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| before we left to go pick up Koby!!! |
Time to go get my little boy wouldn’t get here fast enough! I went thru a lot of "woe is me" moods. We waited “patiently” from the end of October 2010 to the end of February 2011 before we got to go get him. The I-600 process from the embassy could take up to 60 days to finalize. We emailed them in January and they told us that we had been approved and we could pick up our packet. I asked what was in the packet and they wouldn’t tell me, so I didn’t know if it was something my POA could fill out or what, we asked them if they would email it to us, they said no, they would mail it to us, so I asked if we could pay for next day air, and they said they didn’t do that, only standard mail. They told us that it should take a couple of weeks to get here, yea right! We waited, and waited, and waited, for NOTHING! Finally we just had our POA go get it and he scanned and emailed it to me. (DUH, who wouldn’t have thought of that, first?) We couldn’t get them all to open big enough to read, but I got enough to search it on line, well all that was in that packet was the Visa Application, and information about the Visa Medical, so I searched it on line, and found it, I filled it out and emailed it back to our POA and scheduled a Visa Interview. He took the application and Koby and his birth mom to the interview. Everything went well, they needed the medical, that we thought we already had, but it had to be thru their doctors, so we scheduled that appointment, and they needed to see the original adoption decree and social welfare report. Well guess what? We had that stuff here in America. The only way to get it there was to go, because we still hadn’t received the packet they mailed to us a month before this. So we emailed them and tried to get answers, but they wouldn’t tell us anything, they said they couldn’t guarantee anything to us. So we decided to just go over there and pray that the visa gets printed and we get to bring him home this time. They gave us an open date to come back and give them the information they had requested. So we purchased our tickets to fly out on February 18, 2011 and come home February 26, 2011. We were so excited, our friends that went with us the 1st time had decided to go back and this was when they were scheduled to go back too! One of my best friends and her husband had decided to adopt also, so the pictures of the little girl you see, is their daughter.
Leaving for Ghana, we were so excited and nervous at the same time. Not knowing whether they were gonna let him
come home with us was an awful feeling.
But when we arrived in Ghana, and I hear the sweet little pitter patter
of feet running toward me, and looking down and he jumped in my arms, just made
my day!!!
Oh how we had missed this little guy!
We arrived on a Saturday, and we went to the Embassy on the following
Monday. They were happy with seeing the
originals, and his new medical report.
They tried to print the visa that day, but their printer was backed up
so they told us to come back at the end of the day so we did and it still
hadn’t printed. They told us that the
printer would print all night if we would come back in the morning they would
have it printed. We were so excited,
when we got up the next morning we went straight to the Embassy and guess what?
IT WAS PRINTED!!!
Our little boy was going home with us!!! This was Tuesday, so
we had the rest of the week to just relax and enjoy learning all we could about
where our little guy was from. We spent
a lot of time at the orphanage getting to know the kids, and falling in love
with every single one of them!
We went
to the beach on our last trip and Koby didn’t like it at all, but we wanted to
go back there on this trip, but we had waited till the last day and still
hadn’t gone. We decided we would go if
we had time our last day there, we went and Koby surprised us, he loved it, he
played and didn’t cry at all.
We went back to the hotel and got cleaned up for
our flight. Several of the kids came by
the hotel to tell Koby bye. He was so
excited to be leaving and going to America, everyone was so happy for him
also. We left to go to the airport at
7pm, our flight was at 11pm. He told
everyone “me aqua” I don’t know how to spell it but it means “I’m leaving” we
were so happy that he was ready to go with us.
We got to the airport and checked in.
As we were in line 2 people, a man and a woman, both from Ghana, stopped us and said they had to go thru our
bags. So we went over to the bags and
the lady asked which ones were mine, I told her I had stuff in all of them, I was
organized going but coming home, I just threw all the dirty, stinky clothes
together. So she was going thru them and
asked why we were taking the black kid with us.
We told her we adopted him and he was going home with us, the 2 of them
looked at each other and said “well that explains it” ok lets go get you on
your flight. We just had to laugh that
one off, but that did start a whole new nervousness in us. We were so scared every time we got in
another line that they were going to stop us, but no one else did. We worried how Koby would do on the plane,
and he did great, he slept most of the way home. We flew into Washington DC, and while we were
waiting to go thru immigration, Koby was talking to me in Twi. I didn’t know what he was saying, I had learnt
some, and he taught me some of his words for things, I knew when he wanted to
eat, drink and go potty. Those are the
most important right? Well we were in this line and he kept saying the same
thing over and over and I would just say “yes” or “ok” and he would continue to
say it, I had never heard the phrase he was using, but I had no way of knowing
what he was saying, we didn’t have a translator! Well, he said it again and this little
elderly lady said “excuse me honey but your son is wanting something to eat” oh
my goodness, that was not the phrase he had been using when he was hungry! I am so glad she was there and she was from
Ghana and understood Twi. We had a 5 hour
layover so we took a taxi and went sightseeing.
We got back to the airport and flew in to Knoxville, where everyone was
there to see our precious little boy!!!
By the time we landed in Knoxville we had been traveling for 24 hours,
and Koby didn’t make the first whimper, he never cried one time. 
Several wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese, so we took him there and he had a blast! He was doing so well we decided to go ahead and go to church the next morning, he did great there too, he went in to his Sunday School class by himself. We never had to change a thing; he has bonded with us and done so wonderful adjusting. He was speaking quite a bit of English his 1st month home and every day he spoke more and more. We noticed after being home just 3 months, he was speaking English fluently, and he had totally forgotten his other language.
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