Home

What a wonderful word. I am so glad to be here!

I will do my best with this final post. My brain feels a little sluggish, I am not quite sure if it is day or night or what country I am in. I am surprised by the quiet, the big spaces between houses, how fast people drive here and still feel some disbelief that we are finally home.

Our trip back went well. Julia slept some on every flight. She slept 6 hours on the long flight over the ocean. She had a bassinet and I had empty seats on both sides of me, so we were able to spread out and do quite nicely. Going through immigration and customs in LA was a breeze. We had heard some horror stories about that, but it went very smoothly and the US now has a new citizen.

We had a contingent meet us at the airport. One of us was very glad to see the people who came to meet us and one of us starting crying and clinging to the other with all her might. You can decide who was who. Julia was a little nervous and didn't want me to set her down or hand her over to Doug. But she only had 8 hours of sleep (about 5 hours short) over the past 28, so crying and all she was doing pretty good. She did alright with the carseat - only a few stomping her feet complaints and she and Helen fell asleep on the way home.

It was about 11:00pm when we got home, so we decided to feed Julia some lunch. (It was lunch time on the other side of the world.) As we were making it, she was wanting to get down and play with her siblings and the toys. That happened much sooner than I expected. We had some snacks and got the kids into bed by midnight. It was such a wonderful feeling to walk in the rooms and see our THREE sleeping children all safely home - I had been dreaming of this day for the last year and a half. I went to bed shortly after, but my brain decided it needed to keep going, so although I was super tired, I had a hard time falling asleep. At about 2:00, I decided to take an Advil PM and pretty much as soon as I swallowed it, Julia decided it was time to get up. She was still not very happy to be with Doug alone, so I brought her back to bed with us and kept her curled up in my arms, and we both slept (albeit fitfully) until morning.

Julia had a great day here. She really warmed up to Doug, so that allowed Doug to spend most of the day with her, while I spent most of the day playing with Thomas and Helen. Julia and I did well with our sleeping schedules today so hopefully we will be on track soon.

On a final note, Doug and I can not express how grateful we are for all of you. Initially, we were quite surprised and overwhelmed by how many of you were faithfully following our trip. As things became more drawn out and the circumstances became more difficult our surprise was replaced with overwhelming gratitude for you and for standing with us during our journey. We are so very thankful for you and your support.

We look forward to beginning this next chapter in our lives. The details of the next chapter won't be quite as exciting, so the blog entries are probably done. (Those of you who read them at work will have to find something else to occupy that time.)

Thank you again for your support during this chapter. It would have been so much more difficult without all of you.

Love from all of us,

Doug, Barbie, Thomas, Helen and Julia Binh An Atkins

P.S. I didn't see the last two posts that Doug wrote, so that is why there are duplicate titles and some things are written about twice. This is perfect proof for why the blog should be done, we are already telling the same stories over again...

Home!

Barbie and Julia finished their travels and arrived at home at 11 pm last night. It was a kind of rough night for sleeping for Julia, but it is great to have them home.

It is amazing the sense of relief that I have right now that I haven't had for months.

We are very glad to be a Minnesota family of 5.

Take care,

doug

They're on their way!

As I write this White Bear Lake's newest US citizen and her mother are sitting on the tarmac at Los Angeles International airport taxiing to the runway to take off! They are on Northwest flight #308 from LAX to Minneapolis. Right now in checking the flight status, it looks like they might get in a few minutes early (currently on nwa.com the estimated arrival time is 9:10 PM and the scheduled arrival time is 9:36 pm).

I talked with Barbie briefly while she was waiting to board in LA. She said they had no trouble getting through immigration and customs in LA and they arrived at their gate in time to eat Burger King before the flight.

For those coming to the airport to welcome the girls home, you might check on nwa.com to see when the flight will get in. We will be trying to find Barbie and Julia in the baggage claim area as she comes out of the secured area upstairs in the terminal. Look for the group of people who look really excited.

Thanks to all of you for your love and support during our adoption process!

