I am sorry it has taken me so long to post - I have been under the weather with a bad head cold and so busy with Thanksgiving preparations and finalizing our paperwork. We had a lovely, quiet Thanksgiving at home with WAY too much food. Lots of leftovers to consume this weekend. We are so looking forward to having an additional place setting at our table next year!
Great news! Our state-authenticated I171-H copy came back to us from Richmond on Tuesday (although I had hoped to have it last Friday or Monday at the latest). I still was able to finish our document authentication in Washington DC on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This process entailed pulling numbers and waiting - first at the US State Department Authentication office and then at the Chinese Embassy's visa/authentication office (and paying all of the fees, of course). Thank you Shelli for all of your guidance on this process and the tip on where to park for the Chinese Embassy! There is no way I could have done this in one day without your help!!!! All of our documents now have the US Department of State seal and grommet attached and the Chinese Embassy's seal on the back, so they are now legitimate!
Waiting at the Chinese Embassy was a very interesting experience. A tiny little taste of what it will be like to travel in China, perhaps? It was very crowded - standing room only - and I had to wait for about 2 hours for my turn just to drop off my documents, then go have lunch and come back to wait for the pick-up time. I was one of a handful of non-Chinese people in the room. The television program running was also in Chinese - I think it was a tourism advertisment for China. I had forgotten my book in the car but didn't want to leave to go get it and lose my seat and have to come back through security. I tried to have a conversation with the woman next to me, but I was having a hard time understanding her English. She apologized and said her English was very bad. I assured her that her English was very good and was much better than my Chinese! Her 10 year old daughter, 'Sarah', helped act as our translator. I had pictures of Guo with me, as well as the Chinese characters for her name. I asked the woman to pronounce Guo's name for me and she said it differently than how we have been pronouncing it (she said it like 'Tsoo Gwah'). I kept repeating it back and she kept laughing and shaking her head 'no'. Finally, she smiled and clapped her hands after I said it - the only problem is, I have no idea what I said differently that time - it sounded exactly the same to me! Also, Guo lives in a Cantonese speaking province, so someone who speaks Mandarin or another dialect probably pronounces her name differently than the nannies that are taking care of her. I have no idea which dialect the lady next to me was speaking. We will just have to wait and hear it pronounced when we get there! There were a few other Americans - most looked like business people - at the office applying for their visas to visit China. I will be back to do that in a couple of months. There was one other adoptive mother, with her toddler son with her, who happened to have Down Syndrome. She had just received a referral for her daughter in China - after being logged into the non-special needs program for two and a half years! That makes my 6 month long paperchase for Guo seem like a piece of cake!
So, our completed dossier is safely tucked into a small FedEx box and is currently at the sorting facility in Portland, Oregon. It will be in our agency's hands on Monday morning. They will scan the documents and email them to their employee in Beijing who will complete the translation and then they will also ship it to her, hopefully all on Monday. By the time it arrives in China, I am told the translation will be complete and the translator will hand deliver the originals along with the translation to the China Center of Adoption Affairs in Beijing.
The CCAA will review our dossier and process the paperwork and if there are no questions, they will issue our LOA - Letter of Acceptance. This process takes anywhere from 60 - 100+ days. The two most recent special needs families at our agency to receive LOA waited about 65 days, so I am hopeful that will hold true for us as well. We hope to hear good news in early February (before everyone in China goes on a two week vacation for Chinese/Lunar New Year on February 7, 2008) and we hope to travel in March. We are cutting it quite close with our dates - if we miss the LOA window before the Chinese New Year, we may run into travel dates during the April trade show in Guangzhou, which would not be good - our travel dates could get pushed back to May in that case. March sounds so much better than April or May. Everyone pray for speedy LOA!
I am so relieved to have this portion of the process behind us. Now, we wait (and shop, and paint and decorate her bedroom, and assemble a crib, and toddler-proof the house...) Stay tuned!
