Friday, March 10, 2006

For those of you interested in the procedural end, I (Jason) who am in charge of the procedural dealings of this deal for the Schlafer's (Michelle's a lock for the emotional president of this family), I'll attempt to explain from my point of view what has occurred in our lives over the past week.

Wednesday, March 1: Andrea (our adoption coordinator extraordinaire in Chicago) calls to inform us that our Letter of Invitation is being processed and should be ready to pick up by Erken (our adoption coordinator in KZ) by Friday the 3rd. If not Friday, then most likely Monday.

Friday, March 3: We talk to Andrea who informs us that Erken has been to pick up the LOI and it isn't ready. The letter itself is ready, but the government had yet to assign the necessary numbers to each letter.

Monday, March 6: Andrea calls us again to inform us that Erken has been back and the gov't still has not assigned the necessary numbers.

March 7-9: Repeat Monday the 6th only add some emotion, stir, serve in a chilled glass with Olives.
During this stretch, I take all of our notarized documents (updated medical forms for each of us, copies of our doctors' current licenses, psychiatric evaluations, copy of the license of our psychiatrist, copies of our passports, etc, etc) to the county clerks of Jessamine, Fayette, Boyle and Franklin Counties. At each County Clerk's office the clerk (or its designee) signs a form certifying that the notary is indeed a valid notary.

After my treks around the Bluegrass, I headed to the State Capitol to the Secretary of State's Office. At the Capitol, I somehow ended up in a rally against the governor's platform of making the Commonwealth a 'Right to Work' state. Yep, me and 5000 Union representatives from around the state. ANYWAY, I met with one of the Secretary of State's designees and had each document Apostilled. The clerk at the SOS office told me that she is basically looking to see that the County Clerk's designee is registered to sign on behalf of the Clerk.

Friday, May 10: Got the great news (which you can read about below), contacted the bank to order some more crisp Ben Franklins, a travel agent or two to find out how best to give the airlines a couple of month's pay, and off to FedEx to send off our application for travel Visas from the Consulate of Kazakhstan in NYC.

Now, we are both exhausted. We shall get some sleep tonight, but with a travel date of next Friday, our days of sleep are no doubt numbered. Thanks for reading.

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