She is Canadian

Once we landed in Vancouver, My became a Canadian citizen. We were on a small plane with just a few other people, we were spread out a bit. We were all ruined with exhaustion, My was still asleep. As we hit the run way, I took a huge cleansing breath, let the relief flood through my body, and the amazing feeling of knowing that we did it...we had brought our daughter home. We collected our rental car and made the last leg of the trip. We finally made it...my whole family was finally under one roof at home.

She didn't sleep

The flight left Hanoi at 12:30am; it was a 4 hour flight. My did not sleep a wink. This was not a good start to the journey. We arrived at the airport in Seoul in the morning (once the time change was factored in). We were so happy to have made it but we were all feeling a bit tender. The Seoul airport was strangely quiet, there were not many people. Many stores and restaurants were open but there were not many flights. We were thankful to only have a 5 hour lay over. Other flight options had 10 hour layovers.

THEN IT HAPPENED! THE TANTRUM HEARD AROUND THE WORLD

When we had flown with My to Da Nang, in the airport, we let her ride on the small luggage cart with our carry-on luggage. It was not the best and safest idea but it worked. In this airport, we had her new awesome stroller. Unfortunately, she wanted to ride with the carry on luggage. It really was not safe, so I pressed my point and offered her walking or the stroller....THEN BOOM.....SHE ERUPTED

She was in an absolute black rage in the airport. Her screams were absolutely visceral. The scooted on her butt across the ground to get away from all of us then started bucking. I was panicked that she would hit her head on the super hard floor with the full force of her body. I could not go near her or she would scream and scoot further. I was ready to attempt a home-run baseball slide to put my body under hers if she escalated further. I felt horrible for her having to live in her own skin in that moment. I knew that we had pushed her as far as she could go. She was sleep deprived, in a different country, she had been cooped up on a plane...and while she was a good sport about her new family, we sure were different

After about 10 minutes, she settled and allowed me to comfort her and carry her. At this point, she could ride on 2 luggage carts simultaneously if she wanted to. The goal was to avoid another melt down at all costs.

We boarded the Delta flight to Vancouver at around 1pm. The rows had 8 seats. Due to social distancing, every 2nd seat was empty, then due to low booking numbers, even more seats were available. We would be able to spread out. It was amazing! I love travelling to placed where I don't know the language, currency, food and customs. To be immersed in a setting that offers so much learning, is what my soul thrives on.... on this trip, I really learned the sweetness of familiarity. This came when the Delta Airlines captain announced in perfect english the details of the flight and that the flight crew was from Seattle. The plane felt like home, I didn't realized I needed home so much until then.

The flight crew learned our story quickly and they were simply amazing. We got settled, and waited for the kids to fall asleep. Natalie got airsick for hours and finally slept (with the help of a lot of gravol) and My was hyper vigilant, she did not sleep a wink....the whole flight.....10.5 hours. Steve and I passed her back and forth and kept a close eye on Natalie. We landed in Seattle, without incident.

By the end of the flight, My had been awake for about 21 hours.

Finally on the next flight, the 1 hour flight from Seattle to Vancouver, she could not stay awake any longer and sleep overtook her.

Seoul, South Korea

The flight from Hanoi, Vietnam to Seoul, Korea was about 4 hours. With the time change we arrived in the early morning. We had a 6 hour layover.

It was when we got home and unpacked, that we found those darn visa's....in our carry on luggage, tucked so far away as we were instructed to do. Phew, glad it all worked out without them.

We made it to the airport

After a mad rush to hail a ride and get out the door we made it to the airport at 10:10pm. We had 2 hours and 20 minutes before our flight departed. it seemed like we skidded in by the skin of our teeth but had a chance to make the flight. It would prove that getting on the flight would be like swimming up stream in a snow storm backwards.

