A Christmas Miracle

*** PHOTOS TEMPORARILY REMOVED ***

Announcing Elsa

She is 4 months old, and from southern Ethiopia – a small town called Aleta Wendo in the Sidama region.

She is 10 lbs, 13 ounces and 23.2 inches tall. (Very small for U.S. growth charts but quite normal on the Ethiopian charts). The int'l adoption pediatrician checked out her info and told me tonight that she looks like an “excellent baby”. Woo hoo! (I already knew that of course.)

Elsa is a name that I’ve always loved (although it sounds Scandahoovian, it is also Ethiopian). Burke is my mother’s maiden name and my sister’s middle name and (very soon!) my daughter's middle name.

I got the call telling me about her this afternoon, although her information arrived at my adoption agency on Christmas Day (Merry Christmas to ME!).

I was getting ready to leave the house to drive mom to the airport shuttle – we were almost out the door when the phone rang. Mom sat down when I gestured wildly to her that this was THE CALL.

So…. what comes next?

I don’t get to go to Ethiopia just yet, I’m afraid. First, the attorney in Addis Ababa (the Ethiopian capital) goes to court on my behalf to formalize the adoption – I’ll let you know my court date, but it will likely be in late January or early February.

Then I wait my turn to get the all-important embassy date, at which I must appear with her at the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa. That will likely be in late Feb or (more likely) early March. This date will determine when I will travel to go get Elsa!

Please keep Elsa in your prayers so that she stays healthy and happy, and that the court date is successful so that I can officially become her mother.

From cloud nine and feeling like I won the lottery,

P.

p.s. Did you SEE the dimples?!?!?!?

!!

It's official

Do you know this image means? It is very happy news!


















This is the tracking page from the DHL website, showing the journey that my dossier took on its way to the Toukoul orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

It arrived on August 13th, so I am now *officially* waiting for my referral. Should be about 6 months (yikes!) before I hear anything, so it's going to be hard to just WAIT.

So exciting!!

Adoption Update

I can hardly believe I'm typing this: My dossier is done!

I have put that giant pile of documents in a big FedEx box (too big for an envelope!), and have sent it off to my agency. (As a reminder, the "dossier" is all the paperwork and evidence of preparation and qualification that I've been compiling since last summer. It is kind of like a giant pre-approved application to adopt.)

Next step - it gets sent out for translation into Amharic (takes a few weeks, I think) then dispatched to Ethiopia.

Once it is officially delivered to the orphanage in Addis Ababa, I will officially be just Waiting!! (and should have my kiddo about about six months later...)

I've also updated my adoption timeline - it's current as of today!!

India and Lulu playing

sort of!

Chico day 2

It's much cooler today in Chico. The seminar is still quite interesting and I am truly enjoying the folks I am meeting here, feeling even more interested in localization.

I visited the little memorial to Oma and took a video (see below.) Sadly, there was some graffiti on it. I think I will email the Burke ladies and see if people want to pitch in, each about $25 or $50, to donate to Chico State and tell them we'd like that gift designated to clean up the memorial. Not only will that achieve the immediate goal of getting it cleaned up, it will also communicate to the university that Oma's family still cares very much and is engaged.



I met a nice lady named Deb, who is just finishing chemo for breast cancer and came all the way out here from Boston. Pretty brave to show up to this thing not knowing anyone here with most of her hair gone wearing a bandana. She was so lovely to chat with. She showed me photos of her dog online and I showed her the paintings on my web site and she definitely is now going to commission me to do a portrait for her. Funny that the first business opportunity from this localization seminar has nothing to do with software at all!

chico, language, hot hot hot

I'm in Chico, which brings back so many (sort of fuzzy) memories, taking a class that culminates in certification as a Localization Project Manager, which is a nice specialization to add to my pretty solid generalist software / infrastructure experience. The folks in this course have flown in from Singapore, Germany, and Argentina... and I thought my drive up from Berkeley was a drag. The teachers so far have been really great - so nice to be actually interested in class here in a place where I wasn't very interested before.

There are a couple of things that I am attracted to about this specialization: the international aspect (interesting input about different cultures, potential for fun travel) and the language aspect. Like my sister (and father and mother and so on...) I am a big language nut. Porter calls it being a "word geek."

This area near my hotel was all just rocks and dirt when I last lived here, but is now full of condos and shops and businesses. Wild.

And could it be hotter? Well, I suppose it could be humid, like, say Austin! I do not love the heat, so maybe that's another data point about moving.

local girl does good

The Marin paper published this full-page spread on an up-and-coming recording artist from Marin named Amber Dante.

She's Pastor Veronica's daughter! Very cool.

(Veronica Goines is the Pastor of my church, St. Andrew in Marin City.)