“For I know the plans I have for you…to give you hope and a future.”

With Great Joy We Introduce Our Newest Son Aaron Donald Walsh Ho

With Great Joy We Introduce Our Newest Son Aaron Donald Walsh Ho
Born January 17, 2007 Guangdong Province, The People's Republic of China Forever Ours April 12, 2010
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
Lilypie Waiting to Adopt tickers

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Have Visas, Will Travel...(Still don't know when!)



Well, we continue to await the arrival of our Travel Approval, so that we can book our flights and hotel rooms. In the meantime, last Tuesday our Passports were delivered back to us by Fed. Ex. with our Chinese Visas inside. We now officially have permission to enter China. I continue to be surprised and quite frustrated with how long every step seems to take for us, keeping in mind we are a family who submitted our dossier in March of 2008, our dossier had already been reviewed, and we had all the necessary updates, etc. Our Visas are just one more example. The Visa application indicates it takes 3-4 days to be processed. Because these must be hand-delivered to the Chinese Consulate, and since the nearest one is in NYC, we used a courier service that our agency recommended we use. Everyone else I know (think hundreds of online "friends") took 7-14 days to get theirs back. Ours...30 days. Now, I realize Chinese New Year may have impacted us by 5 working days, but still! We specifically overnighted our Passports and Visa applications to the courier service, on Feb. 8th (CNY was the 14th), so technically, there was plenty of time for them to be processed BEFORE CNY.
I realize once we have our son, Aaron, in our arms, none of the individual frustrations during this time of waiting will matter at all anymore - just as my 3 months of bedrest waiting for Donovan now seem like no big deal (though they did at the time!). However, as we continue to wait for our Travel Approval (and have been packed and ready to go for over two weeks now,) these little things that are keeping us from our son...and keeping our son in an orphanage in China, are really on my mind.
Hoping our Travel Approval will come this week!

2 comments:

  1. Hi I just wanted to leave a note to introduce ourselves. We are Dart and Lori Printy from Ohio and we are also waiting on our TA. We are with GWCA adopting a 3.5 girl in guizhou. I think our Visa's should be back today!

    Your son is adorable..I have a January 17th son too:)

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  2. Lori - Hello! Are you an I600 or I800 family? We are a 600 family, and just so frustrated that our LOA took two months and now the TA has already been a month.
    Although we found our son on GWCA's agency list, we are not with GWCA, as CCAA transferred his file to the agency we were LID with, CAWLI.
    Did you find your daughter on the shared list or GWCA's list? Do you have a blog? Best wishes for a speedy TA for you!
    Nicole

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