A glimmer of hope arrived yesterday from our adoption agency. Apparently the baby girl who had entered the orphanage a few weeks ago is doing OK after having some medical issues, which we don’t fully know about yet. If follow-up medical checks are positive, it looks like this may be the baby that gets referred to us. If so, we may be able to travel sometime in the summer (July or August) to get baby Alyssa.
Our fingers are crossed that this will work out. The roller coaster ride with its ups and downs continues.
Nothng definite from Vietnam yet although everything points toward a possible referral ‘real soon.’ The latest news from our adoption agency is that the medical check is still planned for the next week or so and that they hope the Vietnamese government will make a referral after June 15.
We’re not certain exactly what that means, but are eagerly awaiting the day we get the email from our agency telling us that the Vietnamese have made an official referral. Until then, we can only wait.
If this all works out as planned, it looks like we’ll be traveing to Vietnam in early August. We don’t know yet how long we’ll be staying there. We hope to know more on that front in a couple of weeks. The first families from our adoption agency to travel to Vietnam under the new process and pick up their newly adopted children are going in the end of June. Once they go through the process, everyone will have a much better idea of how things work.
More news to follow as we get it.
We finally got the call from our adoption agency last night. Our referral is official!! Our new daughter’s name is Alyssa Mai Hayes. She was born on March 21, 2006. A recent picture is below. We don’t have much more info than that and hope to be able to travel to Vietnam in late August to get Alyssa.
Still no definitive word on when we can get Alyssa, but it looks positive for the last week in August. We’re going crazy waiting!! Our adoption agency says that we’ll only have about two weeks notice from the Vietnamese government once they set the date for the Giving & Receiving Ceremony. We’re starting to move forward with plans so we’re ready once we get the word.
Meanwhile, we’ve been collecting all the necessary items that a family needs when a five-month old baby enters the home. The crib has been in place for several months, but we’ve also now cleaned off Jessie’s old infant car seat and got that ready for Alyssa. We also bought a new bouncer so Alyssa has a place to ’sit’ and can join the rest of the family as we sit in the living room. Of course, we also got new clothes, although not too many until we know Alyssa’s exact size.
All-in-all, we’re ready and now just have to hear from the Vietnamese government!! Jessie has expressed the family’s desire to have Alyssa with us the best with a beautiful drawing, shown below.
Finally all is in place and we’re off to Vietnam on Saturday, August 26, to get our daughter, Alyssa. We don’t have an exact date for the Giving & Receiving Ceremony, but expect it will be either August 29 or 30.
Once we get Alyssa we need to process paperwork with the Vietnamese, Turkish and US governments before we can come back to Ankara. So, we’ll probably spend about two weeks in Vietnam. In addition to Ho Chi Minh City, we’ll also travel to Phan Tiet province where the orphanage is as well as Hanoi to complete visa documents.
Obviously, we are all very excited to finally be on the last steps of this wonderful journey. Will try and update the blog in Vietnam and, hopefully, even be able to add a few pictures.
Looks like the G&R may be delayed by a couple of days. Not certain why, but we got an email from our adoption agency saying we should anticipate the delay. But, we’re still going on the same date and will hang out in Vietnam for a few extra days, if necessary.
At least we’ll be able to see Alyssa!!
Finally after what seems an eternity, we’re on our way to Vietnam. Grandma Patsy has joined us in Ankara and we’re set to fly to Ho Chi Minh City via Istanbul and Bangkok. It will be an exciting journey, one that we’ve been anticipating for many months.
There is still some uncertainity about exactly when we’ll get Alyssa and how long we will have to stay in Vietnam, but that doesn’t really matter since we’ll be able to visit her in the orphanage and be together with her.
We made it!! We’re in Ho Chi Minh City after a relatively uneventful trip from Ankara. Our flight from Istanbul was delayed about an hour, which caused to miss our connection in Bangkok. That meant we got to see more of the Bangkok airport than we wanted, but the airport staff was extremely helpful in getting us re-booked on a flight that was leaving within an hour. So, after a long trek through the airport, we only had a few minutes to wait before getting on an Air France flight for Ho Chi Minh City.
This is turning to be a truly international experience right down to the number of different airlines we are using. We flew from Turkey to Bangkok on Turkish Airlines and were supposed to connect to a Lufthansa flight, but instead ended up on Air France.
In Vietnam, we’ll fly Vietnam Airlines from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and then return to Bangkok on Thai Airlines before linking back up with Turkish Air for the return to Turkey.
The airport in Ho Chi Minh City seemed much cleaner and more efficient than we remembered it when we were last there on November 30, 2000 when we left Vietnam with Jessie. Getting through customs and picking up our luggage was a snap (because of the change in airlines in Bangkok we were a bit concerned the luggage wouldn’t make it). Coming out of the airport terminal, things were much calmer than Nancy and I recalled.
