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Blog Title Translation

Oops! It's been brought to my attention that I never explained the title of this blog. "Mei Mei" is "little sister" in Chinese. Mason will be a "gu-gu" (big brother).

Here is a lesson for you :)
"Wo ai wo de jia" means "I love my family" To ennunciate, it sounds more like, "whoa I whoa de gea." There are lots of accent marks, but I'm not sure how to make them work in this blog. That is a great question for my blog instructor!

Learning Chinese

Good morning! As the post says, we are attempting to learn Chinese. Hee, hee- it's not very easy! But we are determined to be able to get around while we are there, and with some hard work, maybe we can learn enough to talk with our daughter's care givers (at least a little bit). We spend some time every day with DVDs, CDs, or books. Mason is way ahead of all of us, of course! We can all count to ten, say "hello", "my name is" and "what's your name?" We know what "milk", "water" and "juice" are and are learning our colors and fruits and vegetables. Mason can count to about 15 and sing songs like "Itsy Bitsty Spider" in broken Chinese (the songs on the DVD are part Chinese, part English. For example, in "Itsy Bitsty Spider", the words "spider", "rain", and "sun" are in Chinese, and the rest is in English. ) So now we told him he has to teach us the song :) He's pretty excited about teaching us as opposed to us teaching him!

Documents in our dossier

Here is a list of the documents we have to have in our dossier. Everything must be notarized, certified (by the Secretary of State) and authenticated (by the Chinese Consulate). For example, our application letter had to be signed by us in front of a notary. Then it went to Richmond where they confirmed the notary was valid. Then it went to the Secretary of State to be approved. Finally it went to the Chinese Consulate for their blessing. Each of these steps takes anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks.

Dossier:
Application Letter (a letter from us to China, requesting permission to adopt)
Home Study
Birth Certificates
Marriage License
Medical Forms
Employment Verification Letters
Certificate of Financial Status
Police Reports
I-171H (approval from the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service for us to adopt a
child from China. This can take anywhere from 4 weeks to 4 months,
depending on your local department)

The following documents are also a part of our dossier, but do not need notarized, certified or authenticated:
Several Documents from our Home Study Agency (our China agency and our home study
agency are two different agencies. This is not always the case, but is for us.)
Lifestyle Photos (pictures of us)
Passport Photos
Passport Signature Page

Looking back on it, it doesn't look so bad, but it was, I assure you!

How long it has been since we started this process...

The referral process is continually changing, which makes a "countdown" hard to judge. Instead, we are counting up from the day we started. Each day brings us one day closer to our little girl, regardless of how long the actual wait lasts, and that's a reason to celebrate all by itself!

The timeline for our paper chase...

The first step to adopting a child from China is to compile your dossier. This process is called the paperchase. Your dossier consists of many different documents. I'll list those on another post so you can get an idea of what all went into our dossier. Below you can see how long it took from applying to an our agency to sending our dossier to China.

Submitted application to Great Wall China Adoption (GWCA) 2/22/06
Accepted by GWCA 2/23/06
Applied for passports
Last Home study visit 3/19/06
Home Study Received 4/10/06
I-600A (application to adopt a child from another country) & home study sent to the U.S.
Citizen and Immigration Services 4/10/06
First set of documents sent to agency for certification and authentication 4/10/06
Fingerprinted by USCIS 4/25/06
Received 171h (immigration approval) 6/14/06
Second set of documents sent to agency for certification and authentication 6/15/06
Dossier to China! 7/7/2006

Welcome to our blog!

Hello! As of July 7, 2006, our paperwork is on its way to China! Now the wait begins... Hence, I figured it was time to join all the other bloggers out there so you could follow our adventure. It will be at least 12-14 months before we receive our referral for our little girl, but I will try to keep adding new and interesting things for you to read over that time (and of course, I'll keep you updated on anything new!). Please bear with us as I navigate the blogging world and get this site running!

God Bless you all!