Doug, Barbie, Thomas, Helen, and Julia

A final post from Vietnam

A wrap-up:

Things I will miss about Vietnam:

• delicious 30 cents baguettes for lunch
• flowers in December and January
• watching the crazy traffic from the safety of a taxi
• walking along Hanoi's "embassy row"
• delicious breakfast and neat view at the Anise Hotel
• watching people eat meals on the sidewalk
• some very friendly people
• experiencing new things out of my comfort zone
• cyclo rides
• learning about Julia's birth country

Things I won't miss about Vietnam:

• the sewer/fish smell that is prevalent almost everywhere
• people yelling at me because they think that Julia is cold
• crossing the streets
• "squatty" potties
• no highchairs/car seats
• seeing people urinating in the parks

Things I look forward to at home:

• seeing Doug, Thomas and Helen
• being at our house
• hot chocolate at Starbucks
• Target
• snow
• sunny days
• having more than 4 shirts to choose from
• introducing Julia to all of you

Thanks for following us on our journey. We will see you soon!!!

Barbie

Barbie's Flight Information (are you kidding me?)

Barbie and Julia hereby welcome all interested parties to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Friday, January 25 at 9:36 PM. She will be arriving on Northwest flight 308 from LAX.

Please check the blog before you come to the airport as I will post an update if for some reason she doesn't get on that flight. If there is no update then you can assume that she is on that flight! You can check on nwa.com to verify that the flight is on time!

This seems surreal. Friday can't come fast enough!

Doug

EXULTATION!

BARBIE AND JULIA ARE COMING HOME!

At 5:30 pm Vietnam time on Wednesday (about 2 hours ago) Barbie and her fellow moms were on a street corner in Hanoi when they got a call from the Embassy telling them that their children's visas will be approved and that they can come to the embassy at 8:30 AM Thursday for the visa interview. They will have the visas in hand Thursday afternoon, and HOPEFULLY, Barbie and Julia will get on a flight on Friday bound for Minnesota! Do you understand that this means that Barbie and Julia will most likely be home for the WEEKEND!

We are so happy and thankful!

I will write a new post soon to let you know about Barbie's flight schedule! She has stated that she would love to see anyone and everyone at the airport! I would prefer to have them to myself, but hey, if you want, I guess you can come.

We are in shock, but a good kind of shock. We are so happy that this part of our story is coming to an end soon so we can get to the next chapter.

Stay tuned for flight arrival information!

Doug

Hello from VN

Hi all,

I know that Doug has blogged for me already today, but I thought that you might want to hear from me directly. We are hanging in here on this rainy Hanoi day. Myself and another mom went to a "mall" today to get out of the hotel room. It almost felt like home.

For the most part, I am doing well. I miss Doug and the kids immensely and find myself dreaming often of when I get to go home. It is difficult to see the days that I had flights scheduled come and go and I am hoping that that doesn't happen again on the 25th. I have been here for two months and am ready to come home. The one bright side is that I am here with some great people and it makes this incredibly frustrating situation more bearable.

Julia seems to be growing and doing well. When Doug hears her on the phone, he thinks that she is making many more sounds than she was even 3 weeks ago. She hasn't been sleeping well the last few nights, but it appears that she has some teeth coming in, so hopefully that is the reason for the sleepless nights.

We are praying that everything lines up and that they grant our visas on Wednesday and for strength and perseverance if that doesn't happen. We will let you know later.

Thanks for checking in and for all your support.

Love,

Barbie

Sweet Dr. Pepper soothes the pain

I forgot to pass along a bit of information that Barbie told me from her Saturday. On Saturday, Barbie and her friends found a store in Hanoi called, "Western Can". Inside the store, Barbie found Dr. Pepper and Twix! She was in heaven. One of the other ladies found Doritos and the third lady found chips and salsa. These familiar snacks provided some much needed comfort for the ladies as they wait in Hanoi.

As I talked with Barbie tonight (which is Monday morning there), she told me that she and her friends were having a better weekend than they anticipated. On Saturday night they went to a family's home for supper. The mister of this family was a boyhood friend of one of the fathers of the adopted kids still in Hanoi. Barbie said that it was a great evening and they were able to take their mind off a lot of their anxiety for at least a while. Sunday morning Barbie went to church again with one of her friends. Barbie said that she got a chance to talk with a few Americans there and if they end up staying much longer they will have more people that they will have a chance to spend time with. We, of course, hope that she doesn't get to know them too well.

It was raining on Monday morning in Hanoi, so Barbie wasn't so sure what her plan for the day would be. She's getting good at making it through days.

The kids, my mom, and I are spending the weekend at the home of Granny and Gramps K. The highlight of the trip was expected to be a Sunday night visit to the Pizza Ranch to get pizza and Thomas' favorite dessert pizza. Unfortunately, the Pizza Ranch was closed (boo!) It wasn't supposed to be closed. We all kind of stood in shock for several seconds before knowing what to do next. It was -8 deg. Fahrenheit outside, so we decided that we should do something other than look disappointedly at the Pizza Ranch door. We went to the A&W and found the food their to be at least satisfactory. We'll go home tomorrow morning, and we'll get ready to start another week.