Because of our flight delay, Thao, our Vietnamese facilitator, wasn’t at the airport, but it was no problem finding a van to take us to the hotel. It was a Saturday evening and the streets were absolutely alive with humanity — most everyone uses motorbikes for transportation in Vietnam and, of course, Ho Chi Minh City is no exception. Everything and everybody can be seen on a motorbike. Most unusual and interesting to us were the families of four and five all riding on a single motorbike.
We arrived at the Riverside Renaisannce Hotel after about an half hour’s drive and immediately linked up with the rest of our group - two other families who had arrived from the US earlier in the day. Thao was with them and greatly relieved to see that we had no problems getting to the hotel from the airport. As we were soon to learn, Thao is absolutely fantastic and is constantly working to make sure everything (and I mean everything) goes smoothly while we are in Vietnam. It is great to have someone like her watching out for us.
After an hour of conversation and getting to know each other, we went to bed with great anticipation of the coming day - August 28 - when we would get to meet Alyssa for the first time. But for us it was a special day for two reasons since it would also be Jessie’s sixth birthday.
We all woke up today (Monday, August 28) with a feeling of great excitement. Today was going to be the day that we would get to meet Alyssa for the first time.
After a few hours relaxing around the hotel and resting from our long airplane trip, we (five adoptive parents, three grandparents and two previously adopted children) all piled into a minivan with a mountain of luggage to make the three hour drive to the Ham Tan Orphanage.
Soon the van filled with sounds of joy and happiness from two young girls. Jessie and her new friend, Gracie, who is four years old and was also born in Vietnam, were having a wonderful time, laughing and giggling. Their clear love of life made each adult on the van pause and realize once again what a positive impact this fantastic journey of adopting a child internationally had on everyone’s life, not only the children, but also the adults involved. It was evident that their presence only reinforced each parent’s decision to adopt a child.
The trip took a little longer than three hours and we enjoyed seeing the sites as we drove along. For many of us this was the first time outside of Ho Chi Minh City and after about an hour the urban landscape faded and gave way to views of country life in Vietnam. We were traveling along a busy road and soon became used to watching vehicles — trucks, buses, cars, motorbikes and horse and oxen drawn carts — all moving together in a gentle rythm accompanied by the sounds of tooting horns. Only the occassional blast of a large truck’s horn interrupted what appeared to be a well-orchestrated flow of the various forms of transportation. Even the occassional oncoming vehicle veering to avoid our minivan didn’t seem troublesome as we bounced along the way to meet Alyssa.
Eventually, we arrived in Ham Tan and as we neared the orphanage the van quieted considerably as everyone contemplated the once-in-a-lifetime moment that was about to unfold. The van pulled into the orphanage and we anxiously got out and hurried to a room filled with baby cribs where we found Alyssa waiting in her caregiver’s arms. Nancy clutched Alyssa while Jessie and Grandma Patsy looked on and I tried to record this wonderful first encounter with a video camera. After many tears of joy, we were able to compose ourselves and sit down to really meet Alyssa. At the same time, two other families were going through the same experience, all in what I’m sure was a chaotic scene, but no one cared or even payed attention.
It’s impossible for me to explain in words the emotions and feelings of that very special moment. Anything I could write wouldn’t do justice to intensity of the event. Just imagine after waiting almost two years, here we were finally meeting baby Alyssa and holding her in our arms, watching her bright eyes and listening to her soft cooing. All I can do is add in a couple of pictures of our happy family, now in a single moment increased to a family of four. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the pictures.
I’ll stop this post for now since it is getting long, just like the day it describes - August 28, 2006. We spent several hours at the orphanage, traveled another hour to our hotel and celebrated Jessie’s birthday. I’ll write about that in the next post.
After several hours in the orphanage, we all realized that the afternoon had slipped quickly by and that we needed to say goodby to our new family members and make our way to the hotel. Darkness came quickly during the hour long ride to the Novotel Ocean Dunes and Gulf Resort in Phan Thiet, which would be our home for the coming days. At the hotel, we were warmly greeted by the staff and got settled into our rooms in just a few minutes.
Now it was time for another kind of celebration — Jessie’s birthday. We had already planned to have a larger ‘official’ party once we returned to Ankara, but also wanted to recognize Jessie’s special day. So, we had a small family party in our room. Jessie opened several presents with great delight while Nancy, Grandma Patsy and I looked on. Her favorite was her own digital camera, which she had been wanting for a long time.
At dinner we joined all of the other families and much to our surprise at the end of the dinner, the hotel staff produced a beautiful birthday cake for Jessie. (As I said in an earlier post, Thao was super and I assume she was responsible for getting this cake for Jessie.) So, Jessie got to celebrate her birthday twice in one night. After that it was off to bed after a very long, emotionally filled day — one that we all will remember forever.