Ni Hao, Kai-lan

The NY Times ran a piece about Nickelodeon's new cartoon "Ni Hao, Kai-lan" a pre-school show about a little Chinese Girl. I need to start call my friends over at Nick and have them collect swag for me. I'm sure they will make up some cute things for the launch. Might also ask why Kai-lan (which means Chinese broccoli or Chinese kale), has an Australian Koala as a pal and not a Chinese PandaNi Hao" by the way means "Hello." It is pronounced 'knee how.'

Patience

I shouldn't have stressed. Linda came by tonight with the homestudy. She rocks!

Off the immigration first thing in the morning.

Waiting for Homestudy Paperwork

All of the homestudy interviews are done. All of the paperwork is in. We reviewed our homestudy, and with a few minor corrections, approved it last Tuesday. Our SW (Social Worker) needs to get it notorized and then deliver it to us, and I'm beginning to stress.

Once I have the homestudy I can run down to Immigration, and everything will be in for the 171-H. Then I dash to the USAA in Monterey Park. USAA translates everything into Chinese and send's it to CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) in Beijing. Then we are officially "logged in" (aka LID). But I just found out the USAA ships all of their paperwork once a month to China on the 5th!. Feb 5 is right around the corner! If we don't make the cut off, then we get in March 5, which still gets us logged before the new rules, but throws us a bit behind since a slowdown usually occurs around Chinese New Year (Feb 18 for 2007). During Chinese New Year, government offices close for a week. Some folks take even more time off. Everyone leaves the cities and goes home to visit family. Also, the closer we get to April, the more frantic USAA and CCAA will become with people trying to log in before May 1. I expect they will be sitting in a tidalwave of paperwork.

If I get the homestudy by Thurdsay...and I run everywhere Friday morning...we might just make the cut off for Feb 5.

Big Brother

First HomeStudy Meeting

We meet Linda, the social worker assigned to us through Bal Jagat. The Homestudy consists for 4 meetings. One with Bob and Gina together, one each individually, and one to go thru our home and make sure it is suitable. Linda thinks she can get the homestudy completed by the end of January, which is great because the home study needs to be given to Immigration to go along with the I-600A which we filed in December. Once the I-600A, the FBI Livescan fingerprints and the Homestudy are all there, the paperwork is process and we are given a I-171 form which basically grants us permission to bring a child into the U.S. With the I-171 in hand, we then send everything to U.S. Asian Affairs in Monterey Park to be validated and translated into Chinese.

Linda tells us she is busy as there are a number of people trying to make the May 1 deadline.