Travel Approval!!

We received our travel approval (TA) today!! That's one step closer to traveling to China to pick up Hannah. Now our agency will request an appointment with the US Consulate in Guangzhou. Since this is primarily done over email, we should hear about the appointment within the next day or two. Once we have our appointment date, we'll have a much better idea of when we'll travel. The consulate appointment is usually the last thing we'll do, so whatever the date is, we'll actually travel about 2 weeks before then. We've been told that consulate dates are now in the first and second weeks of November, which means we could be traveling in late October.

We've been in touch with the two other families who received referrals from the same agency as ours. They have both adopted before, so we're really happy that we'll likely be traveling with families who have been through this already. Their daughters are also in Qianjiang.

We'll be using a travel agency called Chinasmith, who specializes in arrangements for families traveling to China to adopt. Here's a website that details a typical itinerary: http://www.chinasmith.com/adoption.htm --

We will keep you posted about our plans!!

Joe & Darese