Things have been super crazy around here. It's hard for me to harness all my nervous energy that I'm using to get things done and slow down enough to sit down and write right now, but I want to at least post something amidst all this wonderful chaos!
I can count on one hand how many days until I get to hold our girls! One hand! Our travel dates were approved by IBESR and our flights begin this Sunday (in 4 days)...and we arrive the next day, so on Monday, in Haiti!
Last weekend I was in New Orleans (from Tours-Sunday) with Mark and my friend Sydnie. We had the trip planned long before our referral because Mark was attending a work conference for an organization where he sits on the board. Even though it wasn't great timing with everything we had to get done we didn't want to cancel (plus our flights were expensive)! It was such a fun long weekend. There was a lot of emailing back and forth about adoption stuff while we were there though, including booking our flights to Haiti.
On Friday I realized that I misunderstood the process for getting travel approval from IBESR. Amidst the shuffle of emails and documents I received I missed the information that I was supposed to edit a travel request document and have it notarized. Somehow I thought that requesting our dates from IBESR was something Chareyl took care of once we had approval from our orphanage. Anyway! Once we found out we immediately headed out in the rain back to the hotel where we edited the document.
Once the document was done Mark went to the guest's office to print the document, but their printer wasn't working. He ended up getting someone at the concierge to help him with it. We then found a place with a notary that was open (some were closed on Fridays) and hurried to where that was located. We arrived there only to find out that I left my ID in my other jacket...so Mark ran back out into the rain all the way back to the hotel to get it. We eventually got the document notarized and headed back to the hotel to scan it in. Of course the scanner in the office didn't work...then they couldn't get the one at the concierge to work either. Thankfully they took us to an executive office where they got it to work, but it wouldn't show up in my email. Finally we figured out they had entered my email address in wrong (missed a letter). Whew! Finally we had the document and sent it off to Chareyl who had to juggle a lot on her end I'm sure also to get it to her rep while she was out in the countryside of Haiti herself managing a volunteer group.
Everything worked out alright, but we are also concerned about a planned demonstration for the day we arrive. We're hopeful our driver can pick us up quickly and get us out of Port au Prince by going around the demonstration sites and get us up to Kenscoff. There is the possibility that if things get out of hand we could get stuck in Florida for another night, but we'll see.
Yesterday I also mailed a cashier's check off to our orphanage to pay for our guest house stay and our transportation.
This is really happening! Now back to paperwork, packing, immunizations...
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