First Challenge
When we got out The driver did not speak English, we are in a foreign country, we expect this. The hard part is that despite saying "Korea, Seoul", he took us to the domestic terminal. We found a kind English speaking lady who directed us to a shuttle bus to get to the international terminal. At this point, Steve and I were a little frazzled from the last couple of hours. We were carting 4 suitcases, 4 stuffed backpacks, 3 personal items, a tired 3 year old in a stroller who would whine and cry off and on. We made it to the shuttle pick up area...it was a ghost town. There weren't many people and no sign of a shuttle. Then a man yelled "electric cart to international terminal". I ran up, and negotiated a price for the ride. It was $6.00 USD for us and all of our stuff. I looked in my wallet....I only had large bills. I gave him my smallest bill $20USD and I said "go fast!". He smiled and showed his partner and were were off in the oversized gold cart. Our family is amazing together in times of stress. Second Challenge
We needed to check in for our flight and drop our luggage. The line up was about 150 people long. These were not all people for our flight, these were the people checking in for many flights....some of which didn't leave until 2am. There was no option with this crowd to plead our case and ask to move up in the line with the language barrier and palpable tension in the crowd. It was like a cage of rats, everyone calm enough by so careful to keep their space. Security was managing line jumpers.

After about 40 minutes in the line, you could see how hard it was on Natalie. She was thirsty and tired. She had carried her heavy back pack and personal item and helped in they ways she could. Piper was mad- she wanted to be at home still asleep. She started melting down. Think of a mad, raging,screaming child (she has an amazing set of lungs) that won't be comforted and fights against any one holding her. She just wanted to scream and run. Steve stepped away from the counter with her and held her so tight and rocked her quickly back and forth as Natalie and I finished up at the counter where they scrutinized our paperwork, at first told us we needed online health declarations completed for everyone. When we were in the line, we looked online for the requirements for health declaration but found nothing. Thankfully, after a few moments, she confirmed with her colleague that we didn't need them. Our bags were checked, the weights were just perfectly under the required amount. We were off to security. We didn't have much time but they said we would make it.

Third Challenge
We first had to have our visas,boarding passes and passports checked but the Vietnamese police before we could go through security. We presented our paperwork. We had the visa's with the correct exit date but had put away the first set of visas as instructed by the lady at the Vietnam Embassy in Vancouver. We actually lost track of them but presumed they were in the luggage somewhere. The police officer asked for our other visas that were stamped. We were asked to go to a separate kiosk to the side. We pulled apart all of our carry ons looking for the visas, no luck. We told the officer that we thought they must be in the checked luggage. The officer here said that we would need to go back to the counter (the one with the crazy long line) and get our luggage back and get the visas, then come back. Our flight was about 30 minutes from boarding. I told him that we would miss out flight and he apologized and said that there was nothing he could do about that. He then told us to wait. He got on the phone with someone. By this time, Natalie was done. She was sobbing uncontrollably. She just wanted to go home. Piper had settled by this point and was hugging Natalie trying to comfort her. All of our stuff was strewn about, we had not put our bags back together. It was looking like there was no way we were flying tonight. I remember thinking...should I quickly get online and cancel the flights so that we can get a refund.

About 15 minutes later, a couple of other officers were at the kiosk. I said to one of them. It looks like we won't make our flight. Should we continue to wait or arrange a ride home and find the visas? He told me to wait, we still had 10 minutes to get on the plane. This is when I realized that they were in communication with the plane and they had not instructed the airline to remove our luggage. In fact, it seemed like they were trying to work on the airlines timeline to find a resolution. At this point I said to the family, pack up everything, if it works out for us to take this flight, we are going to have to run if we get the "ok". We packed and were like sprinters at the start line.

A few minutes later, they passed us our paperwork and said "You can go".

Security screening staff expedited us through, on the other side of security was "Gate 30", our gate. The airline staff was waiting to check us in to the flight. We took our seats and we were off to South Korea.

I was numb, I didn't want to speak in case it would jinx it. I was overjoyed for Natalie. It would have been so hard for her to have to leave the airport. I was thankful beyond words. Thankful for the multitude of things that had to go right, and did. We had our 2 daughters and were headed home to Canada.

