Angelina Jolie arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday, in the company of her son Maddox, to adopt a boy from Vietnam.

Though the Associated Press reports that the actress is picking up her 4-year-old son this weekend, sources say that she might collect her new child as soon as tonight.

Jolie is scheduled to attend an adoption ceremony with Vietnamese officials in HMC City on Thursday morning, the officials told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about the matter.

After she receives the child, Jolie will meet with U.S. consular officials, who must review the adoption before a passport can be issued for the boy.
If all goes according to plan, the 31-year-old actress could bring the child home by the weekend, officials told the AP.

The boy has been living at the Tam Binh orphanage on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City since he was abandoned at a hospital as an infant, according to adoption officials.

Shortly after he arrived at the orphanage, the Tam Binh staff tried unsuccessfully to locate the boy’s birth parents.

The boy is healthy, friendly and a little bit shy, they said. He gets along well with other children and loves to play soccer.

The swiftness of the adoption comes as somewhat of a surprise, as earlier this week Vu Duc Long, Head of the Bureau of International Adopted Children, said that Jolie wouldn’t receive the official notice which allows her to claim the child until next month, and therefore couldn’t take the child home until April.

However, Long has admitted that Jolie’s adoption case is being processed more quickly than most because “a celebrated person is certainly treated a little bit different from others.”

Jolie filed adoption papers as a single parent, because she and partner Brad Pitt, 43, are not married.

The couple have three children: 5-year-old Maddox, adopted from Cambodia; 2-year-old Zahara, adopted from Ethiopia; and daughter, Shiloh, who was born to the couple in May.

Source

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