Progress towards and News about Jian!

So I finally have some progress to report on the adoption process. We received the official notice from US Citizenship & Immigration Service (USCIS) that our application was received on May 24. Today we received our biometrics appointment at our local Applications Support Center. We are to report at ASC on July 1st at 3 PM. For the previous 2 adoptions we were able to walk in well ahead of our appointment date. Sometimes this speeds up the approval, although indications are that right now USCIS is not approving anyone quickly no matter how early they get the fingerprints done. We will go next Wednesday just because Steve is home from work anyway and Alice & Lucy are still in school. Hoping for no crowds like both previous visits.

Based on wait times for immigration approvals, this last item needed for our dossier won't be done until early July. Then it will have to be sent to Washington, DC to be authenticated by the State Department and certified by the Chinese Embassy. That process adds another week. I think we're looking at mid-July before our dossier will be on its way to China.

In other more exciting news, we learned a little about Jian Jian's school situation in China. There is a non-profit organization in China started by a young couple from France that works exclusively to improve the lives of orphans with vision impairments. They have a foster and training facility in Beijing and they also do outreach programs to parents and orphanages to educate them in better care for children with vision impairments. Because they do work with orphanages throughout China, I sent a request asking if they knew anything about the school that Jian Jian attends. They didn't, but they were able to find contact information and call the school!

We learned that the school is for children who are blind, deaf, and/or mute. The VI (vision impaired) children are taught braille, Chinese, math, life skills and basic sports. Unfortunately they do not get any orientation & mobility (O&M) training. This is common in China. Only VI adults are given canes, but with no training on how to use them. We are told that Jian Jian studies hard, is very independent, can take care of herself well and is quite healthy. Her teacher is "good hearted" and very concerned about improving education at the school. The school does not have email or "even a fax machine," so we are assuming that Jian Jian has no access to technology devices. It also sounds like the school does not teach the children any English. Jian Jian is from a poor county in a poor province in central China. The school isn't located in a big city and seems to be doing its best with limited resources.

With each successive adoption, we get more comments about what good people we are to doing this. We appreciate the sentiment, but just don't feel that we are doing anything special. In the past 24 hours I've read of 2 families who stretched themselves much further than I could. One family arrived home 2 days ago from China with their 2 newest children, only to have their new son pass away the next day. He was a very sick toddler with extreme heart condition. They knew adopting him that he was very sick, but they went forward anyway. A second family lost their daughter during complicated heart surgery a mere 3 months after bringing her home from China. More families seem to be open to bringing home very sick children not knowing just how long they will get to have them. These children were a few of the lucky ones who passed away with a family surrounding them with love. To me, this makes what we are doing seem like such an easy choice.