Saturday, October 27, 2012

We Are Getting Close to a Travel Date!

Our next big step in this process is called TA "travel approval" from Ch*na. We expect to receive TA at any time now. Usually TA comes between two and four weeks, so we will be in our second week on Tuesday, November 6. They have been coming quickly so we could receive TA this coming week. YIKES! We should be traveling by the middle of November. If there is a delay then it will be at the end of November. Our travel date, however, is contingent on when we receive our Consulate appointment. This we will receive after we receive TA. Anyone else confused? We do hope to be home with Mia and Anna by Christmas, but we will most likely miss Thanksgiving with our family. We will have to have our turkey for Christmas this year. We are also hoping to post while we are in Ch*na, but some families have had problems with this since Ch*na blocks internet activity. We will try and use a VPN and hope all goes well. Any advice for our trip would be greatly appreciated at this time!!

Thursday, October 18, 2012

One For The Books!

We have been waiting for what they call Article 5. This process usually takes two weeks with no exceptions. We had a representative from our agency drop off our paperwork at the US consulate in China on September 26. China had a holiday during the first week of October and all official offices were closed for 8 days. This delayed our Article 5 by a week. Our representative went to pick up our Article 5 and he was told that they did not have it ready yet. They needed to have the family (us) contact them directly because we were adopting two children at the same time. Just to give you a little background on what we received as directions when you get to this part of the process from our agency - it went like this: NOTICE: The US Consulate-Guangzhou advises that adoptive families should NOT call or email them to check on the status of the Article 5. Contacting the consulate may result in a significant delay or decline in issuing your paperwork. 
We asked our agency if this has ever happened before and she told us that she had never heard of it before. We also asked several other people who have adopted from China and they told us the same thing. Well I was urged by our agency to email the consulate and ask them what the delay of our paperwork is and what we can do to help. It is their Friday so we are hoping they respond with something positive. Just another bump in the road on our journey. Please continue to keep us in our prayers. We are still hoping to travel sometime in November (note to China: of this year).