Initial Travel Information

While it seems really, really premature, tonight we had a webinar on Initial Travel Preparation for our future trip to Ethiopia (which, as we are only a month on the waitlist, will not be for a good long while).  It was very interesting, though, to hear the advance prep for travel to Africa.  Basically, we need a bunch of shots, although as a veteran of the dreaded PIOs my reaction was pretty much:  Big, scary shots?  Meh.  Whatevs--it’s going to take a lot more than that to scare me . And Cory doesn’t have to give the shots, for which he was thankful.

Anyhoodle, it was good food for thought on things we need to start doing to get ready to be parents.  So, more research to be done on good travel clinics in the area, what our insurance will cover, etc.  We also need to figure out health insurance for our child, as our policy states that the child would be covered  “at placement”, which doesn’t really specify much in this particular situation--our child might be legally ours, but still in Africa for months (so not technically “placed”).  It’s all a bit confusing, and seems so very far away.  But I guess anything can happen in this crazy process, so we should be as ready as possible. 

Travel itself was discussed, such as the need to apply for passports and how to handle long flights (they didn’t cover the need for Bloody Marys, which I thought was a major oversight), but as my sis lives pretty far away we are used to lengthy times in the air, airports, customs, etc.    Of course, England does not equal Africa, so I’m sure we will see many stark differences. 
Not much else on the adoption front, although there have been referrals in the past couple of weeks, which is pretty exciting stuff.