The Meeting

i think it went pretty much exactly as i thought it would. This time there was considerably more kicking under the table. Cris looks at things much differently (and by differently i mean more positively) than i do sometimes. I kind of feel like the Agency made a huge mistake. We hired them to do a job, and paid them lots and lots of money, and yet they still failed miserably. And i know for a fact, if i messed up at work as miserably as they did at their job i would have serious consequences for that, as would most people. Cris, however, feels like it's water under the bridge. They made a mistake, lets move forward and try to fix it next time. Darn those positive thinkers.

Soooo, down to the important stuff. The first thing she said is basically "i'm leaving for Vietnam in 3 weeks to work on your situation". Once again I felt like this should be a given, she should be in Vietnam working on our situation. Cris thought "isn't that great! She's going to Vietnam to fix the problem herself!".
I still don't have much info about what happened. I guess i don't really care because it can't be changed. Supposedly the orphange director did give our referral to another family. At first i didn't see how this could be possible. We had our referral for 6 months! we had signed a letter of acceptance that went straight to the DIA. But then she basically said that after the orphanage director told her the news, he offered to take a "paper ready" baby that had already been referred to another family to give to us so we didn't have to wait so long. so that's starting to make a little more sense. maybe the same thing happened with our baby. But honestly, who really knows. i think it would border on impossible to actually find out what happened. Too many intricacies of the process. Too many areas to mess up.
I did tell her that i wasn't completely satisfied with that answer, as it seemed like there were other areas of the process that could have contributed to the break down. My main concern is the in-country facilitator. What in the world was she doing for the last 6 months? I said that whenever we requested specific information, like "where EXACTLY is our daughter's dossier" we got the run-around. She said she has already addressed this problem, and that is part of what her trip is for, to go over in detail what she expects of the facilitator.
Also, about the license, since there has certainly been some confusion. I asked for physical evidence of a license in Thanh Hoa, as the agency is only listed as being licensed in Quang Nam, and supposedly they have had their Thanh Hoa license since Jul 25. She said she will provide it.
(by this time she and I are not really BFF's).

So, the good news. They supposedly have a referral for us. But (per our request) are not going to really tell us anything about her until things have really moved along. I don't know when that will be, and i'm really not stressed about it at all. I now realize that whether we see her picture now, or in 3 months, the wait for travel will be the same, so i would rather see it later rather than sooner. The director will be visiting her in the orphange when she goes in January and will take some pictures etc. So i imagine they will have a lot more info in January.

Oh, also she is in Thanh Hoa. AAAAhhhh, scary. At first i was like, "Absolutely not". But then she said basically that in this situation the orphanage director is anxious to right a wrong. That because he knows about our situation he has personallly promised to help move the paperwork along at a reasonable speed, and be sure everything is done perfectly. Who knows if that is true, but it might help. I asked her to please check into Quang Nam to see if there would be any referrals from that province (which has only had 2 referrals this year), and she said she would.

So, that's basically it.
off topic, As for the question about why do a GYN residency if i want to do lipo? Excellent question! I should have done a plastic surgery residency. But i didn't know that's what i wanted. AND i do love love love ob/gyn. But i've finished almost 3 years of residency, and plastics would be another 7-8 years of making very little money and working my butt off. So, i looked into ways to get trained in doing surgery other than GYN surgery. Incidentally, i found that a large portion of "cosmetic surgeons" who are performing lipo/etc. are Dermatoligsts (not surgeons at all!) and Ear nose and throat guys (surgeons, but of course of the face). As gynecologist we already operate in the lower abd every day! It's our specialty area. So basically lipo is just expanding a procedure in an area we already know really really well. Plus, patients ask for it all the time. They usually feel really comfortable with their GYN, and i think would love it if we could be trained to do other procedures they would like to have. so, that's how that happened.

Anyway, sorry for the longest post of all time! thanks for following along!