Loy Kratong Parade

This is just photos of Sophie's band performing in the parade this year. They led off the entire thing from the very front. It was fun to walk along with them on the parade route, and then we set off fireworks from the bridge with Jasmine, Ahna and Sacha before heading home. 

These lite brite elephants are for you Rosa!

Akha Thanksgiving 2012

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November 27, 2012

For Thanksgiving this year, we celebrated at Ning’s village again. Last year, Sophie was in the hospital hooked up to an IV, so she didn’t get to come, but this year, it was Ahna, Jasmine me and Ahngun. We drove up in Jasmine’s new (to her) car and got to see the famous Bua Tong flowers that are everywhere at this time of year. I love the drive to Ning’s village because it’s so picturesque and just really peaceful and beautiful. Definitely a fan of the new road, too. Last year, the car almost got swallowed by potholes. We got to the village and headed up to meet everyone at the church. Somehow we ended up in the 2^nd row (why does that always happen to us? I always feel like the foreigners are being put on display and then because we are in the front of the room, it’s impossible to slip out without seeming rude, even though we don’t speak the language at all, so it’s hard to stay awake and pay attention.)

They had a variety of singers and dancers from all age groups, including the kids from the children’s home run by Ning and her sister Faa. They were so cute! After the performances, which took about an hour, there was a sermon in Akha, for about an hour and a half, during which most of the church emptied out to go cook food for Thanksgiving dinner. THEN, there was a big auction of the rice, fruits and veggies (and fowl) that had been grown that year. The money benefits the church, so it was fun to hear people wagering and the prices going up. We got a bag of rice for Taw Saeng and Jasmine bought a whole pack of stuff, including a live chicken! They killed and cooked it for her there, and turned it into soup. She also got rice, pumpkins, papayas, a variety of veggies we do not have the US and a nice bamboo basket to take it all home in. And it only cost $20 for the whole thing.

After the auction, it was time to eat! So much yummy food and so many people hanging out and celebrating together. It was a fun time, and I ate SO much food. It is so much fun taking Sophie to these things because she is like a totally different kid. She chatters away in Akha and is so sweet, no trace of the moody teenager she can easily be in the city.

Jasmine needed to get some interviews from some villagers for a research project she is doing, so Ahna, Sophie and I walked around the village and went down to the lake to work off some of the calories from dinner. On the way back up the hill, Sophie challenged us to a race up the hill. I won of course, because Ahna was in flip flops, so she fell out early, and Sophie is just weak and has no endurance, so I passed them both up pretty easily. I didn’t have to run fast, just outlast the two of them! We headed back to the car, packed up our spoils and said goodbye to the generous families. Jasmine stayed to continue her interviews and we took the car back to the city. Best way to spend Thanksgiving, in my opinion.  

Headed for Juvie

As you can see by the thermometer on the right, I am currently at 98% of my total budget raised (still need about $2500 for the next two years)
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Wow, I totally thought I had written about everything that happened in November and early December but clearly, that was all in my imagination. Sorry to keep you hanging! So, last I wrote, we were preparing to go to the Juvenile Department for interviews. That was on November 15, and they were supposed to interview me, Sophie, Ning and Sophie’s teacher from last year, who helped us get all her homework and keep the administration from making Sophie repeat 7^th grade. Unfortunately, Ning had to go to a seminar on that morning, so she asked me to tell them she would come the following afternoon.

The morning of the 15^th, it was pouring rain, which is unusual for November, but I was trying not to think of it as a bad sign. The interviews were at a juvenile correction facility (which I didn’t understand til the following day) on some beautiful grounds. We arrived there just on time, but the lawyer was late (shocking, I know). So, we signed in, and when the lawyer finally showed up, they called me in with him to give them some papers and ask a few questions. The interviews were in a tiny room with two social workers (I guess that is what they would be considered.) I was really nervous because I really had no idea what to expect, but the lady who interviewed all of us was really nice. So, the entire interview was conducted in Thai. And it took an hour and a half for me. Let me tell you, my brain was so tired after that interview. But, to my credit, I understood about 95% of the questions. The lady was really good at rephrasing to simpler questions if I didn’t understand, so that was really helpful. At the end of the interview, she told me she was really surprised that I had only been here for a year and a half, because my Thai was so good. I always love hearing that. :)

Basically, she asked me questions about everything in my life. Where I was born, what did I do before I came to Thailand, why did I come, how did I meet Sophie, did I know her parents, how did she come live with me, how do I take care of her when she is sick (that started the whole story of the TB, which she seemed really impressed by), how involved am I in school, how much money do we have, how much does our house cost, etc. One of the things she asked about was basically why did I think that I should be her mom. I didn’t really understand what she was asking, so she said, ‘OK, you are Christian, right? So, do you feel like God sent you here for her?” And I was like “Oh, yeah, actually I do. Here, let me tell you about the crazy story that brought me here at exactly the right time.” After I told her all this, about how I had been pursuing foster parenting in the States, but then God told me to come to Thailand instead, she was like, “so, it was, what is the word in English?.....DESTINY!” I had to laugh, cause that was pretty much it! While it was nervewracking and I kept feeling like there was more I should say, because all the questions felt so sterile, somehow, not really emotional, I still think it went well.

