{"id":269,"date":"2010-04-23T03:07:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T08:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/?p=269"},"modified":"2010-05-07T03:05:51","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T08:05:51","slug":"budapest-day-ii-the-great-market-hall-and-us-embassy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/budapest-day-ii-the-great-market-hall-and-us-embassy\/","title":{"rendered":"Budapest Day II, The Great Market Hall and US Embassy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have so much information about the child welfare system here. I have been privileged to meet officials and key personnel here for the past two days.<\/p>\n

The day started with Adam treating me to a little “breakfast” at the Great Market Hall in Budapest<\/a>.\u00a0 The great market hall is near the US Embassy on the Pest side of Liberty Bridge.\u00a0 It would be a great place to spend an afternoon.\u00a0\u00a0 I was sorry that I didn’t have more time there!\u00a0 I had scaled down my camera so I didn’t take my big one as I didn’t want to have to check it at the Embassy.\u00a0\u00a0 Sorry that I did because the photo ops in the market were phenomenal.<\/p>\n

\"Paprika\"<\/a> \"Hungarian<\/a> \"IMG_0582\"<\/a> \"IMG_0581\"<\/a> \"IMG_0580\"<\/a> \"Vendor<\/a><\/p>\n

I will start with my meeting today and then go on to tell you the rest of my appointments in other posts. Today first I went to the US Embassy and met with the Consular Officer for the US Department of State, Erik Schnotala. He was very gracious and kind. I appreciated the time given to me by these officers as I know their time is precious.\u00a0 I enjoyed meeting him and his lovely assistant very much.<\/p>\n

We were led to an official conference room.\u00a0\u00a0 I felt like a VIP there!\u00a0 Something funny happened during the meeting, it seems that Officer Schnotala and I know mutual people.\u00a0 He recognized this from my business card.<\/p>\n

I introduced myself and then told him a bit about Little Miracles and informed them that we had been accredited by Hungarian officials to place orphan children with adoptive families.\u00a0 I had traveled to meet them and let them get to know our agency and our intentions.\u00a0\u00a0 I feel this is an important part of this small program we will undertake in Hungary.<\/p>\n

Judit Sebestyen, immigrant visa assistant, is the officer that processes the I800 approvals and paperwork for the adoptive families exit visa interviews and issues the visas to the adoptive families at the end of their stay in Hungary.\u00a0 She has worked with immigration visa process for the last seven years in Hungary.<\/p>\n

I appreciated Ms. Sebestyen’s candor with me and her concerns were the same as we always have in my work, post adoption reports.\u00a0\u00a0 It seems there was a scandal recently of a family that did not turn in their reports to the child protection in Hungary and there had been some issues with the placement of the child.\u00a0 This concerned the Hungarian government.\u00a0 With the recent news of the Russian adoptive mom returning her child to Russia,\u00a0 first and foremost the embassy officials in Budapest related the extreme importance of the post adoption reports on the children being adopted.\u00a0 Hungary is very worried about this Russian Adoption case as are the other countries. \u00a0 Post adoption reports can make or break this program. \u00a0 This was relayed to me not in these words but the inference was there.<\/p>\n

I asked Ms. Sebestyen about the processing time for the visas.\u00a0\u00a0 It usually will take 2-3 days to get the initial exit visa interview.\u00a0\u00a0 Once the appointment has been conducted in the morning, if there is only one child that is being adopted, Ms. Sebestyen can usually get the visa ready by the afternoon.\u00a0 She was very candid in telling me that it might not always be possible to do this, and that some cases could extend to the next day, and always if there was more than one child visa being issued.<\/p>\n

Officer Schnotala apologized for the US State Department not having any adoption information about Hungary on the US State Department website and thought this might have deterred families from adoption.\u00a0 They are working on getting information up on the site.<\/p>\n

Of course the Embassy here, like all others is a bit formal and daunting and security is high always.\u00a0 You will have your bags inspected and must check your cell phones and cameras at the door.\u00a0 Please do not attempt to take any photographs at the US Embassy for your memories or your adoptive child’s lifebook or you could be detained and questioned.\u00a0\u00a0 Not worth that shot!\u00a0 For your viewing pleasure I found this photo of the US Embassy in Budapest.<\/a><\/p>\n

I would think that living here in Budapest would be a fabulous post for a consular officer.\u00a0 What a wonderful city to be assigned to!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have so much information about the child welfare system here. I have been privileged to meet officials and key personnel here for the past two days. The day started with Adam treating me to a little “breakfast” at the Great Market Hall in Budapest.\u00a0 The great market hall is near the US Embassy on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9,133,136,137,8,135,134,132],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-budapest","tag-erik-schnotala","tag-exit-visa-interview","tag-hungarian-adoption","tag-hungary","tag-immigrant-visa-process","tag-orphan-immigrant-visa","tag-us-embassy-budapest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}