Thursday, July 7

Happy Birthday, Claire!

Claire said she's not going to let me off the hook and call the trip here, or anything to do with returning home, or anything between count as a birthday gift. She also said we should keep it to ourselves, as she didn't want any fuss made by our birth-family or anyone else here. I acquiesced, but now don't know what to do for her birthday...

Claire started the day with a call to DHL. She asked for the go-to guy, but he was out. She asked about our package, and learned that it had arrived on the plane and would be delivered today. After a little trial and error she got out of him that the package was out for delivery, and the embassy would have it sometime this morning, probably.

We had a quick breakfast in the restaurant. We have planned a lunch with our birthmother and Maddy, so we tried to make it a light breakfast. Really what happened is we just didn't finish what we'd ordered.

We returned to the room and waited for not a lot of time when they arrived. We chatted in the room about the visa an such. We'd hoped that Maddy would explain the deal, especially about leaving on Friday, to our birthmother. She probably did, or would at lunch.

Our birthmother showed us her finger. She'd cut or scratched it, and now it was puffy with what looked to our untrained eyes as an infection. We offered her some antibiotic cream and band-aids, and suggested we stop by Dr. Pinano's office before or after lunch.

We discussed where to go for lunch, too, finally settling on the Chinese place we were going to have our post-adoption celebration dinner. We loaded in the car and took off for the restaurant.

As we drove by, we noticed the doctor's office was open an in a hasty conversation decided to take advantage of that, instead of relying on lucky timing later. I zipped a u-turn and we stopped in. He was happy to see us. He took a look at her hand, cleaned her wound, and gave her some antibiotics and Tylenol-3. She wasn't too happy with our decision, because her hand hurt worse, but everyone tried to cheer her up and tell her it would be better in a little while.

We made it to the restaurant and had lunch and good chatter. Maddy's younger daughter and friend joined us, but at an adjoining table and not really participating in our lunch. Our birthmother took some of the Tylenol and after a while her hand didn't hurt so much. We chatted a little about the birth-father, who she, of course, knew. We really just wanted to know that he was a generally healthy guy (yes), and we also learned that he's short, although we didn't learn how short. Definitely shorter than I am. We learned more, too, but that's her story, not ours.

We also talked about helping Grace's sisters out with school. There's still some details to iron out regarding permanence. Our birthmother is kind of following her paternal grandmother around, and for the moment she's staying with other relatives on Majuro, but will probably eventually move on to another atoll. This makes school planning a little tough. Currently, though, the plan is for her to go to the Delap elementary school, which is just down the street a little from the hotel and their home. Registration is going on now for the fall classes, there's just a need for medical records, maybe some vaccinations, and then there's the matter of the fee. It's $15, which is a little much at the moment.

We discussed the co-op school, which is one of the private schools, where we'd heard the movers and shakers send their kids, including the visiting family. The tuition is more like $2000 a year, but we're thinking that might be a gift that keeps on giving. It might take about twelve years to manifest, but if the girls could make it through, they might be better set for the future.

The Delap school is one of the good ones, we were consoled. It's just as close, but it has a few more benefits. It might be a little out-of-sorts for the girls to go to a school with so much hoit and toit, but to not have it in other aspects of home life. Plus with the uncertainty of permanence, the public school might be more suitable. We deferred the other school discussion for another time, and popped for the records and registration fee, and even gave a little extra in case there were other fees for other vaccinations.

It started raining hard, and we waited it out. As the rain started subsiding, we reminded Maddy she'd taken a call about a traveling birthmother. She had another ride arrive to take her to the hospital. We agreed to take our birthmother to the hospital where she'd get the records she needed, and pending the outcome of that, she'd continue on and do the registration.

We returned to the hotel room. It was about 2PM, so we decided that if we hadn't heard anything by around 3:30 or so, we'd make our way there before 4PM to catch them before closing. As if we were being watched, the phone rang as we entered the room. It was Daisy from the embassy telling us that our visa was there and ready, and we could stop by any time and pick it up. We decided there was no time like the present, so we changed Grace's diaper, prepared some bottles, and returned to the road.

Along the way, at the bridge (there's only the one), we ran into a little bit of a traffic jam. It seems the taxi a few cars ahead ran out of steam reaching the top of the bridge and stalled. The police in the truck a few behind the taxi, but right in front of us, stopped to help. As they were at the crest, we couldn't tell if there was oncoming traffic, so we waited. They got the traffic moving again, and we continued, finishing our trip without additional distraction.

We arrived at the embassy just before 3PM and were let in fairly directly, with another couple of women and a child (they were together). Inside, we were told the consular had just left for town, but would return very soon. Thursday is visa day, and 3PM is the time they do them, it seems, so it should be the case that they're there.

