Our Dossier Has Been Mailed

We began the process of changing our country of adoption from China to Kazakhstan in the second week of July. (June and the beginning of July were spent agonizing over whether to change countries and what route to take if we did.)

The summer was spent collecting and having notarized an enormous number of documents. I don’t even want to think about them at this point…but believe me, it took my ENTIRE school summer vacation to get our dossier together! Those of you that have been through this know it can be a full time job.

Once the dossier was completed and apostilled by the Maine Secretary of State, it was sent off to be translated to Russian at the end of August. This process took about three weeks.

Finally, the whole translated packet (2 complete sets of our dossier) was sent to Kazakhstan on Tuesday, October 2nd! Whoo-hoo! Our information has left the country!

What happens now? Well, let’s see if I can get this straight. (I’ll probably have to tweak this):

• The dossier is sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where it is checked over for the appropriate paper work and criteria for adoption.
• From there it goes to the Ministry of Education. It is here from which our dossier will be sent to one of the two cities that our adoption agency, MAPS, works with. We’ll be going to either Astana (see image above), the capital of Kazakhstan, or Kostanay where MAPS works with specific “baby houses” in each of those cities.
• Once meeting approval from this organization, the dossier is typically sent to the Guardianship board in the city of which you are adopting. I think ours is sent to a particular baby house “guardianship board” rather than a city run one. Once a child becomes available, we will be issued an invitation to travel from the Ministry of Education.

The time frame? This whole process should take about 3 to 4 months. It could go faster or it could take longer, but our estimated time of travel is around mid-January. A family that recently processed their adoption through MAPS waited only 2 months from the time that their dossier left the MAPS office to when they were invited to travel. So, yes, it is possible that we could be invited to go as early as December.

Here are a few Kazakhstan adoption stories. We’re looking forward to writing ours:

Aviva’s Adoption- http://www.bederson.org/aviva/index.html

Recent Adoptions from Astana-

• Wonderful World of Kaz, July-Sept. 2007- http://wonderfulworldofkaz.blogspot.com/
  
• Stanward Bound, July-Sept. 2007, http://www.stanwardbound.blogspot.com/
• The Van Sant Family Adoption, July-Aug. 2007, http://babygirl-kaz.blogspot.com/

Recent Adoptions from Kostanay (also spelled Kostanai and Kustanai)

• Our Adoption Journey to Kazakhstan, Feb.-May, 2007- http://www.watrous2kaz.blogspot.com/
  
• Welcoming SPW, March-May, 2007- http://www.wolfecub.blogspot.com/