August 22, 2004

When starting this adoption process, we were told it would be a plethora of emotions. We have definitely sampled so much from the desert tray of mood swings. These past two weeks have been a roller coaster of emotions. After saying goodbye to our paperwork as it left to be authenticated, we were nail biting and nervous. We received back the envelope from the Houston Consulate first as we thought we would. My email group predicted their good service. Then a day after that, we received back the envelope from the Embassy in Washington DC. What great service. A few days later, on a whim, we decided to check the tracking number on the third and final envelope just in case it left. Oh boy! It did! But then it was taken back to the consulate in Chicago the same day. Start the panic mode. This would have been last Monday. Then on Tuesday we received a call from the consulate. Adam took the message at home. "Some Chinese dude called. You have to send four something for more postage." That was it. That was the message. So here we had to call the consulate, ask for "Some Chinese dude" and tell him we had to send "four something" for postage. That was a difficult phone call to make. Well, turns out the man at the consulate was really nice. His name was Zhou (pronounced "Joe") and he instructed me what to do. We overnighted the extra postage.

So we expected to see the envelope on Thursday. No problem. Oh wait...problem. Thursday came and NO ENVELOPE. Tracking information said it was still at the consulate. Kick in overdrive panic mode. After some crying, an email to our agency and a "Calm down" call from our contact in the dossier team, we were assured someone would call the consulate to find out where our envelope was. On Friday, we received the $#!@*&^ envelope! Call off the dogs and cancel the panic mode. Rob picked up the envelope from the post office, brought it to my office, and we made a thousand copies (or so it seemed). Then he drove it down to our adoption agency and placed it in our case workers hands. SIGH! Stress went away.

Now our dossier will be reviewed and translated and CHINA BOUND! So much work, so
many papercuts and now we are done. We can "relax" and wait for the call that says we have a daughter in China.