Picking a Country

If you don't plan to adopt until next year, you still don't have long to wait before you need to start making decisions. Having a year or two wait between getting started and actually traveling is not unusual these days. The first decision you have to make is if you want to use an agency or not, then if you want to keep your options open as long as possible, you'd have to choose one that works in both countries. Due to the constant changing of rules, regulations, stories in the media, etc you can't predict whether either country would be easy/difficult, or even open at the time you want to travel. In IA, there are no certainties apart from the fact that you will get extremely frustrated, mad, sad and disheartened until you get to bring your child home, this is not an easy process to go through.We chose Ukraine in 2001 primarily because we only had to do one trip. We went back in 2006 because our son was from there and it made sense for all our children to come from the same Country. I still like the idea of one trip, although trips to Ukraine are getting longer than they used to be. However, we ended up having to do 2 trips to Ukraine and leaving our children between trips was not as hard as I thought it would be. We only had a month between trips though and there can be a long time between trips in Russia, depending on what region you travel to. Everyone chooses a Country for their own reasons and there are pros and cons to them all, you just have to make a list, make your decision and go forward with it. No matter where your children come from, it's all worth it in the end. Jane