Waiting for LID

Our letter of application had to be sent to Washington to be authenticated. Another detail we were not told about, but, has to be done. It was sent Fedex on Monday, so should already be through the certification and in the middle of the authentication, and on its way back to Small World the first of next week. Then, it all goes to China and we get our official Log In Date(LID), which means that our paperwork was officially received by the CCAA and is being processed in order along with all the other dossiers that have been sent.

Normally, the LID is about two weeks after it was sent, not because it necessarily takes that long to get there, but, that is how long it is typically taking for them to enter it in the log as having been received. We may not know this date for a month though, as China is notoriously slow in sending that or any kind of information. They just don't see the need to rush I guess.

Everyone that is currently waiting for LOA right now (Letter Of Approval which means we can proceed with the final paperwork to prepare to travel) is seeing a long wait, averaging 90 days. Some have gone as long at 117 days, and others, about 55 days, with the shortest wait being 28 days, no one understands how they got LOA so fast, and it was the only one so far to come that soon.

There was a rumor, probably pretty accurate, that the CCAA wasn't sending LOA's because of H1N1. They wanted to slow down the influx of foreigners for a bit, and it has actually helped with the outbreaks in their country. The families currently waiting are going a bit stir crazy though, and have been hearing that LOA's may come in this week for a lot of them. I hope things speed up, maybe getting the average down to about 40 days or so. If it stays as is, we won't see ours until the end of October, and with the remaining wait for a travel approval letter (TA) we won't travel until December, and we might miss her 5th birthday. I really don't want to miss another one, so, am praying for things to really speed up.