Gaining Momentum

At last, things seem to be going a little bit quicker with this adoption process. Wednesday afternoon (11/9/2011) we received an email telling us that the U.S. Government had approved our application to adopt Jiang Zhen (we already had permission to adopt "in general", and now we have permission to adopt this specific child). We will be receiving the paper approval notification in the mail in a few days, and the agency giving us permission to adopt (USCIS) will be sending the necessary information to the other agencies responsible for getting us an appointment at the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, where we will get a visa for Jiang Zhen to travel with us back to the States. Once we have the appointment set up, the Chinese government will issue approval for us to travel to China and we will start making travel plans. Our best guess at this point is that we will get travel approval about a month from now. So, we could be back in China as early as January (we'd love to make the trip over Christmas break, but it's not very likely everything will fall into place THAT soon). Chinese New Year is January 23 this coming year and since so many Chinese travel to visit their families at that time, getting flights to China and in China around then would be very difficult and more expensive. If we can't get things arranged by early January, we will probably have to wait until mid-February. But either way, it's not really all that far off at this point.

Because we have official approval to adopt Jiang Zhen now, we are able to send things to her. Yesterday a small box containing a teddy bear, a "Hello, Kitty" hairbrush, some hair ribbons, some chocolates from a local candy store, and (most importantly) a small album containing pictures of her new family started it's trip to the Jiamusi Children's Welfare Institute. The box is supposed to get there on 11/16/2011, so hopefully Zhen will know at that point that we are coming to get her soon (if she hasn't been told already).

We still have a lot to do to get ready, but at least now it feels like we are moving forward and that will give us the incentive we need to get those things done.