Xin Nian kuai Le!!

Which means "Happy New Year!" in Chinese. The year of the Pig begins today... Think Anna will be a Pig? :D

I read the rumours way too much, looking for a speck of light to suggest the wait may decrease. Course when I see such a speck, my hopes soar and then I kick myself for reading and hoping. So the most reacent one: There was a suggestion that the wait will stabilize and maybe even start to decrease as of May 1, 2007. At first glance it didn't make sense - why then? Starting May 1st, the rules for eligibilty change - they've applied limits to finances, parents weight and age, medical conditions, etc. That will undoubtedly decrease the number of applications logged in after May 1, which may act to decrease the wait for those new applicants, but it doens't change the number of clients ahead of us... but a poster suggested the following:

... just maybe the CCAA can speed up a little. We have all been told they are working to get more babies in the system and ... they have intentionally slowed down over the last year and a half. If they had started to speed up before the new rules go into place the line and back log of families would just continue to get worse. However, if they show some speed up after May 1, 2007 they have no fear of the line continuing to grow out of control because the new rules will prevent many people from being eligible. So starting with May of 2007, they could release more babies each month, stablilize the program and avoid a 2 year wait.

another poster agreed with:

They can speed up and slow down at will. We know there are babies, just not paper ready babies.........I know they have to have a plan.....how could they continue with this backlog and still function? They are now at the longest wait times ever, am I correct??? That has to be bothering some official over there.......

Translation: There are hundreds if not thousands of babies in orphanages in China. Not all of them are made eligible for internatonal adoption. I'm not sure what or who exactly decides which babies are put up for IA and which are not, but I DO know that there are many more children without families than the number entered into the IA process. The process in China is quite secretive in ways, and the CCAA take pride in doing it "Their way" and not entirely letting us know what "Their way" even is. Since early spring 2006, the wait has increased from six months to the current wait of 16-17 months from LID to referral, and there is no concrete sign that it will improve. Each month a month of families are logged in, while on average two weeks worth of families are matched to children - easy math says the overall number of waiting families is increasing at an incredible rate. In China, "saving face" and appearance is important... there are those in the IA community that suggest the officials in the CCAA do not want the programme to lengthen indefinitely... Bottom line, what those posters were suggesting is they stay "status quo" for now, until May 1, when the number of applicants will be reduced by the new rules, then start matching MORE children per month to equal the number of applicants and stabilize the wait. Interesting thoughts.

I don't know which is worse, not reading and not knowing ANYTHING, or reading possibilities and knowing a lot of stuff, but not knowing which, if any of it, is true.

N