To those reading, thanks for continuing to follow our story. I know that the descriptions are becoming shorter and the entries are less frequent. Please know that there are still 24 hours in the days that are happening in Vietnam and there are probably just as many things happening that could be shared. We don't have the luxury of being able to give you as much of the story as we have in the past due to the fact that it's me reporting second hand on stuff that I glean from a 45-60 minute daily phone conversation.

Well, that's it for now. Take care and we'll try and keep you updated.

Doug

Another week

We got the news on Friday (vietnam time) that a decision would not be made on Julia's visa until next week. We are very disappointed with the news. 2 of the 5 families in our group got their visas preapproved on Friday, and they were able to get their visas issued on the same day, so if our file is approved next week, then the visa will probably be obtained the same day, so that's good news.

I talked with the officer in charge and she assured me that our case was getting attention and that we will hear something in the wednesday to thursday timeline.

We are very disappointed as we just want to get everyone back together at this point. Hopefully next week we will get some better news.

Thanks for checking in.

Doug

Rejected! (by a taxi driver that is)

Hi all (it's Barbie),

No, thankfully our visa has not been rejected. Just me - let me tell you the story.

Yesterday, I was going to go visit the Ambassador's Pagoda. I flagged down a taxi and when I tried to get in the back, the door was locked. He opened the passenger door and asked where I was going. He looked at the address while I again tried to get in the back. He handed me the address, said that he would not take me, slammed the passenger door shut and drove off. I am not quite sure what I did to deserve the rejection, as that has never happened before. (And Julia was not even crying at the time. She can get a pretty good scream going in the taxi as of late and I could see us being kicked out of one, but never refused from the get go!)

The pagoda was pretty. One odd thing - while I was there, I witnessed a monk dressed in his garb, talking on a cell phone and getting on his scooter. It was like two different worlds meeting, and my mind did not know quite what to do with this.

The hotel staff here is very kind. It is slightly chilly in Hanoi right now and because the hotel does not have heat, the staff was worried about our children. So yesterday they went out and bought space heaters for the rooms of the 3 adoptive families, so we can survive this "cold" front. Little do they know what these three kids have in store.

Well, again my time is up with Julia and the computer. We hope to hear good news tomorrow and find out that we can really go home next Thursday.

Miss you all,

Barbie

Light at the end of the tunnel?

I (Doug) had the chance to talk with an official involved in Julia's case on Monday (Vietnam time--Sunday night in Minnesota). After talking with that official, it seems that there is a chance that we might get preapproval for Julia's visa by Friday. If that does indeed happen (and any regular follower's of this blog knows that the only thing for sure is nothing), then we think that Barbie and Julia would be able to travel back to Minnesota leaving Vietnam on Thursday, January 24. Again...this is not a done deal, but rather the official was telling us when they think that we should hear something. That news has helped lift Barbie's spirits. We hope that this is really going to be it.

On Monday afternoon Barbie and Julia traveled back to Hanoi from Hoi An. Their travel was uneventful and Barbie remarked that it was good to be back "home" at the Anise Hotel. When I talked with her tonight (Monday night here, Tuesday morning there) it was cool and rainy in Hanoi. However, she is thinking that she has a list of things to do there and souvenirs to buy there, so she thinks that she better get cracking! That sounds odd.

One thing that she needs to buy is another Vietnamese coffee maker for me. I bought two each of two types of coffee makers at the Fivimart. One coffee maker makes one cup of coffee, so you need more than one. Well, the other night I made some Dragon Coffee for guests and one of the coffee makers didn't really work very well. I don't think I know how to use it. To make matters worse, that coffeemaker broke in the dishwasher. Therfore, I gave Barbie instructions on how to identify the coffee maker that I want her to pick up. Interestingly, the brand of the coffee maker is Inox, which was also the brand of most of the toilets that we used in Vietnam.

We really hope that we have some good news by the end of the week. We really need the rest of our family home with us. Thanks for keeping checking the blog (even when it's not very frequently updated or interestingly written), and remember, Barbie could sure use some emails!

Take care!

Doug and Barbie

85 Degrees and Barbie becomes a negotiator

This is Doug for Barbie.

