Baby Steps

In my first post on this blog, I compared adoption to a marathon. It certainly has been! I thought that sending our dossier to China would mean the end of paperchasing. On the contrary, that paperwork was just training for the REAL paperchase that was to come. After an adoptive family received the Letter of Acceptance from China, there are basically 4 steps that must take place before travel.

1-Immigration Provisional Approval ~ @ 3 weeks
2-Immigration Processing through the National Visa Center ~ @ 1 week
3-Issuing of "Article 5" by US Consulate in Guangzhou ~ @ 2 weeks
4-Issue of Travel Approval by China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) ~ 2-4 weeks

We are waiting on step #3. Our paperwork is being hand-delivered to the US Consulate today. We expect our Article 5 to be issued on August 12. This puts us on track for a Travel approval, hopefully, by the end of August. Once the TA is issued, we will request a consulate appointment in Guangzhou. We will leave approximately 14 days before this appointment, because it falls at the end of the trip. But, the entire trip is contingent upon the scheduling of that one appointment.

Our timeline gets a little hairy here. All of China shuts down Sept 23-25 for the Moon Festival. (I would LOVE to be there for this!), and also Oct 1-7 for another holiday, National Day...which seems to last an entire week. So...to be frank...please pray for speedy processing so that we won't have to wait until mid-October to travel! We're almost there, baby girl!