Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

Well, we got a call this afternoon from our area rep that a permanent family was interested in the girl from Finland!  We are very happy for her—as we told the rep, “Better a permanent family than slumming it with us for a 8 weeks!”

So we had our family interview this evening and went through some basic profiles—no identifying information, just kind of what the student wanted the family to know in a paragraph or two.  It came down to two different girls, one from Hong Kong and one from Iceland.  Our rep was pulling for the girl from Iceland, but Mike was pulling for the girl from Hong Kong.  In the end we went with Iceland.  What tipped the scales?  I’m not sure, really, but I think it was mostly when I said what I didn’t want and that I kind of wanted a break from Asian cultures, that tipped things in favor of the girl from Iceland, who sounds pretty good. 

Now, should she find herself a family, our next choice will be the girl from Hong Kong.  Having gone through an adoption experience with our daughter, I really do believe that we wind up with the children we’re supposed to have, so it does not bother me one bit to have “lost out” on the opportunity to host the Finnish girl—she’s going where she’s supposed to be.

A few things we found out tonight:  AFS is still looking for homes for something like 900 kids who want to come to the US.  Because we were late to the game, we will not have our kid arrive till the end of August.  This makes me pretty happy, actually, since we had 3 weeks of sitting around with Penny and it was a loooooooooooooooooooong three weeks!  This young lady, or the next young lady, or the one after that, will only have to hang out for a week or so before heading off to school.  She can get acclimated to the house and the town, get her school supplies in order, and then head off to her great high school adventure.

So that’s where things stand at the moment:  Iceland.  We’ll see what happens in a week, maybe it’ll change again!  I find it very exciting, really, to kind of play country roulette.  It’d be pretty awesome if we went through all the kids coming to Virginia and they all found homes, and then we wound up working our way through some of the other kids.  Meanwhile, I’ve updated the blog title and links to reflect our country du jour.  Check back often, you never know what the next news will be.

And hooray for finding permanent families!  C’mon, you know you wanna!  Sign Up Today!