Homestudy addendum is done

The homestudy addendum addressing Mindy turning 18 arrived via Fedex this afternoon, and I turned it right around and sent it to immigration in Texas via overnight Fedex. I am really hoping that this means our paperwork will be checked over, forwarded to the Chicago office, and then, logged into their system by next week some time. After that, the immigration officer assigned to our case will go through it, approve it, and then let us know that it was approved, which I am praying will be by the end of next week. Then he will send a cable to the consulate in Guangzhou letting them know we are approved for a Visa for Holly.

When that cable arrives, Lily with Small World will go to the consulate and pick up a form known as the article 5, and take it, along with our signed LOA, to Beijing to the CCAA. They will then go through whatever process they go through to issue us our travel approval letter (TA).

It is currently taking anywhere from two to four weeks for TA's to come in, so, we are looking at after Christmas before we hear anything from them. Probably more like January.

Once we have TA, our agency will make our appointment with the US consulate in Guangzhou China. Our travel is planned backwards from that appointment, so, when we know what day that will be, we will plan travel for about a week before. We will travel probably on a Friday from Salt Lake to Wuhan, arriving, based on time changes, on Sunday, and probably receive Holly that evening. She will come back to our hotel with us, and in the morning on Monday we will complete the adoption paperwork for the China side of the process. They will then prepare her passport which will take til thursday or friday before it is done. In the meantime, while we wait for her passport, we will spend time seeing her province, and getting to know each other. On Friday or Saturday we will travel to Guangzhou, which is a warm, tropical place much like Florida, to complete the US side of the process.

Holly will have a medical checkup, a TB test, and have all of her immunizations, yes I said all, that she would have had to age 5. She will have a picture taken for her Visa documents. Our guide will take all of these documents along with a stack of paperwork we will complete there, to the consulate on that Monday or Tuesday, and we will wait in our hotel room until she calls to tell us all is well, or that we have to take care of something for all to be well. Normally there isn't a problem.

Then, the next day, we go to the consulate with Holly to have her declared a citizen, basically, and then we are free to travel to the US. We will either leave that evening or the next day for home.