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Referral:
We waited and waited, and waited. In the meantime, discussions on various listservs, such as the Chinese American
Adoptive Families group (or CAAF) and the Chinese Expeditid Referral Group (or CERG) were totally confusing as who gets expedited
referrals who might not. Some families with adoptive parents born in China were expedited, so did those families with adoptive
parents born in the United States but with their parents (even their grandparents) born in China or Hong Kong. Things became
a bit confusing as who would be expedited. Then rumors started to be abound that CCAA had a new Director, who's a stickler
for details and do things "by the book." Referrals stopped coming in, and expectations and anxiety mounted among the waiting
families, some were born in China, and some were born in the US, Taiwan or Hong Kong.
Anyway, around early July, our facilitator from ASIA e-mailed us that the Director of ASIA, while in Beijing
visiting CCAA, discovered that our dossier had already been approved (by Department I), and forwarded to Department II for
matching and referral. This second process usually lasts for 6-8 weeks. This means that referral was imminent. Of course,
our faciitator was trying to be cautiously optimistic, and would not predict when exactly our referral would come in. Two
weeks went by, our facilitator called and said that a boy was matched with our family, but not sure when the official referral
document would arrive. On July 25th, 2002, we recieved a call from ASIA that our referral was in their office. We should go
and apply for the Chinese entry visa, and be ready to travel in about 8 weeks. Two months??? That's way too long to wait.
Well, we left on Sept 8, 2002 for some pre-adoption travel to visit my wife's relatives in Shanghai first, then join the adoption
group in Beijing, before going to Hangzhou (on our own, without our agency's facilitator since we were the only family referred
a boy) on Sept. 16 to begin the paperwork to bring our son home.
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