. It’s worn both of us out, Leah has held it together quite well, but I’ve been a basketcase for about the last month. But excitement is slowly starting to take over the anxiety.
To add a whole level of complexity to this we found out in the midst of planning for our trip that our adoption agency (WACAP) is shutting down it’s India adoption program on 3/31. It was stressful dealing with the process of contacting new agencies, filing paperwork, potential new fees, dealing with all new people, on top of the stress of planning for traveling. There were a few days of pretty major panic in figuring out how that might affect our process right near the end. I could go on and on about this, but, we have figured out a plan to get us through transferring to a new agency. If we have all the court orders in place before 3/31, we won’t really be impacted at all. WACAP has been really good, we’re sad that Brianna won’t be working with us much longer. We’ll be moving over to Children of the World (COTW), based out of Alabama, when the time comes. We’re optimistic that it’ll be a smooth transition.
That’s, more or less, what’s been going on… A TON! We’ll probably mostly post updates on our Facebook pages when we’re in India as we are able. It’s been really crazy, but we’re really, really close now. We’re so excited to meet Gaurav in person.
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