Technical Difficulties and Just Plain Busyness!

Thank you to everyone who has sent us congratulations about Mei Lin to our personal email. We've had numerous tech problems with our computer in the last few weeks so I appologize if we've not replied. I was checking emails on Matt's laptop, but had just enough time for a quick reply here and there.

Please know that even if we didn't reply, we really, really appreciate hearing from you and love it when you send emails or leave comments. We'll save all these comments to share with Mei Lin. Emails we received when we got Miyah's referrals are in her lifebook. I'v read her some of what family and friends said when they saw her picture or heard what her name meant, etc. and she LOVES those little quotes.

Anyway, the good news is that our computer is back and nothing was lost (phew), though even with the new hard drive we're still having some problems.

I wish I had updates on Mei Lin, but I have nothing...sigh. I've heard her orphanage isn't good at sending information so it may be that we never get an update (but we can pray we do!).

I've learned a lot about her orphanage and the area of Kunming. I'll share some of that in an upcoming post along with some photos. It looks like a great facility....for an orphanage (or "baby home" as we call them around Miyah).

In case you didn't notice I have a new ticker at the top which is our new wait for travel approval (TA) from China. Our Letter of Intent (LOI) was sent to China on 11.30.06, so we start our count to TA from there, I guess. A Letter of Intent is a rather long letter stating why we want to adopt her, how we plan to care for her special need, etc.

Something I found strange is that China wants you to HAND PRINT the entire 3 page (or more) letter of intent! With computers now, I NEVER write anything that long by hand and so major carpal tunnel was setting in by page two. I rarely print besides, so it just looked messy to me.

Anyway, the entire time I was writing it, I was trying to figure out why it was to be handwritten. All I could come up with in my paranoid mind is that the new special needs program requirements (they just came out with some new ones) now includes passing handwriting analysis.

So, I kept wondering what it meant when I dotted my "i" to one side, or varied the way I wrote my capital 'A' (like a teepee or a larger version of the small "a" - I don't have a preference), and so on...

Paranoid? Perhaps.

This whole special needs route is still somewhat of a mystery to me. We probably won't hear anything from China until TA, which could be four or more months from now! Excrutiating!! Although....someone from our agency with a March log-in-date (like us) DID just get travel approval (TA) after ONLY 2 MONTHS!! WOW! That would be incredible, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up....but that would be great!

I'll post again soon...when/if life slows down a bit.