An example of an Article 5 letter can be found here: www.state.gov/documents/organization/105116.pdf.
We are now down to the last 2 significant hurdles we must clear before traveling to get Cameron: issuance of our Article 5 letter by the U.S. Consulate, and issuance by the CCAA of our final Travel Approval. We had originally thought we might travel in mid-June. However, the new I-800 immigration process takes 4-6 weeks longer than the previous I-600 process. It has been just under 2 weeks since our file was sent to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China for their review and issuance of an Article 5 letter. Our file actually was sent to a courier in Guangzhou who hand delivers it to the U.S. Consulate, then returns several days later for the letter, which the courier then hand delivers to the CCAA. We were instructed that this step would be fairly quick…..about 2 weeks or so. So…….we had planned to call our case manager last Friday to get an update, but found out that she was on vacation until after Memorial Day. We hope to find out this week that the Article 5 letter has been issued and that we are now finally awaiting the last hurdle, the issuance of our final Travel Approval. If so, Travel Approval has been taking between 2-4 weeks recently. I will post to the blog as soon as we get some additional information. Hopefully we are still looking at an early July travel date.
One thing that we have been following closely is the impact of swine flu on travel in China. We received an email from our case manager last week stating that China had put a temporary hold on Beijing adoptions due to the swine flu. However, there are a number of folks who are still traveling, so we are unsure what to think or how this may impact us…..hopefully not at all. Since we don’t yet have our Travel Approval, this is not pertinent to us yet. But in another few weeks…………
Angie has been experimenting a bit with her new wok. So far she has made a chicken and shrimp stir fry that turned out to be quite good, and a sweet and sour chicken dish that, to use her own words, needs a bit more refinement. She really likes the wok and how easy it is to cook with.
After a record 22 straight days of rain (the previous record was 13 straight days in 1935), the weather for the last week has been awesome. The Corps of Engineers was able to get the lake water level down enough to open the boat ramps and most campgrounds, although the beach is closed. Hmmmmm…..actually the beach is underwater! Nevertheless, it was great to see some boaters, tubers, water skiers and jet skiers cruising around the cove. On Friday night we stopped by the Redbud Bay Marina for some pizza. The marina is about a mile from our house and some entrepreneur just opened a pizza joint on the dock where he specializes in pizza and Italian Ice. Cookies and cream? Not so much. Cherry? Awesome! Made with ice and real cherries. If you’re on the water you can call them via cell phone and they’ll deliver the pizza to your boat at the dock! While waiting for our pizza we wandered around the dock and admired all the nice boats. Redbud Bay has a certified ASA (American Sailing Association) school, so there are loads of sailboats that call the marina home.
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