Yesterday we went to the International Workshop that Dillon hosts and required us to attend. We had low expectations for the day, but were pleasantly surprised. There were about a dozen couples, three of which (including us) were in the Korea program. Others were there for China, Vietnam, Hatti, or India. Not all of the families present had decided to adopt, or decided to use Dillon as the agency. There were several couples in the early stages of the process and only one couple that was a step ahead of us (not for Korea though). Given the mix of the attendees, the presentation covered everything from deciding to adopt, selecting an agency to use, the process involved to finalize an adoption, etc. A lot of it is what we had learned previously.

One of the best aspects of the day was having a couple of families there that had recently gone through the process. We got to meet a couple with three biological kids and their adoptive child from Vietnam who joined their family 6 months ago. We also got to meet another couple who brought home their son from China just 8 weeks ago. It was really great getting to hear about their experiences. Of course they faced a barrage of questions from those of us who are looking at the adoptive process from the other side.

Another thing we took away from this day was that we are really thankful that God lead us to adopt from Korea. Every other country requires a dossier. Since we knew from the beginning that we were going to go with the Korea program, we didn't even look at what the dossier requirements were. Having listened to the Dillon representatives walk through the extremely detailed and tedious process, we now recognize that our paperwork is relatively simple. Furthermore, the wait time for children from Korea is much shorter. We knew this from the beginning, but to hear other couples talk about having to wait for as many as 3+ years was quite sad. This is on top of how long they struggled with infertility, acceptance of infertility, and the decision process of deciding to adopt.

We also met Rachel. Rachel is the social worker who will be doing our Home Study. We just scheduled the first visit for this Friday! The Home Study consists of two interviews and is concerned with the "home", not the house. We were surprised to find out that the Home Study is typically done at their office. Although in our case, the Home Study will be done in our house (Rachel lives within a mile of us so it is more convenient for all of us). We spent most of our lunch time talking with her and she seems really terrific.

After the workshop we began (and completed) the initial paperwork that is required for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Finally, but not related to the adoption process, Lucia's sister gave birth to a beautiful, healthy boy on March 5th. God is good!