The basics are really simple. You find and agency, gather lots of documents, mail them to China, and wait to be approved.
We chose to work with CCAI. They wonderfully guided us thru the gathering of 13 documents including birth/marriage certificates, employment letters, police clearance reports, and others. The most time consuming was the 797 (permission from immigration to adopt a foreign born orphan) because that involved waiting for a fingerprinting appointment, a criminal background check, and the completion of our home study.
After all the documents are gathered, they must be notarized, certified at the county of the notary, certified at the state level, and authenticated at the Chinese Consulate. We used 4 different counties, 3 states, and 2 Chinese consulates. My friend who kept up with everything in the process joked that she wouldn't have done all that to keep the children she had. Really, it's not that bad. Just a bunch of baby steps!
Once all our documents were ready, we sent them to our agency. They reviewed them, translated them, and sent them to China.
That is where we currently are. Our documents are on their way to China.
Once there, they will be delivered to the China Center for Adoption Affairs. We will be issued a Log in Date (LID) which is essentially our place in line to receive an abandoned child. We expect to wait about 10 months for the referral of our daughter.
And there you have it. Nothing to it.
1 comment:
That doesn't really sound like "nothing to it." It sounds like quite a lot to it. But I'm really enjoying reading all about it. Thanks Jojo, I'll show the blog to the kids tomorrow. They may not be so interested in the timeline, but they'll love the photo of Bonnie. By the way, like the other guy who commented said, "You'll want to turn on your word verification thingy soon or you'll get spammed in your comments.
Love ya,
Aunt D
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