I’ve been meaning to write another blog post ever since we received our travel notice. It seems like after all of the many months of waiting, that things are moving very quickly. We leave on Wednesday on Emirates Air through Dubai and arrive in Beijing late morning. For those of you who might be skeptical at our choice of airline – Google them. Pretty posh, even for us in the cheap seats.
Here is our itinerary:
Wed – Leave London
Thurs – arrive Beijing/rest
Friday – Tour of Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tianamen Square
Saturday – Tour of Summer Palace, Hutongs, and lunch at Hard Rock Café Beijing.
Sunday – Depart for Taiyuan (Capital of Shanxi Province) via bullet train. This is about a 3 hour trip.
Everything above this point has been “optional”. We decided to see the sights because we have the opportunity to do it. We need a couple of days to get over the jet lag before we take responsibility for a toddler, and last, it’s an important part of Doodlebug’s heritage that we’re going to be able to experience.
Sunday – Arrive Taiyuan. Doodlebug is from Yuncheng City, which is further south in the province, but all Shanxi adoptions are finalized in the capital.
Monday – Gotcha Day (see FAQs below)
Tuesday – Finalize Chinese portion of the adoption
Wed-Thurs – Free/sightseeing days
Friday – Pick up Chinese passport and fly to Guangzhou
We will spend the next week completing the U.S. portion of the adoption – mostly immigration/citizenship stuff. We also have to check in at the UK Consulate because he will need a British visitor’s visa. We will have quite a bit of downtime in Guangzhou as well. A group of families on the same adoption timeline as we are will be in GZ with us and we’ll have an opportunity to get together. Many of us have connected via Facebook and other forums online over the past several months and it will be fun to meet and see everyone with their new kids. We cannot leave GZ until we get the appropriate paperwork from the U.S. consulate there. We will depart directly from GZ and come back to London through Dubai.
FAQs-
Will you get to visit with your new child before he is officially adopted?
No. Gotcha day is literally what it sounds like. The officials give you the child (who probably isn’t thrilled with the situation), you sign some paperwork and you go back 24 hours later and finalize. The 24 hours is technically a waiting period. If for some reason we were to change our minds about adopting Zack, we could do so during that period.
Will he be a U.S. Citizen?
As soon as he enters the United States, the sealed paperwork we get at our consulate appointment in GZ will be activated and he will officially be a U.S. citizen. He will take the oath of citizenship while we’re in GZ (actually, we take it for him as his parents). While we are traveling, he is going to be considered a Chinese citizen, because he will have a Chinese passport with visas to enter the U.S. and the U.K. We have six months to bring him to the U.S. to complete his naturalization - and that will be instantaneous as soon as he clears U.S. customs.
Will he speak any English?
We get asked this a lot. From what we understand, Doodlebug has normal language development for his age – but he does speak only Chinese. He lives with Chinese foster parents in a remote part of China. He probably will not have heard English spoken before he meets us.
Does he know he is being adopted?
We hope he is being properly prepared, but it is impossible for us to know. We sent photographs of ourselves and our home several months ago, and we’ve sent two care packages to him while we’ve been waiting. That said, I’m not sure how you prepare a 2 year old for this. Important to remember, we have been waiting for him but he has not been waiting for us, and he will probably find the situation to be stressful at first. Some children adjust very easily and some grieve more intensely. We won’t know until Gotcha Day, and we are hoping for the best. We have a backpack full of cool toys and snacks we plan to take for Gotcha Day and hope that will help. The young are resilient. We might go through a rough bit at first…please keep us in your thoughts as we go through this journey.
Why do you have to stay in China for so long?
We cannot leave Doodlebug’s province until we receive his Chinese passport and we cannot leave Guangzhou until we receive all of his visas and medical clearance. There is a lot of downtime on the visit, which we can use for sightseeing, shopping, visiting with other adoptive families and…most important, playing with and getting to know Doodlebug learn how to be a couple with a small child versus just a duo. Although this isn’t a vacation, we are excited to be going on this trip and want to experience all that we can of China. Much of that will depend on how his adjustment is going.
What happens when you get home?
Hubs will return to work about a week after we get home, and I will stay home until October 1st. Doodlebug will be going to day care in our town when I go back to work. I will be taking him in small doses so that he can get used to “school” and being there with me and being there for short periods before he has to go to full time nursery. We hope to make a trip to the U.S. before the end of the calendar year to get the rest of our paperwork finished and visit our family.
We “locked” Doodlebug's file on November 7th, 2011. We will leave China with him as our son on September 7th, 2012. This has been a very long process but good things are worth waiting for. Thank you for following our journey - we hope to have exciting things to post in the coming days.