She is having a pretty good time in Hoi An. She says that the city is beautiful and so is the beach. On Saturday morning, her and Julia went to the beach. It was warm and sunny and beautiful. Unfortunately, Julia refused to be put down on the sand and was quite nervous about the ocean. So, Barbie had to hold her most of the time. Finally, Barbie rented a beach chair so that she could put Julia down.

Barbie told me that she was thinking that it would be great to have me with her at Hoi An so we could experience it together. Then she started thinking that if I were there I would be crabby and continuously complaining about how hot it was and getting a headache from the bright sun. I think she then decided that maybe it was ok without me.

Barbie checked into the hotel at Hoi An on her Friday afternoon. She went out and saw some sights and had some supper. She came back to try and get Julia to bed early, but when she got to the room she learned that the AC didn't work and the thermometer in the room read 28 degrees Celsius (about 82 Fahrenheit). She went down to the desk and told them. They told her that they would give her a fan for the night. She said that it would be too hot for the baby (of course the baby has spent her whole life in such temperatures!) They then said that she could try the guest house that they had across the street, but she went and the bed situation wasn't right. Another couple just left the hotel and they offered her their room, but something wasn't very good about that room either. So, the manager said that they had a sister hotel across town that was nicer that had a room, but it would be $45 per night instead of $30. She said that she wanted to pay $30. They said $40, but she said she wouldn't pay more than $35. After awhile they agreed to her price (after she verified that it had a window).

So, Barbie took a taxi to the other property and the room was nicer. She had a big bed a baby crib, and even a high chair. There was a window and the A/C worked. She was happy. She went to the window to take a look at her view and opened the curtains to see a stone wall within arm's length outside the window. It was getting late and she decided that Julia really needed to get some sleep.

They had a pretty good sleep, until 3AM. Then something in the crib broke and that woke up Julia. Barbie didn't want to mess with trying to fix the bed in the middle of the night and so she brought Julia in bed with her. This led Julia to believe that it was time to play, so it took them an hour or so to get back to sleep. The next night (Saturday night), the crib was fixed and Julia slept quite well, but Barbie didn't sleep the greatest as she was congested.

Today (Sunday) they are going to the beach again in the morning and in the afternoon they are going to some sort of cultural show with cultural song and dance. She will be going back to Hanoi on Monday afternoon.

She says to tell you that she misses you all and longs for the day when she can give some good news. I'm with her.

The rest of us are doing ok. Today we went to our favorite Vietnamese family run donut shop, worked more on Thomas' make up math homework, went to the library (and returned a book that we found this week that was lost since october--we had already paid the library for it), and had some friends (Bill, Carol, and family) over (they brought ham--bearers of ham are always welcome here!)

The Christmas tree is still up here at home and is waiting for Barbie and Julia. Hopefully soon.

Take care and thanks for checking in.

Doug (for Barbie and Julia)

Barbie told me to blog

Well, Barbie sent an email from the business class lounge at the Hanoi airport asking me to blog. I don't know what to say other than Barbie was hanging out at the business class lounge at the Hanoi airport. She is coming back to Hanoi on economy. I don't think that there was any space available on economy going there. Business class on Vietnam Airlines is really nice. I hope she enjoyed it. I think that she should be landing about right now. (11:40 PM CST). I told Barbie that if she has a problem with this 1 hour flight that she is going to be in REAL trouble when she has to get back to the US!

I still find it hard to believe that it is my wife, Barbie, who is taking a flight, by herself from a city in Vietnam to another city in Vietnam (that she hasn't been to), and she'll be going on public transportation to a hotel that she's never been to to stay for three nights. I suppose she does have a Vietnamese tour guide with her (Julia). Barbie is not ceasing to amaze me!

Well, I don't know what else to say. If you want to pass Barbie a message, you can email her or me and I'll make sure to give her the news when I talk with her tomorrow (her saturday morning). She will be going to the beach saturday morning and I think that it is supposed to be 85 and sunny. Good for her.

Well, it's to bed for me. Thanks for checking in.

Doug

Off to Hoi An

This is Doug.

I don't know if Barbie will get a chance to blog before she goes, so I'm letting you know that she and Julia will be traveling to Hoi An on Friday morning for a little excursion. They leave the hotel at 9:30 am Friday and will return Monday afternoon/evening. I don't know if she will have access to email, but I will call her each day and read her email to her if you want to send any notes.

