Hello readers. This is our first real entry into our blog. The purpose of this blog is to record our journey of adopting a child from Taiwan. We started our adoption journey in 2007, which involved lots of research online. We first had to choose which country would be the best for us. We took into consideration the wait time for a referral, the length of stay within the country and the price for each country.
In January 2008, we chose Commonwealth Adoptions to assist us with adopting with Taiwan. By May 2008, we completed all of our applications and homestudy. In June 2008, we completed our fingerprinting with the Dept of Homeland Security/Immigrations Dept.
Everything was going as scheduled, until we received an email that Commonwealth was shutting down their operations on July 31, 2008. Needless to say, we were very emotionally, despondent and searching for answers as to how and why this happened. After about a month of waiting, we were notified that our case would be transferred to Gladney. Our agent, Lindsay Hatcher, was so helpful in making our transition and ensuring that everything that we already submitted would be given to the Chung Yi orphanage.
In February 2009, Lindsay contacted us with a referral, including photos and a medical file on our future daughter, Shu-Jhen Ciou.
Within about 13 months from our initial application submission in January 2008, we received a referral. We were with Gladney about 7 months till we received the referral. I feel we are very fortunate because we anticipated receiving a referral on or around Fall 2009 or later.
As of this writing we are in Taiwan, awaiting our meeting with the Chung Yi Orphanage and with our future daughter, Shu-Jhen Ciou.
Our title of our blog, "Our Choice, Our Destiny", refers to our agency, Gladney. We were fortunate enough for Gladney to have offered Shu-Jhen to us. Their belief in us as adoptive parents meant so much.
Upon Shu-Jhen's citizenship as an American citizen, we have given her the name of Cara Alaina Shu-Jhen Ciou Kurokawa. We felt it was important to keep her original Taiwanese name because we do not want her to forget who she is and where she was born.
Till next time.
James "Kimo" Kurokawa
