This won't be our week

We have both been extremely nervous in the past two days, wondering if, by some miracle, we will get a phone call to drop everything and come into DIF to do our interviews.

A meeting with the state director for adoptions was called for Wednesday afternoon at 5.30pm, and with that, we realized that there was no way we would be able to do our interviews before Ahmed leaves, as his flight is from San Diego on Thursday morning. No chance of squeezing in a four hour interview and a two hour wait at the border beforehand.

Licenciada Rosa Maria Solis had come from Mexicali, the Baja California state capital, to talk to us about the hold ups. Unlike the Tijuana coordinator, Solis didn't comment on how beautiful the babies are, or even really seem that interested. She explained that because the UAE and Mexico don't have any official contracts regarding international adoptions, they need to ensure that the clinics where we did our homestudies in Dubai meet the Mexican requirements. It seems like such a simple thing. She explained that they would contact the relevant Mexican authority (the embassy) and ask them to investigate and write a report, in order to proceed to the next step - these precious interviews.

So, there you have it. Three months of wondering why on earth they couldn't do our interviews, and now we know. How simple a thing. Ahmed has had a lot of contact with the consul from the consulate, who is really sympathetic to our predicament, and has already asked what she can do to help. And we know the clinic where we did our homestudies will do everything to help us out.

While we feel relieved that there is finally something tangible to work with, it's bittersweet to be getting this information 12 hours before Ahmed leaves. Ah well, we've had a wonderful three weeks, and Ahmed's witnessed Maya truly sitting on her own, eating her first solid food, graduating from Level One at Gymboree and starting to say all kinds of interesting things: dja dja, ga ga, wah wah, yah yah, ba ba, ma ma, da da, ta ta!