An Authentication Anniversary

Last week, we spent our anniversary finalizing our documents for authentication.

We had an appointment at the Department of State at 10:00 a.m. They put all of our paperwork in a certain order and completed the authentication in less than 40 minutes. We left there and went to a UPS store to make copies of the 13 cover letters from the Dept. of State. We took all of the paperwork back to our hotel room. We had to sort the 4 copied stacks into the same order as our original copies. In preparation for the Chinese Consulate, we held our originals out and made sure to un-paperclip one copied stack (the Chinese Consulate is very picky about how documents are turned in to them). We checked out of our hotel and arrived at the Chinese Consulate around 12:30 p.m. After an hour and a half wait, our number was finally called. We sat down at glass window number 5 and passed our cover letter through a little slot to the lady. Next, we passed copies of our passports through. Finally, our stack of originals and the one copied set passed through and then we watched. The lady wearing gloves matched each original page to the copied page, going through our 13 stacks of documents. It was rather nerve-racking, as we had to have everything just right. At one point, she went back on a page, but luckily then just continued forward. She gave us our pick-up receipt which was scheduled for Thursday (Perfect!). I have never been so happy to get a receipt! It was like we passed the test! On Thursday, we drove back to the Consulate. We arrived there around 9:15 a.m. and were called to the pick-up window around 9:50 a.m. We left around 10:00 a.m. and celebrated with a breakfast at the Starbucks up the street. Mission accomplished! We then drove to the National Zoo and spent the day there! We saw the Asian Elephants and Panda Bears! Panda Baby Bao Bao was there too!

We met my cousin, Barry, for dinner at Old Ebbitt Grill and then walked over to the White House to get a few pictures.

Stressful but successful and fun trip overall! Next Step: Organize all of our paperwork (authenticated documents included)into Dossier form and submit to our agency for approval. From there, our agency will send our Dossier to China (DTC)! About a week after that, we should be LID-Log In Date with China! In the meantime, we are searching for our little girl on many blogs, threads, group pages, etc. It is possible that we could find our daughter before waiting to be matched by our agency.