The past 7 days have been a paperwork marathon. Listen to this...
Our Chinese translations of our home study, adoption contract and our Power of Attorney (all of the above in triplicate) arrived via Taiwan postal service on Tuesday! I was in the Walmart parking lot about to go in the store when I received a text message from Eric which said, "Translations at my office." Huh??? I immediately called him and shouted, "What?!?!" when he answered. In an ever so calm voice he explained, "I have our translated documents from Taiwan right here." At which point I started screaming in his ear! lol It turns out that the documents had been mailed Taiwan Express Mail but had been sent to the wrong address, so they ended up back at the post office. Fortunately Eric's cell # was on the mailing slip, so this is how we received our precious delivery. I hopped back into the car and drove straight to his office at the church, crying and praising God all the way. These translations are what we had been waiting for to finish our dossier!
We spend the next 2 hours trying to figure out where to sign our names on the Chinese adoption contracts (thank God for facebook friends who jumped in to answer my questions!), making photocopies and tracking down a dear friend who is a notary. I even made it to my shift at Chattanooga Coffee Company on time! During a break at work, I sped to the county courthouse and got 16 documents certified before the office closed, then headed back to work. The next morning (Wednesday) I cruised on down to FedEx and overnighted the documents to the TN Secretary of State in Nashville for the state certifications. By Friday morning we had our completed documents in hand!!
Friday I called the Taiwan Consulate (TECO) to find out the procedure for getting our dossier documents certified. There was some confusion about what the fee would be for this service. We had to bring a cashier's check for the proper amount and I received conflicting info from several sources. I didn't get a clear answer from the TECO representative either, due to communication difficulties. In the end, we went with our gut and purchased a cashier's check for the most logical amount.
Today (Monday) I was able to get the day off work, so Eric and I drove our dossier documents to TECO Atlanta. We guessed correctly about the amount due. Yay!! Well almost. We were over by $15 because we had included our Illinois marriage license in the stack of documents. Turns out TECO Atlanta doesn't service Illinois. Ahhhh I missed that one! So before we left Atlanta, we called the Chicago office and FedEx'd the marriage license to them for processing.
So we have just a few more days of waiting. I expect that next week sometime we will be able to ship a large stack of legal documents to His Hands Taiwan, Inc. These documents will be our "ticket" to a court hearing to adopt Selah PingChen. It feels great to be moving forward!
1 comment:
Wow! Takes me back to the days when Mongolia closed on us and we switched two more time to three more countries.... aaaahhhhhh. I still shudder at the words, authenticated and translated original documents. whew! It's all so worth it, SO EXCITED for you!
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