January 2013: Success and Failure

Notice the chart to your right. It's not your imagination, it's less than last month. No, people did not ask for refunds, but I have decided after dealing with the Thai public school system for a year and a half that Sophie needs to be in a private school to improve her English to a level where she can attend school in the US, should we be able to get her papers in time. Also, I am not a fan of the fact that they beat the kids (she and the rest of the class got ten lashes with a thick wooden stick last week because three boys in her class were late. This was the 3rd time that happened this year.). I also want her to be somewhere that they are more concerned with the students than with making teachers look good. (Public schools here fail 98% of the kids at mid-terms and then everyone gets Bs and As for final grades so it looks like the teachers got the kids to improve a ton. Shockingly, it turns out that it's very difficult to measure actual progress that way.)  All of this is to say, please donate for Sophie's academic future! Click here to donate: http://www.covchurchgiving.com/p-446-missionary-heather-askew.aspx

Well, it appears that our adoption train has reached its end. Only instead of a station, the end was a long drop off a bridge that had been blown up. OK, maybe not THAT dramatic, but it certainly felt like it on Monday.

Let me go back a bit. We were super excited after the court decision in December and then, on January 10, I picked up the official court order from our lawyer! This specifically gave me permission from the court to adopt Sophie. The judge told me this paper would let me get her citizenship, get her a passport, get her a visa to the US, as well as adopt her legally in Thailand. I was a bit skeptical, so I went with one of our interns, Nuey, to the city hall where the passport office is located. They said “Oh, without a birth certificate, she can’t get a passport, BUT take this court order to Bangkok and when the adoption is finalized, they will give you this paper (pulling it  out of a stack of stuff) and then you take that to the country where she is registered (Mae Fah Luang) and then bring it back here and she gets a passport.” Whew, a lot of work, but this was the first time it seemed like we were not blazing an unknown trail. There was a system in place to get her a passport.

Next, I went to the child protection office with the court order and they said, “Well, here we only do home studies. Take this to Bangkok with all her documents and then come back to see us and we will start your home studies.” So, armed with the confidence of not one, not two, but THREE government offices saying this court order would let me adopt her, I headed to Bangkok for a three day meeting of all the ECC missionaries in Thailand and a neighboring country. We had a great weekend of fellowship and discussion time and I came away with a lot of good ideas for how to strengthen our Taw Saeng team. However, hanging over my head was this knowledge that on Monday, I was going to take the final step toward completing the adoption. Even though I had so many people praying and felt like I was going in the right direction and doing what I have been praying about and preparing for for a year and a half, there was still a small part of me with reservations about how smoothly it would really go. Turns out, it should have been a much bigger part of me.

I had made an appointment with the US Embassy for 8am, the earliest appointment I could get, thinking that if it took a while, I would still have time to get to the adoption center and hop a bus back to Chaing Mai that evening.  After dressing up, putting on heels and taking a taxi, a skytrain and another taxi, I arrived at the embassy 10 minutes early and signed in. I got inside to the security, and they stopped me, saying the people for adoption paperwork weren’t there til 8:30. So, out I went to wait for them to arrive. Had a nice chat with a girl from Nigeria waiting for her visa to study in the US. Finally, they arrived, and I went through security. I went to the section I had an appointment, only to have them tell me that I was in the wrong section and needed to be in the consular visa section. Luckily, I was able to explain the mixup in Thai to the lady at the desk and she let me cut the line and speak right to a person in the consular section. Here is where I should have started lying.

I went up and showed her the form I needed to get from them, which basically guarantees citizenship to an adopted child upon entering the US. She started asking questions about me adopting alone and I panicked, pulling out the court order. I should have stayed calm and just answered the questions, but no, I freaked out. She read the court order and was like “Oh, you already know the kid. But this says she is 17. You can’t adopt a child over the age of 16 in the US.” I knew this already, but the US State Dept said it was possible, just difficult, when I spoke with them in July. Apparently, that info did not get disseminated worldwide. She said ‘What? AND she doesn’t have citizenship. Wow, this child has a lot of issues. Why did you pick her?” I was like, “I didn’t pick her, she was given to me.” She had me sit down while she went to take all our documents to her boss.

