Completing pre-adoption paperwork

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

MADISON, Miss. (Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008) – Just when you thought you had nothing left to, up pops a horde of additional paperwork that you have to prepare before heading to China to complete a foreign adoption.

I just spent about an hour or so completing paperwork in advance of traveling – I guess I had to do something, though while my lovely wife spent Sunday night at Target spending more cash in advance of our epic journey.

Anyway, we are about a week away from travel. So tonight was time well spent.

On Monday, I am expecting a FedEx package from Holt International Children’s Services with our official travel invitation from the People’s Republic of China. We need the information in this packet before we travel.

I also expect to spend a good bit of the day working with our travel agent, Lotus Travel, in Bellevue, Wa., working out the itinerary for China and arranging hotel and flight reservations. This could be tricky particularly because of the short window we have.

For our 2006 trip to China, for example, we had about a three-week window to arrange everything. I understand the cost of just about everything in China – from travel to in-country expenses – has risen noticeably in the past two years. It will be interesting to see how that affects our travel costs.

With Thanksgiving looming ahead on Thursday, arranging travel and trying to get our tickets all before the weekend could be risky. I’m hoping we can pull this off because Pam, Camryn and I hope to travel to Slidell on Thursday to visit my family.

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To the left is a photo of He Wu Di we received last summer after Holt International matched us with him. From what we understand, this infectiously happy photo won the hearts of staffers at Holt – as well as his new parents.

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On a quick, unrelated note: Despite trying to overcome a bad sinus infection, Pam and I took Camryn today to see Walt Disney’s “Bolt” in 3-D. It was OK. The 3-D effects were nice. Camryn seemed to enjoy, although at one point she got hysterical when she thought the little girl, Penny, ditched her dog, Bolt.

Copyright 2008 by Terry R. Cassreino