Wait?? What?? What does that mean?? LOA?

It’s an early Christmas Present!

Every time I see the initials LOA it makes me think of Leave of Absence. In this case, it means Letter of Acceptance. Our LOA was received in the United States and was sent via FedEx on Monday to our home address. It took about 70 days instead of the usual 100.

What does this mean?

1. Ariana is officially ours in the eyes of the Chinese Government.
2. The timeline has changed.
3. Serious panic is setting in!

We will be signing the letter and returning it to our adoption agency today/tomorrow. There are 3 other families that have received their letters as well. Once all the signatures are collected they will be sent in a batch back China.

In China, they will schedule appointments with the consulate and other agencies. These are fixed appointment dates and will determine when we travel.

We will be working on our travel visas. The visas need to be completed and state where we plan to be traveling (but not exact dates). The visas and paperwork have to be couriered (delivered by hand) to the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco or Washington DC, and then be picked up (by hand) and returned to us. This process will determine the earliest we can travel.

Typically this means we could be traveling in as few as 4 weeks, and as long as 8 weeks. It is totally outside of our control.

We expect to be in china from 14-21 days.

Once we know our appointment dates we will need to by plane tickets and do some serious packing. You are pretty much allowed 1 carry-on and one checked baggage per person. That’s not much space for the length of the stay and needing to provide everything for a young child.

We are still in a bit of a panic (the wife says I need to emphasize this more) with the revised timeline but trust we will make it through this process by the help of others. Depending on the moment we are hoping for a 4 week turnaround, and then in the next moment longer.

Stay tuned as we learn more.