One Down, One To Go

Day 10 July 24th Tuesday
Written and submitted July 25th

Today is the day we have been waiting impatiently for since we have arrived here. Today we are scheduled for our first interview with the INS department at the US embassy. The majority of the paperwork will now take place.

We are all starting to get into a normal routine. Gracie is getting up only once during the night for feeding then she quickly goes down for another several hours of sleep. Logan is getting his needed 10 hours of sleep with makes the days go a little shorter since they begin at 8:00am instead of 3 or 4 am like we had been doing the last week.

We all dressed and went down to see if there was going to be something to eat for Logan. Thank goodness he’s not a picky eater but sometimes it can be a challenge for him to get something he likes here besides pizza and spaghetti. We sat and chatted with the other parents as usual but this morning we were a little nervous because of the interview. Becky especially had several questions she wanted to ask the parents that already went through the interview. Becky had heard some horror stories of the interviewer asking some pretty particular questions about our life back home or how the adoption agency has conducted itself. I think you always get yourself worked up about the unknowns. I wasn’t quite so concerned because I didn’t know about some of the horror stories. Ignorance is bliss.

After breakfast, Gracie was getting tire so we went to the room for her to take her nap. After a while, Becky and I were getting a little anxious about the interview that was scheduled at 2:00pm Tues so we decided to get out of the hotel room and head down to the tourism center a couple blocks away to check our blog for everyone’s comments. It’s a real treat to read all the comments from everyone back home. All the comments and the emails have been great.

Planning a Weekend Trip

We loaded Gracie in her carrier that is similar to a backpack but she is on the front of the person carrying her. She seems to really like the carrier because she fell asleep in it on the way to the tourist center. We reached the center without any problems. We are starting to cross even the widest, busiest roads now with no problems. The trick is you have to just keep walking in the same direction very slowly and the cars and scooters will move around you. I don’t think we will try this at home. The tourist center is a modern building with glass windows that has good air conditioning and the computer connection allows us to view the comments on our blog. After we viewed the comments, we took a look around the room to see if they had any trips we would be interested in. Some people we have met have made the trip to HaLong Bay. It has over 3,000 separate little islands with boat trips that take you through the islands. We inquired on a two day trip that starts by picking us up at our hotel at 8:30am Sat and busing us to the HaLong port to board a junket (boat) and cruise the bay stopping at a cave and a place to swim. We will spend the night on the boat in a calm cove (I hope) that has eight cabin rooms (lower level), restaurant/bar (middle level), and a sun deck on the top. We will cruise the bay the next day back to the port where we will have lunch and board buses back to the hotel. The bus ride I was told is a 3 hour ride so I don’t think that will be much fun but it will be worth the ride. All the meals are included for $55 US per person. This will give us something to do for the weekend and should provide some really good photo opportunities.

It was getting hot and we needed to get back to the hotel to get ready for the interview at the Embassy. When we got back to the room, Logan was getting a little hungry so I attempted to order room service again from the kitchen. The first time I tried I wasn’t very successful. As usual, the first guy didn’t understand me so he had to pass me to another person. I told him that I would like to order a cheese pizza. He told me that just a cheese pizza wasn’t on the menu. I told him I would like a ham and cheese pizza without the ham. He sounded a little confused so I said to order a ham and cheese pizza and just thought when it arrived we could pick the ham off. The pizza arrived with ham cheese, green and red peppers, and onions. I see that I still need to work on my room service ordering skills. The pizza here at the hotel is very good but Logan had to pick the stuff off the top.

We got dressed for the interview and headed down to meet Martin in the hotel lobby. At all the interviews we have to wear long pants. I hate this because it is very hot so I prefer to stay in shorts. The Vietnamese wear long pants all the time. Only Americans and Europeans wear shorts here. We met Martin at the lobby and all loaded in the cab and headed for the US Embassy.

1st Embassy Interview

This interview is the first of two interviews with the US Embassy. The first is with the INS department. They take your paperwork and start the process of checking to make sure all the paperwork is complete and determine whether or not there are issues that are questionable about our adoption. They look to see if the child was abandoned, such as in Gracie’s case, that all the proper notification had taken place in our hometown. If any of the paper seems a little questionable, then they will call us back for more information. At this point in the process the Vietnamese government considers us to be the legal parents of Gracie. It’s now time for the US government to determine that everything is legitimate and that they approve the adoption so we can proceed to the second interview. The worst-case scenario would be that the US does not approve the adoption and she would have to stay in Vietnam, which then would force us to stay in Vietnam until the approval went through. We are positive that the process will take only a week so we should have the approval and move to our second interview. Pray we don’t get any phone calls from the Embassy for further inquiries. The second interview is to get her Visa and then to wait 24 hours for the Visa approval. After the approval of the second interview, we can then fly home.

