Adoption Moves Forward

We're one step closer to Mei Mei's arrival into our family, and this one feels like a big step to me.  We have received permission from the U.S. government to adopt a child from China.  This is a major milestone - all documentation must have been gathered and correctly submitted to USCIS (the US immigration service) to receive this permission, and this is the last piece to gather before we may submit to CCAA (the Chinese adoption agency).

Unfortunately, my understanding may have been a bit off.  I thought that once the U.S. approved us for adoption, our dossier would move directly to the Chinese government.  It appears there are more steps before submitting to CCAA.  Our entire dossier must be translated into Mandarin.  Once everything has been translated, notarized, authenticated and certified by our adoption agency then we are DTC - and no, I don't know what that stands for.  At that point, they submit to the Chinese government and we become "logged in."  Essentially, we begin another long wait.

The time it took the US to process our application was half what we expected - how wonderful if we should be so lucky anywhere else in this process!