We were let into the conference room right off of the lobby area, and waited murmuring to each other. About forty minutes later Andrew and the consular general (or some such) arrived. They sat down and proceeded to apologize for the way our case had been handled, on behalf of the embassy, and the state department.

Among other things, we learned that the date we had received before, 22 June, wasn't the date that the state department gave their approval, but was the date that the Department of Homeland Security gave theirs. We knew this because that's who responded to our e-mail. What hadn't been made apparent was that was the point at which the state department received and could start their processing. The state department did their part in about a week, as expected, so the delay had been in DHS.

It could have been the case, though, that a little discussion about our date would have revealed its mid-processing point. But we weren't really talking about that when we mentioned it, as we were there to collect the other family's visa. A few key questions or recognition of a few keywords, such as us knowing the e-mail was from DHS, might have made this happen.

What frustrates the embassy, and therefore the adopting parents, and specifically in this case us (and our friends and family who sympathize), is that DHS is mum during their processing. It's curious, because DHS was supposedly formed to aid in sharing information with U.S. agencies.

We commented that one thing that would help would be to have the embassy alert the families as the milestones are passed. “It's reached Manila,” and “DHS has started processing,” and “the state department has it now,” and “it's leaving Manila!” They said that some of those milestones are supposed to be provided, and seemed genuinely shocked to hear that we hadn't been told. They also commended us on our restraint that we hadn't been bothering the embassy for them.

We told them we'd contacted our senator to try to get some information out of Manila. Senator Klobuchar has adoption reform as a stated project. They welcome the intervention of Congress, saying that gets the most attention, and that they're having little success making changes from the inside. They'd like to do the processing in Majuro, but evidently the cost of the software to process the requests (facial recognition and so on) is prohibitive.

The government needs to embrace the cloud, methinks. It shouldn't be the case that whole systems need to be installed at each embassy, but that the information should be submitted to some central authority, say DHS, where the processing can be centralized. That kind of reform, I can actually help with...

They also apologized for the way the whole “phone call incident” was handled. It was a breech of procedure and could have been handled differently. It should have been handled differently by all parties involved. Of course, the number shouldn't have been shared to begin with, but once done, a whole different approach could have been taken, and the reaction much less adversarial.

We left the embassy, visa in hand, a little less unhappy with the embassy, and Andrew in particular. That there was a gap in their procedure was a little refreshing, but not totally. That there was a misunderstanding about the timing, helped a little, but that, too, could have been addressed. With a little more experience, that would have been noticed and the understanding corrected.

We returned to the hotel room, and tucked the visa away in our carry-on; in the bag that I'll clutch the whole trip with the Mac in it. We'll give it to the immigrations people in Hawaii, but it needs to be close at hand until then; we process before we can access our bags. We tucked Grace's passport, with the immigration visa in place, with ours.

We then made one last shopping run. We're down to a few diapers, so we got the smallest bunch we could. We also got a little more cash along the way. For our final errand, we filled the car with gas. We'll be giving it back in the morning, and we're leaving the tank just shy of full, like it was when we got it.

We returned to the hotel, where the plan was to divide and conquer. One of us (Claire) would stay with Grace in the room and start packing, and the other (me) would try to throw our dirties through the laundry so we can travel with clean clothes. The laundry was occupied, so we lounged in the room a bit. Later the laundry was still occupied, so we went for dinner.

We had dinner in the restaurant at the hotel. We chatted a bit with bubu, letting her know that we would indeed be leaving tomorrow. We've got our visa and our tickets have been changed. We also said that our birthmother and whomever else wanted to would be welcome to visit any time after lunch tomorrow. We wanted to have enough time to finish getting ready, and were planning on just laying low until it was time to go to the airport.

After dinner, Claire jogged up to the laundry and I returned to the room. Grace had fallen asleep during dinner, so I tucked her into bed. Claire returned with news that the washing machine in the laundry room was unused, so I scooped the basket and hastened there. Claire said she would get a jump on packing for tomorrow.

There was a guy tending the dryer, but the machine was open, so I dumped our clothes in and started the load. I lingered in the hallway until the washer was done. The dryer dude had previously departed, so I was free to switch to the dryer. I lingered more, and when the dryer buzzed, I collected everything and returned to the room. The load was a little large, as I washed everything for the week in the one load. I put the damp clothes out on the bed, and hung a few things. The dry clothes went into the drawers.

Claire had made good progress with packing, so we decided to call it a night. She moved the damp clothes off the bed, and we settled in for a couple more episodes of The Big Bang Theory. Claire turned in, and I finished some posts before turning in also.