Today we met with our entire group at Wide Horizons (our adoption agency) at their headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. There will be nineteen babies coming home with our group which is now called "China 141". Seven babies are from Kylie's orpahange in Xuwen!
Before the meeting started, we all shared photos of our babies. It was so fun seeing all the babies from Xuwen. We all remarked how healthy they all seemed. I think we are very lucky.
It was a wonderfully informative session explaining the various steps that must now occur for our travel to take place by the end of July. Everyone is still hopeful that we will make it before the Olympics, but we must all work with due diligence to complete our necessary paperwork in a timely manner to keep the plans on track.
Our first step will be to get an "invitation to travel" from China once all of our acceptance papers are sent to China and approved. Then, our next step will be to get our travel visas approved/issued by the Chinese Consulate here in the US. This may be a sticky area as the Chinese government may suddenly "close" travel visas prior to the Olympics. However, we arel going to move full-steam ahead with our fingers crossed and hoping for the best. Our agency is really focused and as anxious as we are for this to happen as soon as humanly/politically possible.
Once all that occurs, we will receive an immigration appointment in China. When we have that date, our agency can then plan our trip around this date and begin our travel details. Our agency is hopeful that we will travel sometime within the last three weeks of July.
We did receive some other good news. Originally, our province was going to require us to spend an extra 5 days in Guangdong. This would have made the trip approx. 3 weeks. Today they told us that we have received permission to lessen that extra waiting period to one day so we will be coming home sooner!! We are thinking our total trip will be around 14-16 days. Maggie, Miya, and Oreo are very happy about that!
We also met a gentleman who will be travelling with us as one of our escorts. He is a pediatrician who has travelled to China with 22 groups! He will be there for us and our babies should any medical issues arise. It is comforting to know he will be with us and available to us and our baby.
Well, that's it for today. We are falling more in love with our beautiful little girl every day!
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