We entered the building and headed to the second floor. At the top of the stairs we went through security. We had to have our bags run through the x-ray machine and give them our electronic devices such as our camera, Logan’s game boy, and Becky’s Ipod. We then proceeded through the metal detector and was each issued a visitor’s badge. The office was just a short walk from security. By this time, Becky and I were both pretty anxious but we tried not to show it in front of Logan. The room sort of reminded me of the driver’s license office except the people at the counters were behind glass with microphones and speakers at the window. All of the parents that went to the orphanage to get our babies together last week were at the embassy together. Everyone seems a little on pins and needles. The gentleman from the Embassy appeared at one of the windows and called for us all. He wanted to explain the interview process to us in a group and not as individuals to speed things up a bit. He said he would call the families one at a time into the interview room starting with the Allsups. It pays to have your name start with an A every now and then. At least we will get it over with first. Shortly after the briefing, they called for Becky, Logan, Gracie, and I to enter the interview room. It was a small room with several chairs in front of a window of thick glass with the microphones and speakers. There was an opening at the bottom of the window to pass items to the other side. The gentleman from the embassy was very polite and professional. He had a list of standardized questions on a sheet of paper that he recorded our answers on. They were all very straight forward such as what health insurance I had to how many persons resided in our house. There weren’t any questions that we had to hesitate to answer. All in all it went rather smooth. Gracie might have helped speed things up a bit during the interview because she was starting to get hungry so she was getting restless. The interview took only about 10 minutes and we returned to the waiting area along side everyone else. We were relieved to get that over with. When the other two families were finished, we went through security and collected out electronic items (Logan was happy to get his game boy back). We headed for the front of the building for another cab ride to a place to get Gracie’s picture for her passport.

Passport Picture

This was the easy part. We took a cab back to the south of the lake close by our hotel. The place was a small shop that took only passport type photos. The parents took a seat on a stool then put a white sheet over them and placed the baby on their laps. The white sheet is to give the picture of the baby a white background. All the babies got their photo taken and we took a cab back to the hotel. We were ready to change into shorts and head to happy hour for a drink. We met several of the parents at happy hour to give them the download of our interview.

Dinner at Little Hanoi and the long way back to the Hotel

It was 6:30 and Gracie was getting sleepy so we thought we would get her out and Logan was getting hungry so we decided to walk a couple of blocks to a place called Little Hanoi. We have already eaten there so we knew Logan liked the spaghetti. For the benefit of the gals at the gym, I had a cheese and tomato sandwich with a Tiger beer and Becky had a baguette and water (I don’t think things are going well with her) and Logan had his usual spaghetti. Jenny, the meal cost only $12 US with tip. Lol. Gracie was getting fussy so we fed her a bottle and left for the hotel. When we crossed the street and headed for the hotel, Becky wanted to see some of the shops down a side street and asked me if we could find our way back. I thought since we were only a couple of blocks from the hotel that finding a way back should be easy. We walked down the street and took a left in the general direction of our hotel. We started down this second street and things didn’t seem as bright and lively. We quickly made our way down this street and turned another left thinking we would be getting close to our hotel. We were being followed by a small man for about half the block and he started to get us nervous. I had turned around a couple times and on the third time I was going to warn him to back off, but he was gone. We walked towards a street that looked busy and all lit up. This place didn’t look familiar. I couldn’t believe we only walked three blocks and we were completely lost. I usually have the hotel business card with me, or the map, but since we were only supposed to go to the restaurant and back, I didn’t bring them with me. It was about 9:00pm and I was starting to get worried. We asked a shop owner where the hotel was but he sent us down the wrong road. We then asked a cyclo driver for directions and he told us to count 1 2 left 1 2 right and then asked if we wanted a ride there. I was in no mood for a ride and I thought I could get there faster walking. Logan kept asking me if I was worried and I kept assuring him I was not. Little did he know I was very concerned. When I was younger and wondering the streets of Korea and Japan with my Marine Corps buddies, I didn’t care about were the streets took us but this time I was concerned. The directions the cyclo driver gave us were correct. I couldn’t believe we got lost that quick. Every street here looks the same with all the shops so close and all the stuff displayed out front on the sidewalks. Becky said it right when she said it reminded her of the Decatur Celebration every night. We were happy to make it back to the hotel. I learned to never leave the hotel without my map and hotel business card.

After an exciting adventure, we all got ready for bed.