I was super excited to receive our LOA this week... but after announcing the good news, many people said "now what does that mean?" or "ok, now what?"... Well, I think I already explained that the LOA is basically our official approval from China saying that we have been approved to specifically adopt Courtney. So, now what??
On Wednesday I sent off the signed LOA, I800 (immigration) documents, orphanage child-rearing fee and travel documents. The signed LOA will be sent back to China while the I800 paperwork goes back to immigration (it arrived there this morning just after 9am - gotta love FedEx tracking!). It will sit there at the "lockbox" and then be sent to our specific Hague officer (Gretchen) within 7-10 days. Once she receives or documents (there are other documents that go along with the I800, but our agency had all those) she'll review everything - again - to make sure we still qualify to adopt Courtney, and that Courtney qualifies as an adoptable orphan under the Hague rules. Then we'll get a letter saying we are provisionally approved, pending medical exam and consulate appointment in Guangzhou.
The provisional approval is then sent electronically to China. Then we'll receive an additional letter saying they have received the "cable." I'll send that letter on to our agency who will then forward everything to China. Our Article 5 (also known as LOA2) will then be issued. This lets China know that the US has approved the adoption. From there, the CCAA will be able to issue our TA (travel approval).
This whole process takes a while, as you can imagine! I've seen some TAs arrive in as little as 45 days, but the average seems to be closer to 60-70 days. Still, we beat the average for our LOA... so who knows?!?
Within 2-3 weeks from now we should have our I800 provisional approval... so stay tuned!!
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