News

Update
We received an update from our agency (finally). Yesterday, our agency e-mailed us to let us know that they had not heard from the coordinator in Russia concerning our case. Although I was disappointed, there’s nothing I can do about it at this point. However, today she e-mailed us with more news. The dossier is at the Department of Education, which is really cool. But, the person handling our case is on vacation. This person has to review our information, issue us an "official" referral, and send us an invitation to travel. We have to wait until this person returns from vacation before we can know when we travel. While I think it stinks that our travel plans will be delayed for a while longer, I don’t begrudge the worker a vacation. However, now our case worker is saying that we won’t travel until April. She was actually very appologetic about it. She told us that we would be able to travel this month, so she’s disappointed to see that we’ll have to wait a few more weeks.

Also in that e-mail she included all the documents we need for the second dossier. It doesn’t look too hard. Most of them are papers that we open in Microsoft Word, type in our correct information, print, notarize and apostille. There are a few that will take a while, like getting copies of our deed and such, but most are really easy. She said that we can do all of them except the medical reports and the police clearances, since they have an expiration date. The medicals are only good for about a month (since your health can change quickly) , and the police clearances are only good for six months.

This dossier should in some ways be easier, but in some ways harder. It should be easier because they have very specific guidelines that we must follow in order for the document to be done correctly. This makes it easy because we know exactly what we have to do in order to make it right. However, the same thing makes it harder. With the other two dossiers we worked on for Nepal and Guatemala, we were just given a list of documents needed, and there were only a few instructions. A lot of the paperwork we did for Nepal we could use for Guatemala, because there wasn’t a "formula" or a "form". For Russia, we can’t use any of the paperwork we did for Guatemala or Nepal because Russia has a form you print out (Word document), and a "formula" for all the letters. It tells you exactly how your employer should write the letter of employment! I guess that’s the way it is to make it easier for the translator. If there’s a "formula" to the documents, then he only has to concentrate on the specific details.
Well, I’ve got a stack of 15 documents that I need to prepare. 13 of them are documents for the dossier and 2 are check lists and more instructions. I’m going to start chipping away at it. Our case worker also mentioned that any documents completed for court that are done before our first trip we can take with us. I guess that’s so the translator can start working on the documents ahead of time.