Our Dossier is in Ethiopia! (And some background info FYI)

So we just got the email today from our adoption agency that our dossier arrived safely in Ethiopia! Before it arrived in ET, our dossier first went (from our adoption agency) to the US State Department for authentication, and from there it went to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington D.C. for further authentication. Now that it is in Ethiopia, it will be translated and prepared for court. One more step down in the process!!

What is this "dossier" some of you may be asking...(since I am not so good at relaying all the details)... Well, the dossier is a collection of documents and paperwork that you may have heard me vaguely refer to when I kept talking about all of the "paper-chasing" we were doing in the first few months of '09. Basically it consists of personal letters of reference, letters from the bank, fingerprint clearance from local law enforcement, employer verification and reference letters, a letter to the Ministry of Womens Affairs in ET stating our motivation and intent to adopt, medical letters from both Jeff's and my physician's, past years tax returns, etc, etc, as well as very important document called our Homestudy. The homestudy is a long written report that we got from our social work agency after a series of meetings and a home visit. Essentially they write a very detailed report about us, our family histories, heritage, childhoods, marriage, parenting philosphies, motivation to adopt, neighborhood, home, finances, etc, etc, ultimately giving their stamp of approval for us to adopt (as an FYI, we also had to supply our Homestudy Social Work agency with its own stack of documents/paperwork/references that are separate from the dossier paperwork).

So...this big pile of documents is what physically makes up the Dossier. Keep in mind that most of these documents, once we have collected them, have to be notarized and some even further must be state sealed by the secretary of state...it really is a bunch of crazy hoops to jump through. Essentially, this paperwork (the Dossier) is what is presented to the Ethiopian courts after they have identified a child for us, to allow us to adopt the child legally through the ET government. Actual US citizenship and formal adoption of the child in the US are a whole other story for another day....

Hope this bit of detail helps....Yeah for next steps!!!!