It is hard to believe that it has only been since December that we have been researching adoption and starting to talk about adopting now. It all has happened so fast. It was good to look back on it and see the thought processes and events that led to where we are now. Looking back, there's been a pretty clear path to Thailand.
December 2010
In the beginning of the month, I started looking at the agency my in-laws were planning to work though and reading some of the adoption stories. I also began blog stalking people in the process of adopting. :) I love living vicariously through other people's blogs.
I also began researching countries that we would be qualified to adopt from. I actually went through the State Department's website with descriptions of each country's adoption process and listed every Asian country that we would be qualified to adopt from in the near future. :) I am nothing if not thorough.
Japan was at the top of my list to check out. Unfortunately, not only is it an unusual place to adopt from with a very small program, but it is about twice as expensive as most international adoptions. I also researched Taiwan during December. We would qualify for Thailand too, but I didn't do too much research on it. I was turned off by a description that said Thailand took longer to adopt from and didn't pursue it further. I also joined several yahoo adoption groups.
I began bringing up the possibility to Robby, and after he got over the shock, he got used to the idea. We told our families at the end of December that we were looking into adopting first. It went well. :)
And finally, on December 30th I filled out the pre-application for All God's Children International (AGCI) to get more information on their Taiwan program.
We had a huge paradigm shift in December from adoption being many years in the future to researching agencies and submitting pre-applications. A lot can happen in a month.
Next: January 2011
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