a few updates

We are in the middle of the annual court recess in Ethiopia, so not much news. Here are a few things:

• In the last few months, the Ethiopian government has shut down several orphanages. I've seen different estimates for the total number, but it's well into the double digits. This seems to be part of the effort to address concerns about international adoptions from Ethiopia.
• I have read multiple reports of the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa stepping up their investigations into children's orphan status. They are requesting more legal paperwork, re-interviewing relinquishing families and sending investigators into the field. Although this is positive, it still is being done at the wrong time - after the child is already legally adopted.
• Three families using our agency who received referrals only a few weeks before us have received court dates for late October/early November. We had been thinking we'll get a court date in January, but now we hope it might be earlier.
• In mid-October we'll be participating in a phone conference to prep us for our court date and first trip to Ethiopia.
• We have no updates on the boys. As far as we know they are still somewhere in or near Burji. We hope that they are fed, sheltered, being visited by family, being well taken care of... but we just don't know.

The new school year has started. So far it's going much better than last year.
And that's all for now.