We Have Our Itinerary

We have our trip itinerary. We leave July 13th and arrive in Beijing on July 14th. We will visit the Great Wall and Forbidden City on the 15th. July 16th is Gotcha Day. In adoption terms this is the day when we receive Kristy and she becomes part of our family. You can follow our trip from our travel blog. Just click the Trip to China to Bring Kristy Home link above. It has our full itinerary already posted.

We Have Travel Dates!!

The girls passports arrived yesterday after about 50 calls to the state department and a little help from our US House Representative's office (Joe Wilson). All of our passports are now in New York to get our Chinese visas. Our travel dates are as follows:

July 13 - Columbia to Chicago
July 13 - Chicago to Beijing (we arrive at 3 pm July 14th Beijing time, 3 am US time)
July 27 - Hong Kong to Chicago (Kristy will be a US citizen after going through customs)
July 28 - Chicago to Columbia

Our agency is working on getting the complete travel schedule and appointments completed. I will update the blog when those dates are firmed up.

We Have Our Travel Approval

We received our travel approval today. We don't have firm travel dates yet. Our case manager is trying to arrange it so that we can leave on July 14th but we will have to wait until we get our US consulate appointment in Guangzhou.

Kristy Got Our Package!

We sent a care package to Kristy through USPS and she received it yesterday according to the tracking tool on USPS' website. It had a small purple care bear, two one use cameras, a package of fruit twizzlers to share with her friends, a photo album of us, and a letter (translated into Chinese by our good friend Lucia) telling the nannies about our family. The orphanage has a good reputation of preparing the children for their transition into their new families so the photo album will help. We are spending the weekend getting things ready in the house and preparing for our trip. We are still waiting for the girls passports. It has already been 14 weeks since we applied.

The China Stork Has Arrived!

Our Letter of Acceptance arrived from China today. Our case manager has overnighted it to us and we will receive it tomorrow. We have to sign it saying we are accepting Shan Le Jiao for adoption (duh). Our agency will send it to China and 2 to 3 weeks later we will receive travel approval. Once we receive travel approval our agency will arrange our travel for 4 weeks after receiving the travel approval. This will put us in China in late July or early August. The picture is of the UPS man delivering our Letter of Acceptance.