Dossier

Well, what a week this has been! On Sunday I came down with the flu. All day Sunday and all day Monday I stayed home and tried to stay warm. Of course, it doesn't help that this week has been bitterly cold! On Tuesday, I felt better...no more chills, but a bad cold now. I took the day to relax and rest. Lucky I stayed home because our home study arrived today certified mail. Today, Thursday, I feel only slightly better. Because it was a day off of work, I took all our dossier documents downtown and had them apostilled (the county checks to see if the notary is actually certified to notarize, and then they put a letter over the notarized paper with a seal.) It took three hours, and I was all bundled up against the cold. Also, instead of walking to the building from Union Station, I took a taxi. It really wasn't that bad, but I feel horrible now. I came home, and of course, you have to make photocopies of all the apostilles because all your photocopies have to be EXACT copies. So....two hours of photocopying apostilles! I then had to staple all the numbered apostilles to the correct documents. For isntance, the apostille for one of the forms is number 80, so I had to make sure that the photocopied "80's" went on the corresponding pages. Then, I had to place each copy or original onto one of six piles. Yes, six. There are three piles for the Department of Education and three piles for Court. One pile in the DOE is for the DOE and is sent to the agency...that's all the originals and is our "dossier". Another folder is for the Agency, and is an exact copy of all the DOE pages. The last is "our" folder to take with us on the trip and to keep for our records and are an exact copy of the DOE pages. The other three are the same only for court when we take our second trip.

So, after about two or three hours of copying, putting in folders, double-and-triple-checking, I finally took all our dossier documents to FedEx. Two sets will arrive tomorrow morning! They will check it over (which is just a formality as I already e-mailed her the whole dossier and she was able to check it over before I actually sent it out), and then they will send it off to Russia! Sometime after that, we will be notified of our first visit. People usually travel between 10 and 17 days after receiving their referral, but since we already have a referral, I don't know if it will be the same or if it will be longer.
Post again soon!