LOA – Letter of Acceptance

I received a conference call from Laura, Lisa, and Mary from Adoption Associates. My first response was “I’m not sure if I should be scared or excited that you are all calling so you better tell me what’s going on”. After they said “we got LOA today”. I sputtered for about five minutes… 3 WEEKS!?!? Unheard of… unbelievable… unreal… they told me they next day mailed our LOA, and that once received we needed to sign, date and check the box to accept Violet. We would then need to next day mail it back. They also ended with “the trade fairs are the end of April so you could be going either the first two weeks in April or the first two weeks in May”. Once I stuttered “I need to call Todd” we said good-bye and I called Todd.
Talking to him, the reality set in and all the questions started flying between us. The seasonal trade fairs in Guangzhou are HUGH. The hotel and air fare prices quadruple if you can even find them. The crowds are crushing, compounding a country with overwhelming population during calm times. Needless to say, if someone really wanted to go the agency would try, but we already discussed that possibility and we are not interested. The agency would try to squeeze the trip in prior to the trade fair or we would have to wait until after. Todd and I started calculating the timing and couldn’t even see how the April dates were even feasible. Not only that but we couldn’t see how we would be able to add additional travel with it being “squeezed in”. We had the offer from Jenny that if we came to Dongguan, she would arrange a tour of True Children’s Home and Tung Wah Hospital. She would set up a meeting with Dr. Li and his staff, who performed her surgery, as well as, Zhang Zhao Lian and Li Jiu Hui, Violet’s foster parents. We also wanted to travel the 6 hours to visit her orphanage, not to mention all the places we wanted to see: adding a couple days in Beijing, go to Xi’an and see the terracotta warriors, sightsee in Hong Kong, and tour Three Gorges Dam. Realizing that we won’t be able to visit most of the places on our list, we would still like to see some of China so we decided that we would rather go in May. After a quick return call to Laura to determine if we could “choose” to go in May even if the April timing worked, she said sure! So we are focusing on going the first two weeks of May, we still need to wait for our TA (travel assignment) and embassy appointment dates but it gives us a better stab in the dark. EVEN SO, we are thrilled at the possibility of traveling so soon, in the back of my mind I kept thinking ‘nothing has gone quick so far, we will be lucky if we leave by the end of May’. I expressed my surprise at potentially leaving at the beginning of May to Todd and he said he assumed it would be the beginning of May just to make sure we’d have everything done in time. Smart Man! We are thrilled; each step makes it more of a reality in our minds.