So here we are, standing at the start of the long road to adoption...
First, let me introduce the happy parents-to-be. Pablo and I have been a couple for 10 years. We are very much in love and committed to each other, but have never gotten married. Pablo is from Ecuador, a beautiful country in South America. I am a French-Canadian from Montreal. That’s where we met. We now live in beautiful Alberta, where I work as an engineer and Pablo runs a small business.
Adoption has always been in the back of my mind. I would love to have a mixed family, with some adopted kids and some biological kids. We were going to start with the latter, but they don’t seem to be in a rush! So hey! Why not get the adoption process started and see who shows up first!
So far, we have:
- Done a lot of research
- Picked a country – Sri Lanka, an island country south of the tip of India
- Picked an agency
- Organized a wedding in less than 2 weeks
- Sent out our application to the Alberta government
I know... That’s really not much when you look at the big picture. Baby steps...
The reason I’ve decided to start a blog is we have had a terrible time finding any information at all on adoptions from Sri Lanka! Even the requirements to adopt where not available on the web, let alone any encouraging success story or forum to share experiences. So we thought we’d put our experience out there, for the next family looking for the same info.
I’ll tell you more about the country and why we picked it later. But for now, a few disclaimers:
- Pardon our French: We are a Franco-Spanish family living in an English world. We speak French at home and, although we both work, buy our groceries and have dinner with friends in English, it still is a second language for us (actually, third for Pablo). We will make spelling and grammatical errors, please don’t hold it against us.
- The statistical chance of me becoming pregnant in the next year is 50% (I read that somewhere). In that case, I believe our file will have to be put on hold for a while (I still need to ask more details about what this means). Of course, this implies that you would not see us through the whole process before quite a while. Be warned: we may let you down! But at least, some information will be available about the process to the point where we’ll have made it.
- We’re learning as we go, here. So there will be some speculation... Use this information as a guide, not as divine word (although I am known for always being right).
- Everything in this blog is current as of 2011, but you know how stable the adoption world is (not!).