Google Hoi An. It's pretty neat looking. The girls will fly to Da Nang and then take a taxi from there (about 45 minutes). Hoi An is on the South China Sea and is an ancient town that has been well-preserved. They are really breaking the bank on this one because they are spending $30/night for a hotel (instead of the $25 for a room without a balcony). I'm sure it includes breakfast, too.

We continue to miss the girls but we are very proud of what Barbie is doing for our family. She is an amazing person!

At home things are going well. My mom is really handling all the details around taking care of the kids during the day. Thanks to dad's new GPS he received for Christmas (sorry, Dad, that you can't play with your new toy for a while longer) mom is able to get wherever she needs to go. Yesterday Thomas challenged his grandma to trying to get home from school without the GPS. She thinks that she could, but she didn't try it yesterday.

The kids are enjoying playing in the snow (at least what's left), and they are sleeping well at night. They miss mom and new sister, but for now they are managing just fine.

Thanks for following our story and for caring about us. We'll keep you updated on whatever there is to update you about.

Take care,
Doug

News, but not so good

Hi all,

This morning (my time) Doug called the Vietnam US Citizen and Immigrations Services office on our behalf to see what he could learn about our visa situation. The long and the short of it is that they are aware of our case and will be investigating it further next week. If the investigation answers all of their questions, then they will forward our file to the Embassy in Hanoi who will send us our pre-approval email. That could mean that we won't hear of an approval until the week of the 21st (and not on the 21st since that is MLK day). Right now I am hoping that I will get to come home on January 25th, but of course it could be earlier (although not very likely) or later than that. It was disappointing to hear, but now we have a more realistic date in our heads at least.

So on that note, I am thinking about taking a weekend trip to visit an old city halfway down the coast. It is a place called Hoi An and it is supposed to be a beautiful city near the sea that wasn't destroyed in all the wars. We will see if all the details work out. I or Doug will keep you updated.

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

Not for the faint of heart

Greetings directly from Vietnam!

I borrowed a friend's laptop to be able to blog to you directly. There were too many things to tell you about to try to do it through Doug.

We left this morning from our hotel at 8:00. We got in the minibus, then a few minutes later, were told to get off as that bus was going to the airport (wishful thinking on our part, I guess!). So after getting on the right minibus, we went to the furniture making village. We saw some of the shops and watched a man who was hand carving a design on a table leg. (They said it takes 3 months to make a table.) We saw this beautiful dining room table set that they said was $10,600. Two men in our group were unable to lift the bench seat because it was so large and made of thick pieces of solid wood. I bet the shipping costs are astronomical. (Doug~ just sign for anything that comes to our house UPS no questions asked, OK? =) )

After the furniture village came the snake village. Here they provide snake meat for the restaurants in Hanoi and make bottles of wine with different snakes inside for fermenting "flavor". We went to a man's house "the snake garden" and saw all of his bottles of wine. Some have many snakes inside them, some just one, some with a cobra in them in striking position, etc. If we each paid him 10,000 dong (about 60 cents) he would show us his live snakes. He had 3 cobras and other snakes that he brought out for us. This was about as close to a cobra as I want to get!

After that, we headed to the snake restaurant. This place also had walls full of snake wine, lizard wine, bird wine, etc. As we entered, the owner was getting out a snake (a flower snake) from his cage. Turns out that this was going to be our lunch. He killed it in front of us, drained the snakes blood into a glass, put the snake's heart in a dish and took out some other organ (we think it was the liver or pancreas.) Then it was time to go upstairs for our meal. He put the glass full of blood on the table along with the heart (still beating although separate from the snake) and another glass of rice wine. He took the liver/pancreas, sliced it open and emptied its contents into the glass of rice wine. This was our drink. Now, if you read Doug's blog, he was right about the odds. I didn't drink the snake blood or eat snake meat, but in the spirit of the day, I did try the rice wine/bile drink. I will not try it again. Four people in the group did try the blood. After about 10 - 15 minutes, they took the heart away(still beating - seriously). We aren't sure what happened to that. Some people ate the snake meat and said it didn't really have a bad taste, just a different texture. I stuck with the beef. Towards the end of the meal, they brought out snake soup. Again, in the spirit of things, I tried this. It was kind of like cream of chicken, but not quite so good. Julia wasn't a big fan of it either. So there was my snake village experience. I decided to have cheese pizza for supper. (I took pictures of the snake things for the rest of you - I am not planning on ever looking at them again!)

We finished up the day by visiting ancient citadel remains. It was pretty. All in all, a good and interesting day.

