part 1
part 2

We arrived to scatterbrained Raymond--our guide for our adoption paperwork--looking for us. He is a sweet man, but reminds me of the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland who is late for a very important date. He was angry that Helen did not escort us to the building as he had asked, so he had come downstairs looking for us. We got up to the fourth floor and met up with about 10 other families who were there for their swearing-in as well.

CNN has been doing a story on Chinese adoption and how China has changed its rules on who qualifies to adopt. CNN has followed two families for the past two weeks and since these families were there for the swearing in, they had the cameras rolling after asking all of us for permission to be filmed.

We were briefed about the immigration process that will happen when we land in America and then we all had to stand and raise our right hands and say that our information was all correct as far as we knew and that was it. At the end, I kissed Caleb on the cheek and he kissed me back. Jeff said the cameraman had his camera aimed right at us, so it will be interesting to see if we end up on either CNN or the cutting room floor. They told us that the clip will be on tomorrow night on the Paula Zahn show. I hope it is a positive story, because Paula Zahn had some "experts" (I use the term very loosely) on the show last week who apparently were very negative in their viewpoints of Americans adopting Chinese children saying that Americans are looking for the "China doll" image or children who will grow up to be doctors. Rather a foolish statement since research shows most post-institutionalized children having many developmental delays as well as a combo platter of other issues. The adoptive parents I know are far more interested in how to deal with attachment disorder or speech delays than worrying whether or not their child will grow up to become a doctor!

Raymond was also working with five other families from another adoption agency and he gave all of us our brown packets that must remain sealed until we hand them over to an immigration officer in Los Angeles. He congratulated us and told us we were free to leave.

I had been feeling embarrassed about our 20 passenger bus just for our family, but when we left and told Raymond thanks and goodbye, he took his other families and put them on a China International Trave Service bus that was the size of a Greyhound. I guess CITS likes to make sure their traveling families have plenty of room!

He called Helen's cell phone for us and told her we were ready and soon our bus rolled around the corner. We climbed on and headed for the airport and could finally sit back and relax. Caleb's entire adoption paperwork is now complete and his US visa is in his passport. He will become a U.S. citizen as soon as he lands on U.S. soil in Los Angeles and he should get his certificate of Citizenship about 30-60 days later.