On Thursday (11/17/11), we received an email from the National Visa Center (NVC - a branch of the U.S. State Department) that the paperwork which had been forwarded from the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS)several days earlier had been approved. Included with the email was a "pdf" file of their approval letter. The NVC also sent a copy of their approval to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, where we will eventually get a visa for our new daughter to enter this country with us when we return from China. We forwarded a copy of the letter to our adoption agency and they will send it (and some of the other paperwork we completed earlier) to their representative in China. All of this paper shuffling has two "goals". In the next 3-4 weeks (hopefully), we will get an appointment date for the U.S. Consulate and we will get official approval from China to travel there. And once we have travel approval, our agency can start making our travel arrangements. (We'd like to think that we will be back in China in early January, but nothing about this adoption process has been like those we have experienced in the past, so we will see.)
We also received an update on Jiang Zhen, which included some new measurements. According to the new numbers we were given, she is about 54 inches tall (seems about right) and weighs 120 pounds (not even remotely possible!!!). Our other 13 year old daughter has a very similar body habitus and she is 60 inches tall and weighs 80 pounds! We've asked our agency to try and get a corrected set of numbers, but if they are not able to do so, it's going to be interesting trying to decide what size clothes to take with us for our new daughter.
It feels like it has taken a long time to get to this point in this adoption, but we are gradually shifting from the "gosh this is taking forever" mindset to the "how in the world are we ever going to get everything we need to do done?" panic. And all we can say is "it's about time!"
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