And we wait!

You would think I have this down by now. We officially received TA (travel approval) on Friday from China and are now awaiting news of our Consulate Appointment with the Embassy in Guangzhou. Once we have the appointment our agency will then inform us that it's time to purchase our international tickets to get from US to China.

Some of you have asked, "why go private on your travel blog?"

Our agency received 20 referrals in the batch that ours came in, and all 20 of those families together received TA at the same time. The requesting of the Consulate appointments during this time of year get a little sticky as there is an official holiday the September 12-14th in China and a festival that happens September 28th - October 5th. When we received our referral we were told then that we would travel either in the 4th week (Sometime the week of September 8-12) or the 7th week (very end of September-first part of October). The option to travel either the 5th or 6th week was not listed because of these holidays/festivals during the month.


Now, I like to think of us as special and for this we really are! Our immigration approval to bring Abigail into the U.S. expires on October 12, 2008, which means we have to be back in the United States with her before that date. That makes things a little tricky what with the holidays/festivals that are going on. So, basically what our agency has told us is that we will be going to China (within the necessary time-line) even if it means that we will travel without the rest of the 20 families who received referrals. So think about it, we get travel dates to go get our baby and all the other families have to wait an additional 2-3 weeks - doesn't make for happy "blogging" friends - thus the need to go private on the blog, as we've been recommended to keep this information to ourselves (well and all of you I guess, so shhhh - help us keep this one under wraps).

So with that said, we expect to hear something this week that will tell us when our travel dates are. We'll keep you posted.

P.s. Packing is coming along!