Stahlke Adoption

Visa in Hand

Our visa became available on the same day that my grades were due! I'm finishing up a four-week class at Concordia teaching music bibliography techniques to graduate music students. Luckily, it's a very small class--four this summer and one as an independent study last spring.

With all the adoption events of yesterday, I couldn't concentrate on grading last night. So I set the alarm for 4:30 am and drove to Concordia for a long session. After my grades went in at 1:00 pm, I headed home for lunch and a pow-wow with Jonathan to decide a plan of attack to mail our package to Ukraine.

We initially discussed taking the whole family downtown and celebrating once the mail was off. But as we mentally digested the necessary sequence of events and their associated deadlines, the impossibility of mailing the package today became evident. So . . . we scaled back and decided that picking up the visa was the first critical step. Jonathan was supervising "summer school" with all the kids, so around 2:00 pm I took the "L" downtown to the Chicago DHS office.

It's a good thing we didn't take all the children! They don't wait very well, and it took almost an hour before I could leave with the document that was supposedly waiting for me. But my trip downtown eliminated the time for snail mail, and even more importantly, DHS finally corrected the spelling of Jonathan's name. He has been "JOATHAN" on their documents for some time, and our requests in writing for a correction had not been successful. When the staff member handed me the form, I requested the change, and she arranged for a corrected document while I waited.

I shudder to think of the potential problems in Ukraine with a misspelled document. The staff member at the DHS office today agreed with me that it was important to correct the mistake before traveling!

posted by Stahlkes @ 4:58 PM