After they finished with me, they talked to Sophie for about 40 minutes, and asked her things like: why do you live with Heather, how does she treat you, do you have any problems, do you want to stay with Heather, what did she do when you were in the hospital, did she know your parents? One question that was funny to me was when they asked her why she liked to live with me, she said because I was a good person and took good care of her. So the lady asked “Ok, if someone else who was a good person and could take good care of you came along, would you want to go live with them instead?” Sophie answered “No, because I have lived with Heather for a long time and she is my mom now. We have a close relationship.” Later, my Thai teacher was asking about the interviews and I was telling her what Sophie said, my Thai teacher stopped me and asked what word Sophie used. I remembered that she had used a word I didn’t understand and when I asked her to explain what it meant, she said it meant a close relationship. My Thai teacher said, “Oh, was it this word?” I was like “Oh!  Yeah! That’s it.” She said, “OK, we use the translation for ‘close relationship’ when speaking about close friends or aunts, cousins, like that, people who it would be hard if we were separated, but we would survive. This word, we use for family. When we use this word, it means that our hearts are woven together, that if we were separated from one another, it would be so painful that we would die.” How sweet is that?

Later, Sophie told me, “um, P’Heather, I kind of lied a little bit to the lady.” I was like “WHAT? WHY?!” She said, “Well, she asked me if my mom knew you, right, and I said that after she died Kru Ning told me that my mom had said she wanted me to go live with you. I don’t know if that’s true or not.” It cracked me up, but I told her she didn’t need to lie about anything, and she should always tell the truth when people ask this stuff.

After Sophie’s interview was done, they called in her teacher. Her interview lasted about 30 minutes, and they just asked her about school stuff, like if I was involved with her schoolwork, and came to PTA meetings and stuff, and the teacher told her about me getting Sophie a tutor to keep up with her studies while she was in the hospital.

After we were all done, the social worker came out to talk to us and said, “OK, all three of you talked about Ning, so I definitely need to talk to her tomorrow to corroborate all your stories.” (OK, obviously I am paraphrasing. I can’t really translate corroborate).

Friday, I picked up Ning and we drove back out to Juvie again. I guess Ning didn’t really understand why we were going there because she knew it was Juvie, but after her interview, she understood why they had to do the interviews there. That was the first time I understood that we had been at the Juvie hall all day the day before! The social worker talked to Ning for about an hour and a half also, just like me, and asked her all the same questions she had asked me and Sophie, but Ning had even more insight, because she is the one who really talked to Sophie’s mom about this, and she is the one who is responsible for giving me Sophie in the first place. She had to explain her actions to them and really vouch for me as a good person, so I think that without her testimony, we would not have had a good outcome. They asked her if I was “tjing tjai,” which means having a true or pure heart, and of course she assured them that I was. I think it’s good that they do such thorough interviews because I know there is a probably a lot of people who have dishonorable intentions in adopting kids, so it’s good that they try to be really sure before just handing over kids to foreigners.  

Guardianship progress

As you can see by the thermometer on the right, I am currently at 96% of my total budget raised (still need about $3000 for the next two years)
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October 31, 2012

So, while everyone in America was doing last minute fixes on their kids’ costumes to prep them for trick-or-treating, I was stressing out about going up to Mae Fah Luang yet again. This time, we were going to finally move Sophie officially to Chiang Mai for study. I thought that we were also going to inquire again about getting her birth certificate, but that didn’t end up happening, as I later found out.

Anyway, in preparation for this, we met with our lawyer, with whom I was becoming more and more disillusioned, the more I talked to people he had basically screwed over. But, at this point, we were days away from filing our case, so it was a bit late to fire him and find someone new. He said he would drive his car and we could just pay him for the cost of the car maintenance and gas, about 5000 baht ($175). Two weeks ago, we rented a car for two days, drove all over the country and paid for a hotel room and travel costs for 3 additional people and it only cost 6000 baht, so I was a bit skeptical about the high price. However, I didn’t have much room to argue, since he said he would normally charge 7500 baht just for a fee to travel that far. Frustrating, but I felt like I was boxed into a corner. After all, we NEEDED him to come with us and speak to the family who now lives on Sophie’s land, and speak to the poo yai baan (village chief) from Mae Fah Luang.

