Options...

Options...
Hi! We decided to start a blog about our experience. Since long we've decided to adopt because we consider that bringing another child to this world while there are so many orphans did not make sense, there is enough overpopulation already...

We had many obstacles, the first is that since we were not US citizens we could not adopt internationally. Once this was sorted out we started to consider our options.

The first thing to do was to find an adoption agency, which isn't easy, there many small and big, religious and not. The first one we chose was Journes of the Heart, because it seemed an agency relatively small that offered several options. We had to choose the country from which we wanted to adopt, and at first we decided on China, but the problem is that the process on this country is becoming longer and longer and with more restrictions.

Finally we settled on Taiwan, we requested the application and that's when we started to hit obstables. The first was that we needed to name a guardian within USA and we couldn't find anybody willing to do this. The agency started to treat us not so well, and the truth is that this made us feel depressed and for a while we left the matter alone.

What should we have done? Desist or try another agency? We started our search again, we called, and called, and called. Many treated us with not much interest and posed many issues. What we found odd is the commercial aspect of all this, and how the focus is on the parents, in the parents' happyness, that the child is "perfect", to form a "perfect" family.

In the end we selected three agencies that talked to us very nicely and that seemed to put the attention in the children well being, in finding them a family and save them from their state of abandonment.

One of those agencies is in Washington State, and two in Oregon. We were thinking in Haiti and Ethiopia because we thought these are the two countries that have more needs, but Haiti takes too long and more money, so we finally settled on Ethiopia and the agency Adoption Avenues in Portland. The director Radu Baila is from Romania, he was very nice on the phone and answered all our questions. So... here we go!!! The adventure begins!

AliciA