Paperchase # 7

This morning, Ahmed and I went to court. Specifically, we went to the Family Court, where our case is being dealt with. Tijuana has three family courts, and as (bad) luck would have it, ours has been taken up by the particular court, presided over by the scary judge. We had heard of another family going in to try and see their judge (from another Tijuana Family Court), who was very nice and sweet and sympathetic, and said he would do whatever he could to help their case.

Maya as cute as a button.

So, we trundled along to court, with Maya dressed up as cute as a button, and asked to see the judge. Shocked look on receptionist's face, but she showed us through to a corridor, and said: Last door on the right. Off we went. Outside said door was a nice friendly young woman with a clipboard who listened to our story, in my best possible Spanish, still avoiding past tenses. In the meantime, several people tentatively knocked on the door, went in timidly and came out again. Scary judge had her back to the door and never once turned around. Nice young lady directed us to the judge's third secretary, who is the one dealing with our case. She was nice and friendly, again, and told us to go to DIF. Called up someone at DIF for us, and said, yes, she's waiting to see you, and she will explain everything about the hold up. So, that felt promising, and she seemed to think that it wouldn't take us long at all to get the adoption done. Ha ha, I always come out of these offices feeling positive until a few days later when the reality hits that their words really don't mean much.

Off to DIF and met the adoption supervisor, Licenciada Sanchez, who again, is a lovely woman, and is keen to help us out, but her hands are tied, waiting for the 'decision' by the higher authorities. We have yet to know what they're actually trying to decide, and we're praying it's not something as grim as whether or not we can actually adopt Maya. If that's the case, we have a sketchy worst case scenario lined up, which involves boats in the middle of the night, stuffing Maya down my top and pretending I'm pregnant (might have worked when she was only a month old and wanted to sleep all the time, not the case any more), or moving to a shack somewhere in Mexico and living out the rest of our days there living off homegrown tomatoes and chillies.

She assured us it's nothing like that, just formalities. But goodness me, how many months to work out the formalities? We submitted the request for interviews on 23rd June, it's now the middle of August.

Decision is to finally be made Monday 18th August, we were told.