I Got the Brown Envelope!

(I know I'm supposed to be recounting my journey to Elizabeth, but I just had to celebrate a milestone on my journey to Baby#2...) To the uninitiated, this means absolutely nothing, but to an adoptive parent, this is good news! I received the famous "brown envelope" that all China parents receive. The brown envelope doesn't have anything to do with the CCAA or with my dossier's log-in date. After I filed my I-600A, the USCIS approved me to bring an adopted child into the U.S. It then did two things. First, it sent me an I-171H which meant that I was approved (the I-171H went into my dossier). Second, it sent a cable, indicating the approval, to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou. (On the I-600A, one of the questions was where I wanted the approval cable sent, and since I'm adopting from China, I wrote that it should go to Guangzhou). The cable tells the Consulate that, at some point in the next (18 months?), I'll arrive there with a child. It indicates that, if the baby's paperwork is in order, the Consulate can issue her a visa, since my own paperwork is approved. When the U.S. Consulate receives the cable, its normal process is to send you the brown envelope. Technically, what's in the brown envelope is not really all that important--some forms, a map. You can download the I-600 (the companion piece to the I-600A, needed by the Consulate to approve the baby's paperwork), and you can get the visa application from your guide when you're in China. The brown envelope simply is proof that the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou has received the USCIS cable. And it's something to celebrate!

Impatiently Waiting to Travel...

As soon as I saw Elizabeth’s face, I wanted to leave for China to bring her home! As that wasn’t possible, I occupied myself by making ‘to-do’ lists of all that I had to do before travel. I confirmed that my Aunt Sylvia (my mother’s brother’s ex-wife—did you follow that?) would go to China with me to bring Elizabeth home. She turned out to be a perfect travel companion! I received the ‘Notice of Coming to China for Adoption’ (my travel approval) from the CCAA, and I mailed my and my aunt’s passports to AT so that AT could get our visas for us from the Chinese Embassy, but I couldn’t make plane reservations until I knew the date for the consulate appointment. The very last thing that you do in China is to go to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou to obtain the baby's visa to enter the United States. Once you know that date, you can plan the rest of the trip. AT finally notified me on September 28th that our consulate appointment was on November 1st. I immediately made our plane reservations through Forte International Travel Agency in Washington, D.C. I would leave on United from the Portland Jetport at 7:04 am on Tuesday, October 18, and meet up with Auntie Sylvia, who was traveling from Texas, in Chicago for our flight to Beijing, and return to Portland on Thursday, November 3, 2005, at 5:41 pm. I prepared a packing list and revised it constantly right up until I left. I spread everything that I planned to take to China out in Elizabeth’s room so that every surface was covered. I think I finished packing shortly before leaving for the airport…I also mailed a package to Elizabeth at the orphanage. In it, I placed a fleecy blanket; a stuffed dog (of course!); two disposable cameras; a photo album with pictures of Elizabeth, Baxter and I, the cat, my parents, my sister and her family, and the house, all with English and Chinese captions under each photo; and Hershey’s chocolates for her caregivers. I put it all together at work, as you can tell from the photos...


When we went to the Civil Affairs Office in Nanchang, I was given everything but the blanket and chocolates back; when I got home, I took the cameras in to be developed and discovered that I had priceless photos of Elizabeth with her fosterparents, taken in front of the orphanage. But of all that I did before leaving for China, easily the dumbest thing I did was to break my foot on Sunday, two days before leaving. My parents were to arrive later that day because they were going to stay at my house and take care of the dog and cat for me. I was up early doing all sorts of last minute things around the house. I walked down the four stairs from my house into the garage, and when I stepped onto the garage floor, I turned my right foot. It really hurt, but I thought, OK, it'll be better in a few minutes...Well, it wasn’t, and I limped around the house until my parents arrived later that morning. My mother (sensibly) wanted me to go to the hospital immediately, but I (of course) was in denial. I wrapped my foot in an ace bandage and iced it and tried to keep it elevated, but nothing seemed to help. The next morning, I gave in, and Dad and I went to the E.R. X-rays confirmed that I had broken the 5th metarsal on my right foot, which is a little bone at the base of the little toe. I was given an ace bandage, a boot contraption with Velcro strips, and aluminum crutches, and sent home.

I called Sandy at AT when I got home from the hospital and told her my news. She wanted me to delay travel for a month or even for a week, but I said, I don’t think so! I think she understood...One of the last things to happen before I left was that I received an email with updated height and weight information for Elizabeth. I thought, This must be a mistake! Her referral stated that on June 1st her weight was 6.04 kg (13.3 lbs) and her height was 66.5 cm (26.18 in), but the updated information stated that she now weighed 9.0 kg (19.8 lbs) and was 74 cm (29.13 in) tall. It turned out to be very accurate--Elizabeth was by far the largest baby in our group of five babies, even though two babies were older and two babies were younger than her. Not all Chinese babies are tiny!

The Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs and the Matching Process

All international adoptions in China are overseen by one government office in China, the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA). There is no independent adoption from China; American adopters work through a U.S. adoption agency approved by the CCAA. Once your dossier is received by the CCAA, it is logged into the computer. The officials at CCAA then review your dossier for any issues; finding none, they then match orphanages with available babies to groups of adoptive parents from different adoption agencies. Orphanages have color-coded files, and agencies have color-coded files. Orphanages are grouped by province, and parents’ dossiers are grouped by sending adoption agencies. They match orphanages up with agencies like this: if this orphanage has five babies, and this agency has five families in a travel group, or if these two orphanages are in the same province and have a total of 10 babies, and this agency has 10 families in a travel group, then those babies and those families will be matched with one another. The CCAA will match larger traveling groups with orphanages with large groups of babies so that families in one traveling group won’t be split up going all over China. They then match individual babies with each family in the travel group. The workers at CCAA supposedly try very hard to ‘match’ the children to families by reading carefully through the information provided to them about the adopting family and the information provided to them about the available children. Amy Eldridge, with Love Without Boundaries, toured the CCAA in 2003 and later wrote about her visit: “I asked if they ever matched a family and a baby according to looks or baby’s personality. They told me that they would often try that, but the way it works is that a woman at the computer will have a stack of babies[’ files] and a group of dossiers on the computer…The woman told me that if she reads on the baby’s file that the child likes music, she will quickly look at the families to see if any of them have a musical interest or job. If they match like this, it is almost always by job or hobby. Sometimes they said a baby’s face just was meant to go with a certain family. So there IS a little bit of ‘picking’ versus just ‘child one with family one, child two with family two,’ but it isn’t someone agonizing over whether or not a baby fits a family. It goes pretty quickly.” According to the Rumor Queen, “they first look for something that stands out: a matching birthday, a baby who looks a lot like a parent, or a baby who likes music and a parent who teaches music. Some have stated that they use[] Chinese astrology.” They also consider the age of child requested by the adoptive parents in making the match, but this is just one of the factors used in making the match as the CCAA believes it is creating families, not filling orders. However the match finally occurs, I firmly believe you are matched with the child you were ‘meant’ to have!

Referral Day! September 7, 2005

While sitting at my desk, the receptionist buzzed me to say that I had a call from Sandy Rappeport, the Director of the International Program at Adoptions Together. I immediately knew that it was The Call! It was 10:44 AM. Sandy said, "She’s beautiful—I’m emailing you her pictures as we speak! She has a rosebud mouth, and she’s smiling!!!" As Sandy and I talked, Bud and Matt (two of my officemates) came to stand behind me and were there as I opened my email and saw her little face for the first time. She was absolutely beautiful—and smiling! And waving, too!

Of course, I got teary, and I didn’t ask many (any?) of the questions that one is supposed to ask when one gets The Call. I did learn that her name was Jing Shen Yan. Jing (because she is from Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province); Shen (which means the Year of the Monkey, and all children admitted that year to the Jingdezhen City Social Welfare Institute (SWI) have the same name); Yan (which means 'a swallow'—she was given this name with the hope that she “will be as cute and agile as a swallow”). She was born October 26, 2004, and was found the following day at the entrance to the Massage Clinic of Jingdezhen City. She had been in fostercare since that time. When found, she was wearing a red hat, sky-blue jacket and trousers, and was wrapped in an old blanket. There was a note with her which gave her date of birth (no other information was given, as far as I know). She was described as “lively, extroverted, quite good appetite; laughs aloud, active, restless, likes loud toys and music, and is impatient sometimes”—all just as true today as they were when written! Sandy confirmed that I had established a FedEx account and told me that the referral package would arrive the following day. I could hardly wait! Immediately after The Call, I called my parents (who live two hours away) and told them that they had a beautiful new grand-daughter. I also emailed her pictures to them. I also told everyone in the office—I really didn’t do too much work for the rest of that day… The next day, I took my camera to work so that I could memorialize the Delivery of the Referral Package. I couldn’t concentrate and kept looking for the FedEx guy. By the afternoon, I was beside myself—still no package. I called the agency and was given the tracking number. When I checked on-line, it came back as an invalid tracking number, so I called the agency again and was told, "Oh, I misplaced your FedEx account number, so I sent the package via UPS." Hmm. Okay. So I checked its status on-line with UPS and saw that UPS had my address as 'Blank,' when actually it is 'North Blank.' I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but when I got a call at 3 pm from UPS asking where the address in Blank was located, I lost it! Not only had my agency sent my referral to my home address (ON A WEEK DAY, when I would be AT WORK and NOT THERE to receive it), but it had gotten my home address WRONG! UNFORGIVABLE. I said, "There is no such address!" He was VERY apologetic (when it wasn’t even his fault) and VERY nice and told me that he would deliver the package the following day to me at work. The next day, Joe from UPS delivered my referral! (“What can Brown do for you?” crossed my mind…) What do you think?

Inside the envelope, I found two 4x6 photos and one passport-sized photo of the baby; a 1 ½ page “Report on Jing Shen-Yan’s Growth and Development” dated June 1, 2005; a medical report in Chinese with English translations—she was in perfect health; and a form entitled 'Letter of Seeking Confirmation from Adopter.' If (IF???) I wanted to accept this referral, I was instructed to sign and date this last form and overnight it back to the agency. Of course, I signed and returned the form immediately! What a wonderful day!!!