For those of you who are familiar with foreign adoptions, you know generally what this means; for the others, you may have no idea what LOA is... even though we've done this once before, I keep having to explain (to myself and my family) what all these terms mean. It is confusing, but, basically, the LOA (letter of acceptance) is a letter from the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) asking us if we do, indeed, understand FuBei's medical issues and that we are still willing to adopt her. Soooo, we will sign that tomorrow when it arrives via FedEx from our agency, then send it, along with another form (DS-230 or something) back to the agency. Also, I can now fill out my I-800 form for the National Benefits Center (Immigration office devoted to this kind of stuff...) to approve. They then send the approval to me and I send it to agency, who sends it to American Consulate in China, where they approve it and wire it to CCAA in Beijing, who THEN issue us travel approval (known as TA in adoption lingo). From there, our agency makes an appointment with the American Consulate, around which we will make our travel plan. My fingers hurt just typing it all, and I barely understand it, but all that to say, the paperwork should take about 1 month, when we should have our TA... then it is usually about 2 weeks until travel. Confused? Translation: we should travel AROUND 6 weeks from now, give or take any delays, distractions, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc. YIPPEE!
