Dossier is COMPLETE!

Yesterday was the day that we travelled to San Francisco.

I had "Mapquest"ed everything, so we left home at 6am, got to the Secretary of State's office at 8:20, parked, Mark and Austin stayed in the car. I had to go through a metal detector and have my bag searched. They almost didn't let me in because of my knee replacement and not having a note. Thanfully, I was wearing Capri's and showed him my scar (how strange is that).

On to the Chinese Consulate! We got over there at about 9am and it was amazing how efficient the workers are there. The nice lady who took our precious documents thought I was nuts to want to pay "lots of extra money" to get them back in the same day. She gave me a receipt that said 3pm and everything else was in Chinese. For all I know it said something like "This lady is crazy, charge her lots and lots".

We took Austin to the Steinhart Aquarium where he drove me insane with his lack of wanting to spend anytime looking at each exhibit. He was like a kid in the candy store. Frogs, turtles, fish, bugs, YUCK!

We went back to the Consulate at 2:30 and the documents were ready. It really is amazing. The majority of the Consulates function is to process Visa's for folks (like us in the near future) that want to travel to China. There are people constantly dropping off and picking up Visa's and they are so darn efficient.

In the car I had a stapler, so I got my packet ready to mail to CCAI. We drove down Geary and luckily saw a post office, so I mailed it off.

Our agency received the package and I just received a phone call that we are now in TRANSLATION! Kim said that we should have our paperwork in China by next week!

We are so happy!!!