Despite having this case for a year, our lawyer still does not believe that Sophie’s entire family is dead. I thought he may finally believe us if someone ELSE tells him that they are all dead. All of a sudden at this meeting, he started saying that if we couldn’t find a living relative to sign for us, then I couldn’t get legal guardianship, but I could get cleared to adopt her. ????? How is guardianship harder than adoption? She can’t be the first kid in the history of the country to have no living relatives and need to be adopted by someone. Not to mention the fact that for the past year, he has been saying she can’t be adopted since she is not a citizen and that she is too old to be adopted in Thailand. This is why I have lost all faith in this lawyer because every day, his story changes to be a complete contradiction from the previous day.

The plan was to meet at the office at 5 am and head up to MFL and back in the same day. We had arranged with the family and the chief to meet us at the government office, so they were planning to be there too. We got up to the office about 9am, and there were only 3 people ahead of us in line to finish Sophie’s address change. I thought that while we did that, the lawyer was speaking to the other office about her birth certificate, but I guess I should have been more specific and told him to go ask, instead of just asking what he found out. He just told me the same thing they said the last time we went up, which I found out later was totally a lie. (More on that to come).

OK, so we went to the first desk, he looked over the papers, and sent us to take yet more pictures because the last batch did not have Sophie in her school uniform. After that was done, we waited for him to type up the papers. The guy called us in when the papers were printed, but not yet officially signed, and I saw that my name was spelled incorrectly.

I didn’t realize until that moment that they were actually not only giving her permission to study in Chiang Mai, but specifically naming me and our house as her legal guardian and residence. However, I thought my name should be spelled correctly. So, we went back to wait again.

While we were waiting, the family and the chief showed up and the lawyer talked to them. On the drive up, he had asked Sophie over and over and over and over again “are you sure these people are not your family?” and she kept telling him “no, they are my mom’s friends.” Finally, after the 10^th time, she just gave up and said, “OK, yeah, they are family.” So, when they show up, and he says, “how are you related?” they are like “Uh, we’re not. We’re just friends who live on her parents’ land.” Then the lawyer is all shocked and dismayed and like “Why did Sophie say they were relatives? They aren’t relatives. They say all the relatives are dead!” To which I respond with a combination of disbelief and derision and say: “I know. This is what we have been telling you for a year. You wouldn’t believe Sophie when she told you over and over that they were not family, so she finally told you what you wanted to hear. I have been telling you the same thing for a year. Do you finally believe us now?”

After this, Sophie comes running out and grabs me to go inside, where I am plopped in front of a guy who starts asking me questions about Sophie. Like, do I yell at her (kind of lied on that one), do I hit her (I was pretty appalled by that question and responded by telling the story of how I wanted to go beat her teacher up after he beat all the kids in class until they had bruises and couldn’t sit down for 3 days), where do we live, that kind of thing. I couldn’t follow 100% of what he was saying, but the gist of it was that they sometimes have problems with foreigners wanting to take in teenagers. They will say that they want to help or adopt them, but really, they beat them, or make them house slaves, or force them to work in brothels, so he wanted to be really sure that I was treating her well. I said that was very good, and that is why I wanted to take care of her, to keep those awful things from happening. He seemed satisfied with that, and stamped our papers and sent us on our way back to desk 1. So, we waited another 20 minutes to get the final copy. Then we made a few copies and had them officially stamped as well.

Basically, this paper gives me full authority to travel with Sophie, get her out of trouble with the police (as if that would ever happen), and lets her stay with me until she finishes 9^th grade. Technically, she is still registered in Mae Fah Luang, so we need to take this paper and the accompanying check-in sheet to the Chiang Mai government office every 6 months until she is done with 9^th grade. At that point, we need to go back to mae Fah Luang to get another paper extending her stay in Chiang Mai until she finishes high school. Ideally by that point, all this will be moot because I will have adopted her and gotten her US citizenship by that point, but I am still not sure exactly how long that will all take.

At this point, it’s 11am. I think, ok, we will be back in Chiang Mai by 4pm and I can actually go to work and teach tonight. Great! However, this is the best part of the story. We head down the mountain and pull off into this random village. The lawyer tells us that he is going to leave us here to have lunch at the market and then come back and pick us up in two hours while he goes to meet with someone else. I was so confused because on the drive up, he had said we would go with him to meet these other people and it would just be a second while he gave them some documents, and then we would get back on the road. So, he leaves us in the middle of nowhere, basically, and says he will come back in 2 hours, to give us time to shop and eat. So, two hours comes and goes. Long story short, he comes back at 4:15. 4:15!!!! We got there at 11:20. I was speechless with anger at the fact that I had paid him 5000 baht for this day and he was making me miss work and just dumping us in this little town with NOTHING to do for hours. He refused to tell us where he was or how long he would be, every time I called him, he would just say “oh, just a second, we’re coming” and then hang up on me. It was infuriating!