Lining up the ducks to come home

Just when I thought our journey to Vietnam was as interesting, stressful, exciting and impossible as it could get, our trip home falls into the same category!


A bit about immigration...
We had 2 options with respect to obtaining Canadian citizenship for My. One was to have her arrive as a "landed immigrant" and proceed with the immigration process. This can take a couple of years and the Canadian Immigration Canada's system is notoriously fraught with poor process and delays. This process does work, but it takes a long time. The other way is for her to become a Canadian citizen automatically upon landing in Canada. This is great...but there is a big caveat. With this type of citizenship, she can not pass her Canadian citizenship onto her children. For her children to become Canadian citizens, the father must be a Canadian and pass his citizenship or the children must be born in Canada and obtain Canadian citizenship this way. We chose the automatic citizenship route for both Natalie and Piper. It does seem like a second class type of citizenship. We did not made the decision lightly. Our thoughts are that a lot can change between adoption and the time they are ready to have children and, the likely hood of the father not being Canadian or the children not being born in Canada is low.

After the adoption, there were a couple more steps in the process before we could bring Piper home:
1) While we had applied a couple of years ago for citizenship for Piper, we had to complete the process. This entailed couriering a large package of paperwork to the Canadian High Commission in Singapore. The High Commission is responsible for finishing the processing of the file completing the immigration process and issuing the "Grant of Citizenship". This process is quick- usually 5-10 days but they can rush if they need to.
2)The High Commission notifies the Canadian Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam that the Grant of Citizenship is complete. This provides the authority that the Canadian embassy requires to print a temporary Canadian passport for the child. The passport has a white cover- rather than the usual black cover.

In order for the Canadian High Commission to begin working on the citizenship, one of the required criteria that we had to meet was that we planned to travel back to Canada "imminently". This criteria is satisfied with the travel itinerary from our flights home. We had to book a return flight (not one way) to be eligible for Vietnam visa's. So we booked return flights through the flight center. I wanted to have the name and personal contact rather than a call center or online third party travel booking company. We guessed at the return date, knowing we would need to change it at some point. In an earlier post, I told the story that when we booked this flight, we planned to leave Canada on March 22. A couple of days after booking, the global landscape was changing fast due to the spread of COVID-19. Borders were closing and flights were bring cancelled. At this time, we realized that if we had a chance of getting this adoption completed, we needed to leave ASAP. Steve went to flight center and we moved our departing flights up to March 14. We already had our Vietnam visitor visa's in hand, the entry date was March 22. We had planned to go through the "Visa on arrival" process at the airport after landing. The day before we were set to leave, Vietnam suspended the visa on arrival option. We worked closely with the Vietnam Embassy in Vancouver, and got so lucky to get last minute 1 month Visa's dated March 14th that would allow us into the country. We were told to put away these visa's once we landed and only use the ones we originally had. She said that having 2 visa's in hand makes thing complicated for us. We dutifully followed her instruction.

Shortly after we arrived in Vietnam, our return flight was cancelled. We no longer could prove imminent travel. We tried to work with Flight Center and it seemed easy peasy as we had a person to email that would provide all the help we needed- but then.....the emails stopped coming and we received no response from the two travel agents working on our file for 5 days. At home, companies were laying off staff and businesses were closing. We didn't know if Flight Center had been impacted. What we did know was that we needed to get new flights booked to get the paperwork moving, and they were radio silent. We could not wait for them. We then abandoned Flight Center and booked new flights through Flight Hub that departed June 4th. It was my least favorite option, but there were not a lot of flights and they had the best flights for us. We got extra cancellation insurance and forwarded the itinerary to the High Commission in Singapore so to trigger the processing of Piper's "Grant of Citizenship".

A few days later, 2 of the 3 flights in our trip were cancelled. We did not report the cancellation to the High Commission. We carried on as though we were travelling on June 4th. We realized that there was little point in booking more flights until we had the temporary passport in hand.

