Consulate Appointment

Wednesday of this week (aka 2 days before we leave) we went to the Consulate here in Guangzhou for “swearing-in”. This is the office that approves us (on the Chinese end of things) to be adopt her as our daughter. We sat in a large room full of about 50 other adoptive families, and stood and swore that all of the information we had given was true and accurate. Emerson will be a US citizen when we land at LAX on Friday evening and go through immigration there. It was a pretty cool experience, and of course, this is the one place we have been where cameras are forbidden.

They spoke to the group about Chinese adoptions, and we learned that they have processed about 3000 adoptions to US families so far this year, and about 2000 of those have been special needs adoptions. Emerson is considered special needs because of her cleft lip and palate, even though it has already been surgically repaired. I think all of the families in our group (20 families) with our agency are special needs adoptions, and all but a few are cleft lip/palate kids. We have seen many Chinese kids this week with their new parents who have cleft lip and palate, some repaired, some unrepaired.

Many people on the island make their living off of adoptive families, selling them souvenirs and sandwiches. Papa John’s Pizza delivers to our hotel, and when we ordered the other night, the delivery boy spent his whole night making deliveries back and forth to our hotel. It’s been an interesting experience to walk around the island and be “normal”, American parents with our Chinese daughter, as there are probably hundreds on the island right now. I know when we get back home our family will stick out like a sore thumb.

We’ll get Emerson’s passport Thursday evening, and be all set to leave on Friday. Because of the time change, we will leave China at 9pm Friday night, and land in Los Angelos at 6:50pm on Friday. It will be the longest Friday ever, and we can’t wait to hug all of our babies on Saturday morning!