A preview of our trip

Here is a quick overview of what will happen during our trip...

When we travel, the trip will be about 2 weeks, start to finish. We plan to leave our children in IN with family during most of that time. We’ll travel in a group assembled by AWAA, leaving from Chicago on a Thursday. We’ll arrive in Beijing the next day, and allow our bodies several days to acclimate themselves to the time change. We’ll tour the Forbidden City, Great Wall, etc. and then divide into smaller groups that will go to the provinces of our children's’ orphanages. By the third day in China we will have our child (also known as “gotcha day”), and will spend several days doing paperwork to make her “officially ours” and touring the cities of the orphanages. Although it’s an unknown, we hope to receive permission to visit her orphanage, as well as the site at which she was left to be found. When the adoption paperwork is processed in the local province, we will have the paperwork completed using her American name, greatly simplifying things back here in the US. Once done, we then travel to Guangzhou. There at the US Consulate, she will go through picture taking, a physical exam, completion of her passport, and application for her visa into the US. Upon receipt of the visa and passport, we will return home to start a new paper chase to obtain her SSN, birth certificate in her American name, and ultimately citizenship. We expect to arrive back on Wednesday. We will then spend a few days acclimating to our time zone and recovering from jet lag.