What do America, Australia, Japan, and Guatemala have in common?

What do America, Australia, Japan, and Guatemala have in common? These are all the places Clinton's precious birth certificate has to travel in order to bring home Baby Ella. We have to get all of our certificates (i.e. birth, marriage, divorce,etc...) both great sealed and authenticated. Here in America we order the certificates from the issuing state. We then mail the certificates to the state department where they were issued to get a "Great Seal". After I receive them back I send them to the Guatemalan Consulates office in CA where they are authenticated. At this point they are ready to be submitted as part of the dossier. In Australia it is a different story. I still have yet to find out exactly what to do - but I am on the right track. I have been leaving messages and e-mailing the Guatemalan Consulate in Australia for a couple of weeks with no response. I have been unsure what to do with the documents. I ordered the documents from Australia and had them sent to my mother - in- laws house in Melbourne. She is keeping them safe. I finally reached the consulate this evening. He let me know ( through very bad reception I might add) that he is just an honorary consulate i.e. he is unable to authenticate any documents.Australia has no Guatemalan embassy. Japan has jurisdiction over Australia. He gave me the contact info for the embassy in Japan. (I wasn't sure if I was going to be speaking to someone who spoke english, japanese, or Spanish - LOL). I called Japan. I spoke to a nice Japanese lady who spoke o.k. english. However, she said all questions had to be submitted via e-mail. I just sent an e-mail and am awaiting a reply. I have a feeling what has to happen is this - Helen will send the documents to the state department to receive an apostille ( I don't think Aus issues great seals). I think the documents then have to go to the embassy in Japan to get authenticated. They will then be sent to me (I just pray the documents arrive to me safely! ) where I will send them as part of our dossier to our adoption agency and they in turn will send the documents to Guatemala. WOW! Just writing about it makes me tired!!!

The more positive news today is that we received our Contract from our adoption agency . We just have to send it back to them with a check and we will be closer to getting a referral. ( of course we will not receive our referral until our dossier is complete and we get our I-171 ). We have our second appointment for our homestudy on Wednesday. This time she will be interviewing Clinton and I seperately. This is not nearly as nerve wracking as the first visit. I am sure all will go smoothly. The details have yet to be ironed out for the classes we have to take in order for them to complete the homestudy. The first date they had available in Feb. wouldn't work because Clinto will be in England. We are seeing if we can get special permission to do a home study course instead. Honestly, even if we get permission to do the home study course I would still like to take the "real" course sometime. The more I learn about international adoption the more fascinated I become. I am learning so much every day! That's all for now. I have to check my e-mail to see if I have a reply.