May 5 Status Update

I realized that although I have posted information about our adoption process, I have not posted any information about where we are in the process.

On Friday I was very relieved to pick up our passports from the Chinese Consulate in Washington with our visas.  I had been concerned since when Stacey dropped off the application we were asked for some additional information about my work, so I did not know if there would be some delay in issuing the visa.  There was some delay, but we received the visas in two weeks rather than the normal four days.

On a side note, the Chinese visa is really beautiful.  It fills a full passport page and has an image of the Great Wall.  I guess it was especially beautiful to see it since I had been stressed about it and it signified another step forward in the process.

I will leave out many bureaucratic details for the moment, but we have paperwork which is now making its way through the Chinese system and when it gets final approval we should be notified of when we can make an appointment at the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou.  Once we have that, we will know when we will be traveling to China.  We have been told that notification should arrive between 5/1 and 5/15, so we are in the period now when we should hear.  Once that is finalized, it will be a matter of a few weeks before we get on a plane.