Last Week, Brought to us by the Letter A (as in A5)

I received another great email last week regarding our adoption and we marked off another next step towards finalizing the paperwork!

We received an email from the US Consulate’s office in Guangzhou, China that the paperwork for our daughter’s visa had been provisionally approved and we had been granted our Article 5 (A5).  The next step is for all of our paperwork to be returned back to Beijing for a final look before China will issue our Travel Approval (TA).  

Once we have received our TA, we can make appointments with Nanjing and Guangzhou.  In Nanjing, which is a two-hour drive from Suzhou, we will take legal custody of our daughter and that will finalize everything with the Chinese government.  Then, we we go to Guangzhou and we will meet with the US Consulate’s office to wrap up everything she needs to immigrate to the US to become a citizen.

As we’re nearing the end of the paperwork on this side of the world (we’ll still have to apply for her US passport, complete follow-up adoption reports, etc.), I have started to think about how far we have come.  In 2010, on a spring evening, after Jamie and I had made the decision to adopt from China, we talked about whether or not we would take our other daughters to travel with us to China.  We decided to wait and see how old our girls would be at the time of travel and look at the cost of the trip and then decide.  What an amazing gift it is to know that we will travel as a family of 5 this spring!  It is a short drive to Nanjing and a quick flight to Guangzhou from our home in Suzhou and the “would-we, should-we, can-we?” has been already answered for us.

On a much, much sillier note, I was really excited to get a packet in the mail last week.  For a moment my heart started beating fast and I thought “oh my goodness” China mailed our adoption paperwork to our home (instead of to our agency in the US)!  This had happened to our friends and I couldn’t think of anything else that would be coming through the Chinese mail that I would require a signature.  Alas, I was wrong, and instead I signed for this...

My Starbucks gold card!  Until I moved to China I could count the number of times that I had been to Starbuck’s on two hands and I now I have the “Gold” card.  I am not sure if I should be embarrassed or proud, especially since I don’t drink (straight) coffee!