On June 1st, I checked with the Canadian Embassy in Hanoi on the progress of our file. The contact there said that she had not received notification from the High Commission in Singapore that Piper's Grant of Citizenship had been completed and that she was concerned as it was taking quite a long time. I asked her if she could check with Singapore. She told me that she would not be able to advocate for us. This surprised me as I saw it more as 2 arms of the Canadian government working through one process. We had already met the criteria for Piper to be granted citizenship, it was just the processing of the paperwork that was needed. I shook my head in disbelief, ready to follow up with the High Commission.

I called the front desk of the High Commission and learned quickly that the immigration section does not have a phone. They communicate through email only. I explained the challenge I was having and the kind lady gave me a few more email addresses to direct my request for urgent assistance to. Ultimately, I emailed 6 inboxes and then the magic happened. On June 4th, I received an email from the Canadian Embassy in Hanoi that she had received authorization to print the temporary passport and that it was ready. I left a few minutes later to pick it up; soon I had that precious white passport with her sweet little picture in my hands.

On the way to the embassy, I started looking for flights home...again. Up until then, there were two route options still open to get us home- through Tokyo or Seoul. On the morning on June 3rd, Japan announced that foreigners coming from many countries, including Vietnam would not be permitted to transit through Japan. This option dried up...we only had Seoul left. There was a thought that Seoul might follow suit.

I found great flights for a great price- it left June 5th at 00:30. While we loved our time in Vietnam and our dear friends there, given the anticipated uncertainty, it was time to come home.

Thinking we were leaving the following day just after midnight, we got a jump on packing. By 9pm we were 95% packed and looking forward to spending the following day with our friends. Then Steve said "Something is not adding up with the flight duration, layovers, time changes and departure time". This is when we realized......we were actually set to leave in 3.5 hours. The apartment we had lived in for 3 months was not clean, the fridge was full, the dishes were dirty....the airport was 35 minutes away and we didn't have a ride....we started moving really fast!

The quest for quiet activities....

Now that we have figured out the importance of keeping My’s energy and emotional level as even as we can because she is having such a hard time self regulating, the quest is on for quiet fun activities....

This one was a winner today....
She is so happy with her pretty nails.
Each day we know her, we understand her better and better. I sense that we can successfully declare sustained peace in the valley soon!

I KNOW......

The days are full of swinging from melt down to melt down with some happy bits between. Right now she is crying because Steve has gone down to the lobby to get out dinner order from the delivery guy. My doesn't know where he went, but I think she thinks he went to play outside at the playground without her. I explained that he went to get dinner but she has put on her shoes, and is beside me wailing "Di Choi Bo" which means she wants to go with Daddy and play outside. I am imagining Steve at the little playground in the dark and in the heat (it is about 36 degrees out there right now)- I can't help but snicker. She is however, convinced that this is where he is. She often does not accept any comfort, so I stay close and work my way to her as she will allow, until the big emotions pass. It is close to bedtime which adds another layer of melting down. I think I am getting used to the crying. She has a lot of emotion to work through and crying is so therapeutic. We all feel better after a good cry. In her happier moments, her English is coming along. One of the favorite things she says is "I know". She has no idea what she is saying which makes it hilarious. Of course we all repeat her and laugh which encourages her even more. Despite how well she is doing, we see the footprints of trauma from 3 years living in an institution are on her soul. It will take time and intervention when we return to Canada. For the meantime we have found success with a number of techniques. We keep her as close physically as she wants to be, provide lots of activities that celebrate her success, put her in the kitchen sink to play as water is therapeutic, we have a good bedtime routine and we keep her energy level as balanced as we can. It seems the higher her excitement during a game or activity, the harder she crashes shortly after. We have eliminated screen time completely in favor of more connective activities. All of these seem to be helping her as she finds her way and learns that we love her unconditionally forever. We have a long road ahead, but we will get there. I learned with Natalie a long time ago, a child's journey is their journey. In Vietnam, they believe in destiny. I know that I can walk beside my children, but I can not walk for them. We started this journey 3 years ago, and despite the miles, I have walked beside My everyday.