Oh my gosh: I think you would be a dream come true for a deaf child, Shel!
But for all who are interested, I think the China program is just wonderful! For China, there are specific agencies that have been approved for China adoptions, we used one near to us called
Wide Horizons for Children .
The wonderful thing about China adoptions (aside from the amazing children, of course) is that the process is very well defined, regimented, and although you can't always predict how much time it may take from first step in the application to bringing home the little one (it took us nearly 3 years), the steps are very well documented and established, Chinese adoptions are nothing if not bureaucratic, few surprises along the way. Costs are fixed and made clear upfront, so there's not a lot of legal wrangling or official bribery once you get in-country, as there is in some of the other programs.
They didn't know Anna-Li was deaf, so I don't know the specifics of the special needs (waiting child) process, but I understand it's much faster, costs a great deal less, requires a very slightly different approval process, and is just a wonderful path to take.
It took nearly a year for us to complete our full dossier, which is an approved application plus all the results of a series of social worker home visits, medical exams, interviews, all the original documentation required for our births, marriage, immigration paperwork had to be approved and certified in 3 states, and then some were completed a second time because several items took months after which the documents we had been able to complete at the very start had expired).
We then waited almost 2 years for our completed package to make its way through the Chinese queue (unfortunately, the SARS crisis backed up the China process during the year before we adopted, so it was unusually slow for everyone at that time), but finally we got a call in December with a name, weight, age, sex, province, followed a week later with a small photo from some unknown months prior and some cryptic hastily translated intake forms (with info such as the name of the orphanage, and that Li was eating solid foods, had regular bowel movements, her favorite toy was a music box, and she was stubborn, didn't listen to her caretakers :O ) . We were told we'd need to make our plans to bring home a baby -- and fast! We'd be going to China for 2 weeks in January to pick her up -- we traveled in a group with 20 other families from the Northeast all doing the same thing, adopting from the same orphanage, during Chinese New Year. Tons of paperwork both here and then during our 2+ weeks in China, but all very well guided.
As Denise likely knows, it has been the most incredible and wonderful adventure.
This first shot is less than 10 minutes after she was handed to me, in a crush of hundreds, our groups plus families all around us adopting from Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, with officials calling out names and handing out tiny, frightened, crying babies one after another. The second shot is a few days later, and the 3rd is taken our first week back home.
