We just got back from our trip to the North Shore (that would be the Minnesota side of Lake Superior). Our dog Cody thoroughly enjoyed sniffing and marking the three state parks we made it to. His favorite--paws down--was Gooseberry Falls. Especially after he locked eyes with a fine looking chocolate lab just a few yards away.
Our cabin was situated 20 miles west of Two Harbors. Remote enough that we had no cell signals, no internet access or TV stations to speak of. Just the company of one kitchen mouse, lots of pesky aphids (that go to die in your toothbrush) and the occasional loon off Lake Pequan.
All this remoteness seemed like it would be good practice for our stay in 18th century Uralsk. Sure, I tried getting Bob to eat root vegetables, but he put his foot down after the turnip soup. Luckily, I have plenty of time to work on him, or so I thought. But the fact is we may be in Kazakhstan earlier than we imagined. Like 2-3 months earlier, but I'm jumping ahead of myself.
Back to the cabin. After managing to get a semblance of a cell signal, I immediately called the agency. (I know, I know we're on vacation, give it a rest.) But I had to give them an update. We had gotten clearance by the FBI before we left and now all that was holding things up was the I-171H. Our social worker said it was taking 1-1/2 months to get the Notice of Favorable Determination. Why so long? Turns out there's only ONE person in Minnesota that processes the petitions for orphan immigration for SIX surrounding states--another example of our government at its finest. Now you ask, how can that put us in Kazakhstan any sooner? Well, instead of waiting on that form, we're going to apostille all the other documents and send it on to the agency. They'll start the translations and then fax the remaining document afterwards. That should take a month. Tack on another 7-8 days for the Kazak Consulate in Washington to authenticate the documents and off it all goes to Kazakhstan. Right now they're saying it's taking 6 weeks from the day the Kazak Ministry receives our dossier to the time we travel. ONLY 6 weeks. Now add it up and it comes to 11 weeks total. Which could possibly put us in Uralsk late November/mid December. (Our initial time frame was closer to mid February/early March.)
Wow, what an amazing Christmas present our adopted son would be.
3 comments:
hey! We are on the same boat as you are! We have everything-but the I-171H. I gave everything else to our agency last week and it's being translated right now! There is only one lady in TAmpa that processes all the i-171h'S, BUT not sure how many other states she does. It's quite maddening. However, it's only been a week (last Thursday was a week) that they've had our home study, so I am trying to chill. In the meanttime, I got an email that my son's passport was mailed SAturday. So, that is cool.
and I'm busy buying baby toys. I need to hurry up and travel before I buy any more. We wanted to travel in Dec but I was doing a lot of research today on other folks who used our agency and they traveled about 6 to 8 weeks after their dossier was received. So, if my I-171H would come this week or next, we could possibly travel in November. So, maybe we'll be there together. :)
The weekend north sounds so awesome - I've been itching to get away from it all for a couple of days and hit Duluth or Jay Cooke State Park or something. I think it's good to get away from all the technology sometimes.
Hopefully you won't have to wait that long for your I171-H. MN usually is fairly quick, but sounds like maybe they've had some staff changes since I got mine in February. But it does sound great that they'll go ahead and get the rest ready so you can save some time!
Sounds like a great vacation. We took a vacation before we left for Kaz too! I look forward to reading your blog especially once you travel. We were in almaty. Here's our blog. We just got back in July.
www.bilbro-family.blogspot.com/
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