Plans change (a little bit)

We knew we'd have to be flexible during this process.  Well, the first change to our plans has happened.  Not too big of a deal but noteable anyway.  Originally, we were going to take two trips to Russia.  The first trip is to meet the child after the referral.  The second trip would be a longer one that includes a court date, a 10-day waiting period, and finally "gotcha day".

A few days ago, we got an email from our adoption coordinator.  Here is a portion of the email:

A new law that is going into effect as of January 1, 2012 is the extension of the 10 day waiting/appeal period post court finalization. This waiting period will now be a mandated 30 days, thus turning the Russia adoption process into a three short trip process rather than two trips. We anticipate that each trip will be approximately 5-7 days in duration. We realize that a family’s first concern will be the additional costs of traveling, and while you will be making three round trips to Russia, we do want to highlight some positive aspects of this change:

1. Less vacation and FMLA time will be spent actually traveling and more will be available to each family to spend in post adoption with the child(ren)in their new home, helping to make the transition better.

2. The old process required families to spend several thousand dollars actually living in Russia for up to a month, now, instead of expending money to reside in the country for several weeks you will expend approximately the same, if not less, simply on the travel portion. Theoretically, the overall cost of the adoption will not increase because of the change, the money will just be spent elsewhere.

3. Think of all the frequent flyer miles!