Adoption: not for the faint of heart

So, this was our day...

This morning we tracked our much anticipated paperwork from Taipei, to Anchorage, to Memphis, to Lenexa, and finally to our door at 10:10 AM. It was a time for rejoicing, we were moving forward and making progress!

Now that we had the translated paperwork to go along with all the English versions, our next steps are to get them notarized, authenticated by the Secretary of State's office, and then to the TECO (Taipei Economic and Cultural Office) in downtown KC. All so we could send it back to Taiwan. Monday is Memorial Day so all the offices will be closed, and then Alicia is out of town the rest of the week. Alica came up with a brilliant scheme of a road trip to Topeka to the Secretary of State's office and then hightail it back to the TECO tomorrow, so we wouldn't have to lose another week. Gotta love the mommy mode...

I called the SoS's office to see if they happen to have a branch in our area like Missouri does. No dice, their only office is in Topeka. Then I talked to the Notary Dept. to double check what they needed for their authentication process and to see if Alicia's crazy scheme will work. What do you know, it will!

This afternoon, we go to get the Chinese translations notarized after I got off work. One perk of working for the bank is getting free notarization. We've been helped by the same nice guy at the branch nearest our home with all our paperwork so far. When we showed him the English and Chinese translations, he said he couldn't notarize them since neither we, nor he, could read the documents. At that instant, it was a blessing that Alicia is a stay-at-home-wife, and we need my job. Otherwise Alicia would have given this nice man a 20 minute "Come to Jesus" lecture about how a Notary's job is to verify that the person is who they say they are, they are signing of their own free volition, and that they actually signed the document in the notary's presence. It's that simple. It technically doesn't matter if you want to have a notary witness you signing a will, power of attorney, something in Chinese, or in ancient Hebrew. Alicia's tongue was almost bleeding and I have some indentations in my thigh from her death grip, but we didn't burn any bridges and I still have my job.

It's 4:25, and we still needed to get these documents notarized before our early morning trek to Topeka. So, Alicia kindly asked him if he knew of anyone who could notarize them, and happens to know Mandarin Chinese so they can verify what we are signing. His answer was to photocopy the Notary section of a couple phone books for us and we left. Alicia called 5 different places on our way home, almost in tears, having to leave messages for a few.

She finally reached a live human, a very nice woman who talked with Alica for 20 minutes saying that she's been a notary for 20 years, and has never had anyone need her services for documents in a foreign language. She searched through her Notary guidebook, and agreed with us that it doesn't matter what you're signing or in what language it is, but she wanted to call the Secretary of State's office to double check the rules.

It just so happened that I was already on the phone with the Notary department at the Secretary of State's office, who I've already talked to twice before this morning. By this time Rita from the Notary department and I are on a first-name basis. After I explained the whole situation, and asked her if she knew what we could do, or to whom we could go for foreign language notarization, she turned our whole afternoon around. They do notarization for free, and then they can do the authentication, all at the same time in the same office, in about 20 minutes! After hanging up and breathing a big sigh of relief that our day was salvaged, we looked at each other and laughed, wondering how can they notarize something, and then turn around and authenticate their own notarization? We aren't going to question them, after all, they are the Secretary of State's office. We just hope they actually know what they can and cannot do.

So, first thing tomorrow, we're heading to Topeka to the Secretary of State's office. It's next door to the State Capitol building, and since neither of us have ever been there we'll take a quick tour and some photos to commemorate this step in the journey. Then we need to hightail it back to KC to the TECO. We've heard it usually takes them 2-3 days to process the paperwork, so we are praying it will be ready for us to overnight everything back to the Skiles in Taiwan Monday the 7th.

With that, Ted can get us on the court docket for the first hearing, hopefully in the first part of July. The second hearing is usually around 3 weeks after the first, and then Titus is officially and legally our child! We still have Immigration frustration, but it's very possible, even plausible that we can travel the first week in August. Hopefully in time for my parents to meet Titus before they go back to Moscow.