I sat there for about 20 minutes, praying my heart out, just like when we went to Mae Fah Luang to get her birth certificate, and just like then, it didn’t work. I heard my name called and the guy at the window said “Nope. Can’t give you this form. The Thai adoption has to be completely finalized by the time she is 16 to get citizenship via adoption. However, if you complete the adoption in Thailand, she would be eligible for a student visa or a 10 year multiple entry visa. Sorry.”

So, had I not mentioned Sophie’s age or given her the court document and just let them assume that I was adopting some random kid, they would have given me the form and by the time they figured it out, the adoption would have been done and it wouldn’t matter. But, no, my panic-honesty has to ruin everything.

So, crushed and disappointed and rapidly feeling like this was going to all end in disaster rather than triumph, I struggled out the door to the street. Oh, did I mention that I was dragging a small roller backpack stuffed with every document we have in the world and a rolling carryon stuffed with 5 days of clothing? Yeah, awkward to say the least.

As I was about to have a complete and total emotional breakdown on the sidewalk of the US Embassy in the middle of Bangkok, I heard my name called. I turned around and there was a girl I had not seen since I was 20 years old and she was 16 (that was 13 years ago, for those of you keeping track.) I barely recognized her, but it was Linnea, the daughter of some college friends of my parents. I knew she was teaching in Thailand, but she was in Chonburi, in the South, and I am way up north, so we just figured we’d run into each other when one of us traveled to the other end of the country for vacation. But, no, here at the US Embassy is where we meet. She was there with her boyfriend to get his visa so he could come with her to visit her parents in the States. We chatted for about half an hour and I told her an abbreviated version of the story and we caught up about her life too. Finally, I was recovered enough to head for the Adoption Center and hope for the best.

This time, I discarded all attempts at professionalism and swapped heels for crocs so I could just walk the half mile back to the skytrain station. This time I took a train and then a taxi to the adoption center. So far, every Thai person I meet has been pleasantly surprised by my ability to speak Thai and been very complimentary. I guess even in Bangkok, a foreigner able to master the language is a rarity.

I got to the adoption center, almost broke my ankle when my heel (yeah, I changed back in the taxi) fell between the slats in a grate, but made it inside. The building was pretty quiet, which I thought was a good sign. I figured I wouldn’t have to wait long. I got to the intake room, and the lady was talking with a couple from Australia. She talked to me in English, but I responded in Thai, cause I figured it might get me further. Usually it does. Example: once I started speaking Thai when ordering at restaurants, I started getting the discount price, instead of the menu price. I guess food and adoption are not really in the same league, but whatever.

I explained the situation to her and asked if there was any way we could just file for Thai adoption and overlook the fact that I didn’t have the document from the US. She took my whole packet and was gone for about 10 minutes. I called my friend Carmen who has been a HUGE monumental help in the process and has finished their adoption already. She prayed for me and was saying that I should still be able to do the Thai adoption regardless of the US side when the lady returned. She said the social worker wouldn’t take the file because I didn’t have that document. I was like “OK, but I have a court order from the Thai court saying I CAN adopt her here.” She said the social worker told her the guarantee of US citizenship was more important than the court order from Thailand. How weird is that? I didn’t even get to talk to a social worker. She said to try to get the government office in Mae Fah Luang to change Sophie’s birthdate to reflect that she was born in 97 not 95 so I could get the form from the US and then file, but we already tried that and they wouldn’t do it because her parents are already dead, so there is no one to guarantee that the year is wrong.

After all this, I called Carmen back and talked to her about the situation. She thought they really could do it, but looked at the paperwork, the fact that Sophie has no citizenship in Thailand and that I was adopting on my own, and just figured it wasn’t worth the hassle so they just sent me away. If I lived in Bangkok, I would come in every day for as long as it took until they let me file, but I live 10 hours away by car, so that is not a viable option.

