Waiting for LOA Day 40

We're approaching the half way mark ... still praying for our Letter of Acceptance by Christmas. Elaine sent a great "dictionary" for us with some simple words in English and their Chinese equivalent. The part that I like most is the sounds like column. For instance:

English Chinese Sounds like
I love you Wo ai ni Whoa eye nee

Now I have some homework to do!

Jack and I went to a book fair sponsored by the Chinese School in Portland this weekend. Wow! Great books and activities for the kids. Jack made an oragami dog and made a luggage tag for he and MingGe for our trip. We also had wonderful homemade dumplings (jowza) for lunch. We brought an order home for John and he was so pleased. He was able to make jowza with MingGe at the Dream Home. It was a great surprise.

D

Chinese School in Portland

My girlfriend CJ McCarron brought me in a copy of Port City Life. There is an article this month about the Chinese School in Portland!

The families meet on Saturdays at the Breakwater School in Portland. From their website "The mission of the Chinese School in Portland, Maine, is to encourage the lifelong learning and enjoyment of Chinese culture through lively classes for children in Mandarin language, calligraphy, art, song, and dance." I am so excited. The Spring semester starts in March. I hope MingGe will be able to go!

Still waiting for LOA - day 36.

D

Yeah !!! Pictures

Elaine sent us these pictures last night. I don't know what we would do without Elaine and Migyeong ...

MingGe and her buddy WenXi.

Halloween 2008

For anyone who wants to see the Halloween picture -

Jack is the one with no head!
Mikey is a robber.
Ruby is SuperGirl.

D

MingGe's Room

Waiting for LOA Day 33

Sent MingGe some pictures of the house this AM. I had previsouly sent a picture of her bedroom and Halloween. Migyeong said she liked them so that was all I needed to hear!

Four families from Harrah's received their LOAs last week. A couple were waiting around 120 days but I believe the other two where around 90. So, we are going to pray for the processing time to continue to decrease!

I am going to try to post a video of MingGe that we received last weekend. Not sure it will work, but I'm going to try!

D

Waiting for LOA Day 29

Our best guess for travel to get MingGe is February. For those that want the details:

Our file was logged in at CCAA in Beijing on October 15.
On average it takes 85 days to get your Letter of Acceptance (LOA), then about three weeks to get Travel Approval (TA).

Once we have our LOA we can submit our I-800 to the USCIS office. This must be approved by USCIS, forwarded to the National Visa Center, then on to the US Consulate in Guangzhou. Our I-800 is done, printed and ready to go - just need the LOA.

Once we have TA from China we can request a consulate appointment, assuming our I-800 has been approved and received at the consualte.

All of our plans will revolve around our appointment at the US consulate in Guangzhou.

I am starting this blog today because I feel a need to do something. It seems a little early to pack!

I cannot stop thinking about our little girl. Jack, John and I talk about her like she is already with us! This weekend we will be taking pictures to send to MingGe and also working on her Christmas package. Elaine told us this week that we could mail a package to their apartment.

That's it for now. I want to try loading some pictures... Blogging is new to me!