Consulate Appointment

Has been scheduled for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, September 7. Working to figure out what that means in terms of "get there" and "leave by" dates for flights.

Travel Approval!

Our travel approval arrived last night. It only took 1.5 weeks; the first thing to go fast since the surprise referral! Our agency will be working on consulate appointments this week, and then we can schedule our travel (likely end of August-early September).

Funny thing, I finally sat down to start the packing list for China this morning...

Article 5!

After some agency nagging and fingernail chewing, we finally heard that our Article 5 has been picked up from the Consulate. It's theoretically supposed to take 2 weeks; it's been a month. At least we have it. It tells China that if they let us pick up Jed, the U.S. will let us bring him home.

Now the Article 5 gets sent to the main adoption office in China. They do whatever they need to do with it, including doublechecking that Jed is still in the orphanage and ready to be adopted. Then they give us Travel Approval, which is running approximately a month after Article 5. Then we schedule a Consulate Appointment in consultation with our agency, and then we will go to China! We're probably still at least 2 months away, but one more step down. I'm starting to collect things we'll need to pack.