Going on standby tomorrow

For some reason Mr. Hiep hasn't gotten Henry's passport yet. I paid a huge expedite fee of almost twenty times the regular cost but it's still taking the standard week to process. We had planned on leaving tomorrow at 6:30 AM for Hanoi, but now we have to wait for the passport. Hopefully it will be here by 9 and we can make our way to the airport and go on standby--since all the later flights to Hanoi are booked up. Then I have a 3 PM appointment at the embassy to turn in my application--if I can make it on time.

Anyway the flights out of Hanoi back home were booked up for Tuesday so we have a flight out for midnight Wednesday. So that gives me an extra day in Hanoi anyway, and I could turn the form in on Tuesday and get the visa on Wednesday.

I wanted to write a little more about my conversation with the INS agent Mary Anne Russell. There apparently is some kind of big problems in a couple of provinces. She got called out of my interview for five to ten minutes to deal with that. She seems concerned that if they "pull out" of the provinces, meaning I suppose not allow adoptions, the welfare of 72 children in the process of being adopted will be in question. Knowing that Henry was only fed enough milk to keep him alive until I coujld adopt him, I can't imagine what they would do with that many infants with no end in sight to their being kept at the orphanage and no guarantee of further aid coming from the agencies.

She also spoke about children being obtained in unusual and questionable ways. She said one adoption facilitator said he was walking through a cemetery in the middle of the night and just found several babies laying around abandoned. She also said some birth mothers who were tracked down in other cases had not been fully informed that their children were bound for international adoption. They were under the impression that they were being adopted nearby and would be available for visits in the coming years.

She was concerned about what I guess I would call "waiting children", and she said they don't always get adequate health care or their issues are not properly diagonesed and the adoptive parents aren't fully informed. She mentioned one child whose G&R had to be put off for two weeks while she was in intensive care. Another child actually died before the parents could get him home to the US.

This is just what I discussed with her during our short talk. She does seem very interested and concerned, not on any kind of witch hunt. I didn't get an idea that they wanted to close anything down--she was in fact concerned with keeping the troubled provinces open to adoption for the benefit of the children.

Overall it was a very pleasant conversation. We spoke about our travels throughout Vietnam and Cambodia. She seemed very genuine and proficient.