FINALLY

Once we agreed to adopt Olivia, we had to send China a Letter of Intent (LOI) stating our plans. It's been almost a month now since we first got her picture on Nov. 20 (my Mom's B-day!) and I mailed our letter to our agency shortly thereafter. I knew it had to be translated before being going to China, but I'd hoped it had long been sent... However, our agency informed me today that our letter should be going out TODAY, Dec. 18, along with four others. While I'm glad it's FINALLY on it's way to China, I'm disappointed that it didn't go out weeks ago. I didn't realize that step was going to take soooo long. But then again, nothing with adoption is quick or easy!

I'm mostly disappointed because this means China has no idea yet that Rong Fu Tan is spoken for and our countdown hasn't even started yet :( According to those who have been there done that, I'm expecting it take 30-60 days from today to get our Travel Approval (TA) which will invite us to China. That means we should get our TA sometime between Jan 18th and Feb 18th. Once we have our TA, we can begin to set up appointments in China and book our flights. Assuming we'll need a few weeks notice between getting our TA and take off, it now looks like we probably won't be traveling until February or (early?) March.

Our travel may be further complicated by Chinese New Year, the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. The 2007 new year begins February 18th and the festivities continue for 15 days. I know government offices shut down for at least part of this time, so we may be advised to avoid travel during that time.

The bright side of this is that we will have plenty of time to recover from our 10-day Christmas trip to Florida before having to hop on another plane!