Getting ready for travel

We were transferred to the Travel team at our agency this past Monday. They told us to go ahead and apply for our Visas and put a travel date of May 15th on the application. This means that we could travel a week before or after this time approximately. Still not sure when we are going but it looks like May. My work is OK with me taking three weeks off (2 for travel and 1 for acclimation) but I am sure I will be working a little bit from home.

We have been buying baby stuff left and right. Holy cow diapers are expensive. I took a poll at work on cloth diapers and I was pretty much laughed out of the office. We cleaned out our cupboards and put in some of the baby food and bottles and things that we purchased. Still really weird. For intra-China travel we are only allowed one suitcase each weighing no more than 44#. Now, for those of you that know C understand the boulder I am pushing uphill here. She could fill both suitcases with shoes for a weekend trip so we are going to have to economize.

This past weekend we bought a 4-pack of the bags that you rollup and squeeze the air out of to save space; hopefully these will work. The recommendation is to pack super light and have your clothes laundered while in China. There is always the option of buying inexpensive clothes there as well.

We are sending our care package off to the orphanage tonight. This will include a camera so that the care providers can take pictures of Maya, the other babies, the people who take care of her and her orphanage. There is also a service that provides a news clipping service that reads Chinese newspapers for finding notices. By law, the orphanage has to take a picture of the kids and place them in the newspaper. This will provide us with a picture of Maya when she was younger.

A brief recap of the referral process was that 64 of the 90 were "misplaced". About 30 of the misplaced ones were found (we were lucky enough to be in that group) and the remainders had to have their pictures regenerated and only received the one small photo that is attached to the file.

What we are most distraught about is that of the original 26 referrals that were delivered without issue; it appears that they were able to turn their paperwork around quick enough and they are actually leaving tomorrow. So, yes, if our referral wouldn’t have been lost we may have been boarding a plane Thursday. We are bummed, but we are plodding through.