Travel dates?

A couple of people have asked what our travel dates will be after reading Wednesday's exciting news of our court date. We wish we knew! As you've undoubtedly noticed so far, nothing about this process is simple, easy, or efficient, so we're trying to get used to that being the status quo. What we are waiting on is for our agency to send us an itinerary and that's based on when the birth family/person who found child is available to meet with us. I'll talk about birth family/finder in a future post.

Part of why we chose our particular agency is that they facilitate this meeting, which not only proves that the child has been voluntarily relinquished (not kidnapped, which sadly does happen), but it gives us this amazing opportunity to find out more about our child and ask any questions we may have. We can also take pictures of her/him/them and later show them to Bedilu so that he has as much of his history in Ethiopia as possible. We think this transparency that our agency provides is really important and special. Needless to say, it's probably going to be the most intense encounter of our lives and I'm sure many tears will be shed.

Anyway, that's what we're waiting on to know our exact travel dates, but it'll be very close to our court date on 4/20/11, so it's probably safe to say we'll be leaving for Ethiopia on 4/15 or 4/16.