Travel Call: Take Two!

Big news! We got our official travel call today! Our ICPC issue was resolved in 3 days instead of 3 weeks. So I guess the squeaky wheel does indeed get the grease. I had a feeling they were going to get moving on this thing, but wasn't expecting it to happen this fast. We're really relieved there will be no more delays and that everything ended up working out in the end. So now we can officially get excited about making the trip to Korea! So much left to do, so much left to plan, and we can hardly wait.

"Git 'R Done!"

Made some more progress this afternoon. After hearing that the ICPC office will start reviewing our case, our social worker called to tell me that they had indeed contacted her requesting supporting documentation from our homestudy. She was on her way out, so she will work on getting that together first thing on Monday and will Fed-Ex it to ICPC, so they should have it on Tuesday. In addition, I've gone back and forth over e-mail with the ICPC director, who said that they will also be needing supporting documentation from the Korean side. So to facilitate things, I gave her all the contact info for Holt and also contacted Holt myself to give them the heads-up that someone will be contacting them soon about this. The lady I spoke to at Holt said they have everything there on file and she will notify the person who deals with all the ICPC requests to expect a call and to get things ready to fax over. So it looks like we're in good shape for now.

What I really don't understand is why this has all been left for the last minute. We'd certainly like to find out why our ICPC application was filed so late by our agency. Our updated homestudy and everything for ICPC had been sent over from our social worker to Holt about a month ago, but apparently the ICPC application wasn't even filed until Feb. 19th and didn't show up at ICPC in Ohio until Feb. 25th. I think we still need to get some answers on that. But hopefully, this hassle will be resolved soon enough so we can leave on the 11th as planned.

Our charm offensive is working

Good news! I just received an e-mail from the ICPC director saying that she has asked one of her team members to conduct a preliminary review of our case! I guess our tag-team charm offensive is working. We both wrote really nice e-mails back to her yesterday and it looks like she's going to do what she can to help us travel as originally scheduled on March 11th. I have a good feeling about this.

ICPC update

Well, as it stands now, our state Senator's office did contact our state's ICPC director on our behalf. And we received an e-mail back from the ICPC director stating that, while they would love to handle every request on the day they receive them, they have a backlog of many other equally urgent requests and have to be considerate of everyone else waiting in front of us. She said their current turnaround time for these requests is 2-3 weeks, but they would try to get to ours as soon as possible. John wrote a pretty convincing and compelling e-mail back about our scheduling and timing issues, so for the moment, we'll just hold tight and wait to see if a miracle occurs before we rearrange our travel dates.

Where's Superman when you need him?

Ok, I spent the last few hours talking to our adoption agency in Oregon, the Ohio ICPC office, our local Congressman's office, our State Senator's office, writing e-mails, leaving voice mails, and getting much needed support from other families on our agency BB. So far, a nice lady at our State Senator's office said she would try to call this Ohio ICPC lady to see if our case can be expedited. She probably can't get through to a real person at the moment, either.

So, I guess this whole thing was just too easy, right? Everything was finally moving along great, our flights were booked, it was working out great with John's schedule, and the timing was just perfect......until this.

Breaking News! Travel Call!

Well, I just received a call from our adoption agency. It was one of those "I've got good news and I've got bad news" types of calls. The good news is that Leah Jin-Ri is now cleared to leave Korea! The bad news is that the Ohio Interstate Compact (ICPC) hasn't been approved yet, and word is that Ohio is really slow in processing these. This is some sort of agreement that has to be made between Oregon's ICPC and our state's ICPC, which would allow Jin-Ri to live in Ohio until her finalization. The reason for this is that it takes at least 6 months of post-placement supervision for adoptions from Korea to be finalized, and until then, Holt Oregon is officially her guardian. So, I've been instructed to contact some lady at the Ohio ICPC office to try to push this through. Worse case scenario is that we have to get a Congressperson involved. Wish me luck!