[KimOH]

Our 2001 adoption was completed in 6 months from application to homecoming. Our 2005 adoption took 14 months.

As others have mentioned, there are a lot of factors that can affect your timeframe (we likely would have been home a lot sooner except for the reaccreditation delays of 2004/2005. Something that is currently affecting families again.)

There are still people who are completing their adoptions in 9-12 months, and some who take much longer. Just from anecdotal evidence that I've seen, I think 12-18 months is probably average now.

As for the costs, it's hard to give a good estimate because so many things were are variable. There are a couple of things that can make your estimate change pretty wildly.
-- Authentication costs. Each document in your dossier has to be notarized and appostilled by your state. (Some states require certification on a county-level, too.) The cost of this can vary widely from state to state (anywhere from $5-$20 per doc, I think.) When you consider you'll likely have 60+ docs to authenticate, that difference can make for a wide range of costs: 60 docs @ $5/ea is $300, but 60 docs @ $20/ea is $1200,
-- Travel costs. Travel costs are (for the most part) outside the control of your agency and they can fluctuate wildly depending on the time of year you travel, how long the region requires you to stay, and what region you're going to. For instance, our hotel in our region in 2001 cost $42/night including breakfast. In Moscow in 2005 we paid $270/night, without breakfast.

As you're comparing agencies, look carefully (or ask questions) about whats included in your fees and what's extra. It's very difficult to compare apples-to-apples because different agencies include different things. (For instance, some agencies supply drivers/translators as part of the agency fee. Others ask you to pay them separately per day while in country.)

Oh -- about Siberia -- Russia is a country that spans two continents (Europe and Asia). Siberia is the general term used to describe the portion of Russia that is on the Asian continent which, according to land mass, is more than half the country. (For lack of a better analogy, it would be like saying "New England" or "the South" to describe parts of the US.) There are many different regions in Siberia and each of them run a little differently. Region-specific backlogs do happen, but I don't think it would be accurate to say "Siberian regions are faster." It all depends.