It's unofficially official: we are going to China June 20 through July 3. Our guide for the process, Sabrina Chang, emailed us yesterday to give us the good news. The dates are tentative until we receive our travel approval, but once we do, Sabrina will make our appointment with the American Consulate in Guangzhou (Canton). That's the final step in getting little Katie's passport and visa so she can enter the U.S. with us as our daughter (and a U.S. citizen).
From that date, we work backward about 2 weeks so we can get all the paperwork done before the Consulate appointment, and that's what we'll be spending most mornings working on while in China. We will fly to Guangzhou initially, then travel to the capital of the province that Katie was born in. She was born in Beiliu City, in Guangxi province, so it looks like we'll spend a week or so in NanNing, the capital of Guangxi province. There we will take care of all of theChinese government paperwork to complete the adoption.
Then we will travel back to Guangzhou for another week to complete the U.S. paperwork leading up to the Consulate appointment. After waiting a day or so for the Consulate to make a passport and visa for Katie, we will be on the plane back to the States.
We thought about taking a few extra days to tour Beijing, but with all the hoopla surrounding the upcoming Olympics, we decided not to. Maybe we're wrong, but it seems like the hassle factor will be too great. We do plan to return at some point in the future with Katie and explore Beijing and Guangxi province in much greater depth. For now, we are totally focused on our daughter, as we should be.
We keep telling the dogs "you have no idea how much your life is about to change", but I suspect it's really a subconscious way of telling ourselves the same thing. I think it will be a pleasant, if hectic, change for all involved. More to come...
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