We’re in the final stages of getting all of our paperwork ready for our Vietnam dossier. If you look in the background section, you’ll see that we have already prepared a dossier for this adoption, but that was in case we were going to have to adopt from China. So, it wasn’t too hard to get all of the paper put together for this dossier. We had already gotten all of the ‘hard’ documents (birth certificates, marriage certificate, etc) and really only had to update some of the other documents that were unique to Vietnam. We also had to have our home study updated because we had moved since we had received our preliminary approval from the Citizens and Immigration Service (CIS) - an agency of the Department of Homeland Security. Everyone who does an international adoption gets to know CIS and its procedures very well!

The other slightly complicating factor was getting many of the documents notarized. Because we’re now living in Ankara, Turkey, it’s not as easy as if we were in the US. But, of course, we got great service from the Consular Section at the US Embassy.

Another interesting twist was updating police background checks. Of course, these have to be done by the local police and be in a language that the Vietnamese authorities will understand. Again, the embassy provided super service. This time the Regional Security Office was able to coordinate with the Turkish National Police to confirm that neither Nancy nor I had any record of criminal activities in Ankara, Turkey.

So, after all of the that was done and we took pictures of our new house to be included in the dossier, we fedexed everything back to our adoption agency. The final dossier should be on it way to Vietnam soon. Will keep you updated.

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