Day 6: Thursday, 5/26

Thursday has come and gone and it's about 9:00 pm here. I'm whipped. The night went surprisingly well as Grace only woke up for a bottle and change once... she did, unfortunately stay up for about 2 hours but the time difference is still helping me out. Here is was from 2-4 am but back home it was 9-11 am so it was nearly the middle of my “day”. That's not to say that staying up with a baby in the middle of the night is easy, just not as hard as it could have been ;)

 We had more official business to conduct today at the U.S. Embassy and Gordon, once again, was going to meet with us to prep us for the “hearing”... it was more like an interview and paperwork session in reality. But before any of that could happen, our downstairs neighbors popped up to see if we wanted to head over to the laundromat and drop off some laundry after lunch. Jeff and I went down to the restaurant for a quick bite while they went to skype with 2 of their kids who did not make the trip with them.

They have self-serve laundry that is pretty reasonable but we hear the wait is long and the water is cold. Frankly, we just didn't want to spend the day doing laundry so we dropped off 4 bags (between the two families) with the woman who will wash, dry and fold it for you. Cost us $20 for the 4 bags plus a small tip – it was definitely worth it.
On our way to drop off our laundry, Gordon called to see if we could drop by his office for our pre-hearing prep. He specified that it would be best if only the “person who knows the paperwork best” would attend so the guys dropped us off to take care of business while they went and worked out the details with the laundry lady. I liked the arrangement myself :)
While in Gordon's office we went through the last (we hope) stack of paperwork we'll need to complete for our adoptions page by page and line by line. Our agency has prepared us pretty well but even they get some things wrong as rules change or preferences are adjusted... Gordon absolutely earns his money making sure every “i” is dotted and “t” is crossed.
With paperwork in one hand and cash in the other, we all headed to the U.S. Embassy for the hearing. We'd met Andrew before when we needed that form notarized so it was nice to see a friendly face again. We were in and out of his conference room in about 15 minutes... then another half hour for Daisy to take our money, get the packets copied, and give us our receipts. Now comes the 4-week wait... “give or take 2 weeks” as Andrew added. Really? It could be as quick as 2? I think not. I haven't yet heard of a family coming back in anything less than 4+ weeks so there's no way he's going to lure me in with promises of a quick turn around!
After we were done the guys, Madi, Grace and I headed back to the laundry place to pick up our clothes while Stacy stayed at the hotel with Oliver. We did have to sort through the clothes when we returned to the hotel but that was a minor inconvenience. Somewhere along the way the idea was born for a pizza party in the Enra restaurant for dinner, however, when we arrived back at the hotel, Stacy informed us that their birth mom had shown up unexpectedly. We took our clothes and our leave with a plan that if we didn't hear from them within the hour that we'd be on our own for dinner. Almost an hour went by and our neighbors were available so down to the Enra we went. The pizza was pretty good and Greg finally got his beer.
There isn't much else to do tonight except write another blog post and try to upload some photos. I really hope it works...