Wed jan 26 Consulate Day

Wednesday January 26, 2011

Today was Consulate Day.  I stayed in the hotel room with Nikki from 10 to 11 in case our facilitator Molly needed me to answer any questions.  She was at the US consulate turning in all our paperwork for Nikki to immigrate to the US. Everything went fine, so we took a walk around the island. It was beautiful today-probably 50 degrees and sunny. We stopped at subway for lunch.  Then at 2 pm we got on a big bus with probably 40 other couples, kids & babies and headed to the US Consulate for our oath taking.  We never had to do that for our other adoptions but China is a Hague approved country and Ukraine is not. For those of you who don't know, from what I understand Hague countries have to prove without a doubt that the child is truly an orphan with the documents to prove it.  We go in a big room, raise our right hands and repeat what the officer is saying.  It had to do with swearing that Nikki's immigration paperwork is correct & done honestly.  Then they call each family forward to sign the DS-230 which we mailed to them in September or October.  We had to sign an affidavit that we will have Nikki vaccinated within 30 days of her arrival in the states, this was supposed to be done in the states.  I kept asking our Social worker about it and she said we didn't need it, even though I knew we did.  But oh well, we got it done today.   Now we wait until Friday when Molly will pick up Nikki's immigration visa from the consulate and we head to Hong Kong.  Saturday we fly home.