Where We Are Now

Some time back, I mentioned (okay, celebrated) that we were out of review. This means that our dossier has been moved to the matching room. I had saved these pictures to use some day in a Lifebook for S/J. I thought I'd share two of them now, so you'd see where our dossier is currently living or at least where it has been. I'll explain that in a minute. Even though our dossier is in this room, we still have quite a wait before we receive a referral.

When the CCAA starts matching, they have stacks of dossiers from the orphanages and stacks from the adoption agencies. I've been told that the first thing they do is match up the numbers. If orphanage A has six babies available and agency D has six dossiers, they match those two groups together. They try very hard to keep agency groups together so they may travel together when it's time. They also read the interests of the parents and the children and match that way. A child who likes musical toys would be matched to a family that has stated how important music is to their life, etc... They also use the passport pictures that were included in the dossier and match if they see any resemblance. Sometimes it might be a date that stands out, the same birthday, etc... These matches occur until they're finished for the month and then sent to the respective countries. When the agencies receive this information, they contact the parents and this is called a referral. There have been suggestions that China has a limit on how many children they will refer in a year. The monthly number seems to vary, but there are so many extenuating circumstances. China has not officially stated anything about this matter.

Normally referrals would be expected in about a week or so. Things are topsy-turvy this month (isn't there a new reason every month?) because the CCAA is moving to a new location. These pictures are of the old location, but should give a reasonable idea of what it looks like. I would expect their new home to be a bit more modern, however. Now the next batch of referrals is rumored to go through July 13th. While this is more than last month, which was more than the month before, it is still far less than we hoped for. We were really hoping for all or most of July in July. If we are to have any hope of getting a referral in October. They will need to speed up. This means that those stacks of dossiers would now represent all the parents in the world who have logged in between July 14, 2005 and October 31, 2005. Some rumors have the numbers as high as 2000 dossiers per month, so you do the math. August and September are rumored to be light, but October is quite heavy. There was a huge delay last year for those who were DTC (dossier to China) in September, and they did not get logged in until October. This made for a lighter September and a heavy October. No matter how you look at it, there are a lot of folders in there before they get to ours.

We're still hopeful for 2006 referral. Please put those good thoughts out there for us!