As far as my mental state, I am doing fairly well. It was hard finding out that things will probably take longer than we hoped on Friday. If I were given a choice, I would come home in a heartbeat, but as long as I am here, I am trying to make the best of it. The time that I have with just Julia is probably a benefit for her, so I am trying to make good use of that. And I keep trying to find new things to explore here. Sometimes it is hard, and I am hoping to get good news soon, but am doing my best to make the most of this unique time while I am here.

Hope you are doing well and that I can tell you my stories in person soon!

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

An update from Barbie (from Doug)

I talked with Barbie just before she was headed out for the Snake village on Monday morning Vietnam time. She was doing ok. She told me that the church that she went to was very interesting. She told me that people without Vietnamese passports were welcome to attend. I asked her how Julia got in (as she indeed has a Vietnamese passport). She said that people w/o Vietnamese and their families were welcome.

She said that the church met in a hotel meeting room, but was trying to get a building permit to construct a church building. There were people from all over the world there, Asia, Europe, the US, Australia, etc. She said the pastor was european, maybe from Germany or the Netherlands. The service was all in English and Barbie said that they had a Christmas Eve service that it would have been nice to attend had we know about the existence of the church.

Hmmm...other news...I guess that Barbie found a laundry service that has very reasonable prices (thanks for the tip, Marla).

This Wednesday a family that Barbie (and the rest of us while we were there) is leaving for home. I think she will miss having them around. They have a 6 year old boy and just adopted a 2 1/2 year old girl. They live in Minnesota, so hopefully we will get a chance to connect with them back here.

We are hoping that by the end of this week that Barbie gets word of Julia's visa pre-approval. If that happens, then the Visa should be obtained sometime the week of the 14th. We don't know if this will happen or not, but that's our current hope.

Well, keep up the good work of letting Barbie know that you're thinking about her.

Take care,
Doug

A Little Update

Barbie doesn't have a lot of time or opportunity to blog, but we talk to her every day, so I thought that I would give an update.

A couple of the other families joined her at the Anise Hotel on Saturday in Vietnam. Barbie is really glad for this. Now people are closer and she can have some breakfast company.

Saturday night Julia didn't sleep very well. Barbie thinks that she is cutting her lower eye teeth now. The past several weeks have brought many teeth issues for the Atkins family. One of the other families located a church that supposedly has an English-speaking service at 10:30 on Sunday morning. Barbie and a couple of others were going to try and visit. I'll let you know if they found it.

But...to let you know how bad things have become over there...Barbie agreed to go along on an outing to the Snake Village near Hanoi. At the beginning of the trip, there is no way that Barbie would have agreed to do this, but I suppose she thinks that it is better than nothing! I think that all the families from our agency are going there on Monday. I would give odds of 100,000 to 1 that Barbie does not drink the cobra blood. I think it is probably 25,000 to 1 that she doesn't eat the snake meat. They leave at 8 AM on Monday morning, so I'll have to call them early to see how things went on Sunday.

Today Thomas, Helen, mom, and I went to church. It was nice seeing some friends that we haven't seen for awhile, but I felt badly that Barbie and Julia weren't there with us. Everyone seemed to think I had lost weight, which isn't the case. We figured out that probably everyone else in America had gained weight while we were gone (Thanksgiving and Christmas), so by comparison, I looked smaller.

I'll see if Barbie has anything to add about her Sunday after I talk with her this evening (her Monday morning).

Thanks for reading.

Doug (for Barbie)

Bad news

Hi all,

We found out today that they are just beginning the investigation into Julia's file and that it could be later next week before her pre-approval is issued. This was quite discouraging as we were hoping that it would be wrapping up sooner than that. After the pre-approval is issued, there is still 2 - 4 business days worth of stuff that needs to happen before we actually get her visa. That means it could still be a couple of weeks before we get to come home.

We are doing OK. The weather has been nice, so we have just been enjoying time outside and saving our tourist things for cloudy days. But all that being said, we want to receive word soon that we can go home.

Well, again, Julia is telling me that she is done here in the business center, so I will sign off.

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We are doing well on this side of the world. It was a beautiful sunny day yesterday and today looks like it will be the same. We spent the morning walking around enjoying the weather.

For those of you who would like to see my new place, you can go to anisehotel.com and check out their website.

We watched some of the Rose Bowl game this morning (Weds.) so we could see Doug's beloved Illini. When we heard that they were going to the Rose Bowl, I was really thinking that we would all be home, so it was bittersweet to see the game here.

Well, Julia has had enough.

Barbie