Honduras 101

Well, if you are anything like me, you may need a bit of geography and basic information about Honduras.  Honduras is in Central America, north of Nicaragua, south of Guatemala.  It has a Caribbean coast, and is probably best know for Roatan, off its east coast.  The capital is Tegucigalpa, which is basically due south of about Nashville, Tennessee.  (In my mind, I pictured Honduras much further west than it actually is.  I guess it's my west coast bias.)  Honduras is also slightly larger than Tennessee.  When I travel, I'll probably only be going to Tegucigalpa.  Though I'd love to take a side trip to Roatan or Belize, it likely won't happen.  We'll see...

In 2010, there were only 9 U.S. adoptions from Honduras; in 2009 there were 4. There are a few agencies starting adoptions from Honduras.  My agency sounds like it will be one of the first, if not the first, to get a Honduras program actually up and running.  Honduras is not a Hague country.  (For those of you not well versed in adoption lingo, this has to do with the Hague treaty that some countries signed regarding international adoption.)  You can find more info here about Honduran adoption statistics and information. 

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere.  I heard it was the 2nd poorest, next to Haiti.  Honduras has just over 8 million people, about 1 million of them living in Tegucigalpa.  They are 2 hours ahead of the west coast during standard time.  For more Honduras info, click here.

Because Honduras is so poor, many of the orphans are in charity run orphanages.  It is not clear whether my daughter will come from a state run or charity run orphanage. Here are a few random pics of Honduran orphans from various charity websites.  My goodness!  Don't you just want to bring them all back home with you?!

Hoops & Delays

As anyone who has adopted internationally can tell you, the process is full of bumps, glitches, hoops to jump through, and delays.  This adoption is no different.  I originally thought I'd travel in late spring.  Well, that didn't happen.  Then I was SURE I'd travel in the summer.  In fact, I even got a call from my agency in early June.  I was SURE they had a referral waiting for me.  Nope.  Instead, they had another hoop for me to jump through.  Honduras had approved my dossier, but wanted one more thing.  They wanted me (and all adopting families) to be evaluated by a psychologist, including a personality test.  Oh boy!  So after my insurance said they don't do that sort of thing, I cold called psychologists from the phone book until I found one with some adoption experience and a price I could afford.  Only problem, it'd be a month before I could get an appointment.
So jump ahead to mid-July.  My psychology appointment is done, but they are waiting on my personality test results.  Let's hope that this report is done and in Honduras's hands by the end of the month.  Maybe then I will have a referral in August.  But you know the saying, "Man plans, and God laughs."
So today's delay...Honduras had just now decided that I will have to make 2 trips to Honduras, up to 6 weeks apart.  Many countries do require 2 trips, but this is the first Honduras has ever said about it.   Both trips would be about 5 days.  I would likely go alone on the first trip, meet my daughter, sign papers, go back home...alone.  The second trip my mom and 4 year old Mia would likely come, we would have our official Gotcha Day, and do the U.S. paperwork, and then come home.  Though not what I had planned on, we can make it work.  It's just the up to 6 week DELAY from the first to second trip that gets me.
Like I said, just a bunch of hoops & delays.  Nothing new in the world of international adoption.  On the positive side, this adoption looks like it will take just about a year total, from start to finish.  A far cry from the over 3 1/2 year start to finish total from my China adoption.