When they finally came back to pick us up, he was all apologetic, but I was not having it. I was basically done with him at that point. I was just like “don’t talk, let’s just go.” We finally got back to Chiang Mai at 8:30pm. After that, I have been very short with him, and just not wanted to talk to him at all, because I just don’t trust him or believe a word her says anymore, which is not a good feeling to have, when we still need to go to juvenile court and then the head court of Chiang Mai and he needs to testify for us.

Thursday morning, I had a Thai lesson. I asked my teacher to help me read the paper for Sophie, so I knew what it said. She read it and said “Heather, this is wrong!” Apparently, when they typed in how long Sophie is allowed to stay with me before the paper expires does not match up. It says “this child is allowed to stay with Heather Askew for the next year and 5 months, until March 31, 2015.” Yeah, do the math. That is 2 years and 5 months, not one year. So, if anyone at the Chiang Mai government office or the court sees this, it could put the entire guardianship on hold until we can go BACK to MFL and get it fixed! Six people read this paper, and not a single one of them caught that mistake. So, not only did we waste 4 hours of time in a nameless town, we didn’t even get a correct document for our case! However, I am not freaking out too much yet, because three different offices in Chiang Mai had to approve her check-in, and not one of them commented on the inaccuracy, so hopefully nobody will notice at court either. I didn’t even tell the lawyer, for fear he would hold off on filing the case yet again.

The other incredibly frustrating thing is that, when we were in MFL with Ning on October 8, they told us we need to go pick up Sophie’s ID card (not citizenship, just a resident alien card) in Doi Saket, just outside Chiang Mai. However, after the debacle with the moving form, I asked my Thai teacher to help me find the phone number for this office so I would have everything 150% prepared before I pulled Sophie out of school yet again to go get this card.

We call them, and they are totally confused. They are like “what are you talking about? You can’t pick up a card here. We manufacture the cards in batches and send them back to the county. You have to pick it up at the county office in Mae Fah Luang.” I was so furious and confused. That lady gave us a number for her supervisor, who said the same thing. They get batches of ID info from the counties and then make the cards and send them back. They don’t have the ability to distribute them.

Next, we called the county office, where we JUST WERE YESTERDAY!! I explained to the woman who answered that we were just in MFL, they told us to go to Doi Saket, but now Doi Saket is saying to go to MFL, so I was completely at a loss as to what we were supposed to do. She asked me a bunch of questions about where Sophie was born, what village number and if she had citizenship. Then, she gave me another number to call. My Thai teacher called for me and talked to that person.

Let me back up a bit to explain. We have a copy (not an original, Sophie has no clue where that might be) of an application for her to get an ID card. It was filed in November of 2007, 5 years ago, and says that the card should be picked up at the end of January, 2008. They never went to pick up this card, so we have been carting this paper all over the place for the last year and a half trying to get info as to how to get this card that was applied for.

So, the new person says, OK, what is the application date? We tell her and she’s like “oh, no! That expired. They did a census in 2007, but those cards expired last year. They did a new census last year, but if she never picked up her card, her number may have been cancelled when they did the new survey. You need to come to the government office in MFL and ask them to create a new application and put her number back in the system if it was deleted. Then, they will send the info to Doi Saket, and send the card back to MFL and you can come pick it up.” I about fell over when I heard this. We had the opportunity to do this TWICE in the last month. So, for those of you keeping track, I have spent nearly $400 USD in a month to basically get lied to multiple times, spend hours traveling and waiting at a government office, and get nothing accomplished in the process to get Sophie an identification card.

After this phone call, I called the village chief we had met with several times over the past year, who had helped us both times at the government office. I asked him if he remembered the census last year and if he had put Sophie’s name on the list, or if her number was gone. He said he was sure her name was on the list, because he checked last year, when we went to visit him in the village in December. (See “Chiang Rai, Poo Chi Fah, and Other Funny Names for that story). FINALLY, some good news.

The day after I found all this out, our lawyer finally filed the case with the court, and we got a court date. Well, two actually. Our first is November 15, when we will go to the juvenile court and testify to our relationship, how long Sophie has been with me and why I should be allowed to be her guardian. Then, they will write a recommendation to the high court, and we will go to see them on December 12. That is a panel of 4 judges who will ask us more questions and will render a final decision. So, if all goes well, it should all be official and legal by Christmas! Great Christmas present, huh?

The next step is where it gets a bit murky. Now, the lawyer says that we can take the judgement to Bangkok, and file it with the Department of Child Welfare to legally adopt Sophie. However, I still don’t know if that is really the case. I do know that once I get the judgement, I will go to the US Consulate and find out what is the next step I can take to get her US citizenship, since she may never be able to get Thai citizenship in her life.
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