Devastated and heartbroken, I decided to walk back to the skytrain so I wouldn’t fall apart in a cab. That was a not great idea. I walked for about a mile before realizing I really had no idea where I was. I finally just grabbed a cab to get to the nearest station. I took the skytrain to the end of the line, took yet another cab to the tour bus station, and was there just in time to get a ticket on the 2:30 bus. I was worried I would be stuck in Bangkok for hours waiting to get a night bus home, but I got lucky. Even luckier, I got the front seat! I usually end up crammed in the back, but I had lots of leg room and a window to boot. Looking back on the whole day, I can see that God did have a hand in it, despite the feeling of abandonment I had in the moment.

I had loaded up my ipad with tv shows from the US that I had been saving up to watch on the way back from Bangkok, so I just drowned myself in escapist tv. One show that I have not missed an episode of in all five seasons is Parenthood. This season it has paralleled my life in a way that feels like I am being spied on for material. One of the storylines is about a family that adopts an older child and the problems and joys that come with that. Just last week, they had decided to finalize the adoption in court, and I was just preparing to finalize the adoption in Bangkok. So, I had the season finale on my ipad and delayed watching it, knowing how it would end, and not knowing if I could handle it. Eventually, at about 11pm, I had run out of other tv and didn’t feel like sleeping, so I caved and put it on. Sure enough, the season ends with the whole family, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, all coming to the court date to witness the adoption and celebrate together, and I just thought, “we will never have that,” and it broke my heart even more. I arrived in Chiang Mai at 1am and felt so hollowed out and raw that I could barely talk to Ahna and couldn’t even cry about the terrible day I had had.

The rest of the week, people kept trying to comfort and reassure me and sometimes it would make me choke on my sobs, but mostly I just felt unable to feel anything about it, and just kept playing with the kids, laughing and joking around like things are normal.

When I got to Thailand, I could never understand how these kids who have these tough lives and have traumatic things happen to them could come every day and play and laugh and joke like any kid from a middle class home in the US. Now I understand. When your life is one disappointment and trauma after another, it becomes your normal and you have to continue to laugh and find the joy in life, or the anguish will just drown you, like Artax in the Swamps of Sadness (Neverending Story).  

So, when I focus on that, on the fact that Sophie is still here at all, when she could have died from TB a year ago, or fallen over the waterfall in Pai, or been abducted by that creepy guy at New Years, then I take joy in the everyday things.

The day after I got back from Bangkok, I got an email from a lawyer contact in Bangkok who is an expert on citizenship in Thailand. She sent me a book about how to go about getting citizenship for people like Sophie and she is going to write up a legal opinion about Sophie and is confident that we can get her Thai citizenship. So, I guess that’s the rainbow after the storm. The goal was never to get her US citizenship, but to get her to be recognized as a human with rights by a government somewhere. If we can achieve her citizenship here, we can get her a passport and still get her a US visa so she can travel there and maybe study there, if she still wants to. I am not giving up on the Thai adoption either, because selfishly I still want a piece of paper saying we are a family. Tomorrow, I will be meeting with a lawyer in Chiang Mai, a friend of Nuey’s, who will look over our documents and help us continue in that direction. God has definitely provided quite a few contacts lately for help with legal matters and they are all graciously donating their time, which is beyond amazing.

Another development is that I decided on a school for Sophie to attend. She has been wanted to go to Christian school for a while now, and there is a fantastic school very near our house that several of her friends from grade school attend. I went to meet with them today, and they still have openings for 9^th grade, so they are ready to take her once I give a deposit next week. They have a great bilingual program, which is better than International School, because every class has both a Thai teacher and a foreign teacher, so the students learn Thai and English simultaneously for every subject. If we DO end up coming to the US for her last couple years of high school, this will give her a huge advantage and probably enable her to skip ESL classes altogether. Also, they don’t hit the kids! And they are very academically focused on the students, rather than on making the teachers look good.