8-30 - Travel Itinerary

Christy and I will board a plane September 5th to start our journey to receive Olivia. Of course our first leg will take us to Atlanta then onto Los Angeles and finally to China. Total travel time will be approx. 28 hours - give or take.

Below is our Itinerary for the trip:

Sep.7 - arrive in Guangzhou, China
- Fly from Guangzhou to Beijing - Half day tour to Forbidden City and Tianmen Square
Sep.8 - tour to the Great wall with lunch
Sep.9 - Beijing to Wuhan
Sep.10 - "Gotcha Day" / 'Forever Family Day" - Receive Olivia
Sep.11 - Adoption registration
Sep.12-14 - Adoption process
Sep.15 - Wuhan to Guangzhou
Sep.16 - TBD - Nothing scheduled - most likely shopping for gifts
Sep.17 - Medical check up for Olivia
Sep.18 - Appointment with the US Consulate
Sep.19 - Pick up Olivia's Visa / Leave for USA
Sep.21 - Arrive Home

8-26 - We have chosen a name

Olivia Whitener

We are very pleased to announce we have decided our daughters name will be Olivia. We are still unsure as to the rest of her name, but I am very happy that we have chosen Olivia. Christy has requested to have Olivia's Chinese name translated to determine if it will offer anything we may want to incorporate into her name. The name she was given by her foster mother is Rou Han Li. The foster mothers last name is Li, we would like to know what translations or references Rou Han will offer.

Olivia was one of the very first names we had in mind when we first started the process of adoption. We had a couple of other names that we really liked but one was used by a neighbor that had a precious daughter last year and another name was used by my admin when she gave birth to her daughter 2 weeks ago.

From the earlier post you will see we are very close to traveling to receive our Olivia. If we arrive in China on the 8th there is a possibility that "forever family day" / "Gotcha day" will occur on the 9th. Woo Hoo!!!!!!

8-26 - Travel Approval Granted

We have received travel approval!!!!! Now we have requested an appointment date with the US Embassy in Guangzhou, China. Hopefully on the 27th we will receive our appointment date and then finally we will be able to make flight and hotel arrangements. Tentatively we are expecting to leave on September the 6th or 7th.

First leg of our travel will take us to Los Angeles and then the flight will be approximately 16 hours from LAX to Beijing, China. We are not sure if we can get a direct flight into Wuhan, Hubei so we will most likely have to make an intra-country flight once we arrive in China. I can imagine our initial travel period to Wuhan will be 26 hours. Should be fun....hopefully it will go better than our 18 hour travel experience from Hawaii after the earthquake last fall.

This week we should start packing and complete our gifts shopping for the foster parents and our guide in China. We are still hoping to find a house sitter to take care of Maisy, MiJho and Anna Belle. If nothing else we can board Maisy (don't want to) and have some of our neighbors check on the cats.

I will be taking shot at installing the baby seat in our vehicle this week. Should be interesting. Apparently baby seats are not that easy to properly install and 90% are installed improperly, Christy is to make an appointment at a local police station to check my baby seat installation skills.

8-16 - Waiting on travel approval

It has been two weeks since we received our referral, not much has happened since then. We have requested travel approval and sent our passports to DC for visa stamps so we can enter China. Christy has been buying baby clothes and I have been buying gadgets e.g. video monitor.

We have also contacted a lady in Texas that will serve as our liaison until we travel. Her father lives in the same province as our daughter (sorry - no name chosen yet) and he will deliver letters and a care package we have put together. The care package consist of a cake (to be purchased in China for a party for our daughter and the others in foster care), pictures of Christy and I, camera and a couple other things - I think.

Today we FedEx'd another package, it consisted of a blanket which Christy and I slept with for a couple days. It is believed with us sleeping with the blanket our scent will transfer and it will assist with the bonding once we receive her on "gotcha day". (I (marty) do not have much confidence in the blanket, I know once she is handed off to us she will scream and cry and throw a fit, understandably so. We will have to flip a coin to see which of us is to be the first recipient.) We have also provided a book which has some questions we hope the foster parents will answer. The book is pretty cool as on one side of the book is the question in English and on the opposing side the same question is written in Chinese.

Travel is still anticipated to be mid September - we anxiously await travel approval.

8-13 - Pix_Daughter and her new home

8-12 - Pix_Christy and Marty

8-11 - Pix _Whitener's with paws

8-10 - Adoption in China

China Adoption

I'm only one, But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do. - Edward Everett Hale

China is a country of more than 1.2 Billion people, which happens to be 22% of the worlds population. In an effort to control the population the Chinese government places restricitons upon families requiring governmental approval for more than one child. This is referred to as the "One Child Policy". In some parts of China a couple must apply to the government and receive an authorized schedule when it is their turn to try for a pregnancy. The penalties for having unauthorized children are very severe, and consist of being fined up to one years wages, loss of a job, imprisonment, and social ostracism.

Girls are abandoned in China. Not because they are not loved by their parents and not because the birth mother does not desire to retain the baby, simply in most cases boys are preferred ans needed. Within the Chinese culture boys take care of their parents in lieu of social security, as China does not have a system in place to care of the elderly. The reason for the abundance of girls is that couples abandon babies that are not boys. During the pregnancy it is illegal in China for a doctor to provide the gender of a baby. It is feared and often occurs the mother will abort the baby if the sex is a girl. It is also illegal to abandon a child, but there is not a system in place that will allow a couple to hand over an infant when it is discovered to be a girl. Therefore, the only option left is for the baby to be abandoned.

Babies are abandoned in many different factions. Generally the baby will be left in a basket in a conspicuous location e.g. marketplace, orphanage steps, government building so the child will be found quickly. It is believed some mothers watch from a distance to ensure someone discovers the baby. The mother will sometimes leave a note with the birthdate, but most of the time nothing is left behind for fear of tracking the baby back to the parents.

8-9 - Introduction

A JOURNEY OF 10,000 MILES BEGINS WITH ONE STEP - Chinese proverb

Welcome to our adoption website page. The purpose of this site is to allow friends and family to track our journey as we get closer to receiving our daughter. Christy and I had discussed adoption for a couple years before we finally decided to proceed. If we knew the process was going to take us more than 32 months, we would have not wasted all the time we did talking about it. The initial application for adoption consideration was picked up in January of 2005.

Our referral package with our daughters information arrived August 2, 2007. Sadly, we are not much different than most others that are adopting from China. The time frame when we started was estimated to be around 18 months to referral. Of course we had to complete 10 months of documents, background checks and governmental approvals before we could even send or adoption request to China. We were DTC (dossier to China) in October '05 and LID (log in date) November 16, 2005. These dates are important as they are the dates which dictate where your application is in the midst of the thousands of other applicants requesting to adopt within China. In the end, our 18 month referral period turned out to be 32 months. Please check newsletter as we will post our progress as well as pictures while we are in China.

"For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened." Luke 11