WOW! I Should Blog More Often! A Lot Has Happened!

Well, I am so bad about getting on this blog, that I can never even remember the address to tell people the site for our blog! :-) So here goes---I'm going go try to catch up here!

We received an email from CCAI on Friday, June 29th with possible travel dates, as they were expecting to receive our travel approval any day. Here is the email from them:

Dear Mark & Susan Alexander,



Wonderful news! Based on the date that your documents were turned into the CCCWA, we believe a travel approval for your family will arrive in our hands shortly! Although we are not sure on the exact date we will receive travel approvals, we are hopeful to receive them in the next 1-3 business days. We are very excited for your family as you are one step closer to traveling to China for your little one! Upon receiving travel approvals we will request a Consulate appointment for your family. Once travel approvals arrive, we will email you as soon as we have them in hand. We are contacting you today in hopes to be able to request consulate appointments as quickly as possible once the travel approvals arrive.

Please carefully read through the below information.

Please thoroughly review the two tentative travel date options below and let us know via email if both of these options will work for your family. When requesting Consulate appointments we must provide 5 possible dates to the Consulate and therefore must consider multiple options for possible trips. As long as it works for your family we will request Option 1 as the first option for your travel group.
Option 1


Leave around July 11-13 and return somewhere around July 27-28.**


**Leaving July 11th will include a 3 night/2 day tour in Beijing. If you would like to opt out of the tour you can potentially leave as late as July 13th.


Option 2


Leave around July 18-20 and return somewhere around August 3-4.**


**Leaving July 18th will include a 3 night/2 day tour in Beijing. If you would like to opt out of the tour you can potentially leave as late as July 20th.


Please note that travel dates will not be confirmed until we have a Consulate appointment for your family. The Consulate takes anywhere from 1-5 business days to reply but they try to respond within 1-3 business days. We will email you to let you know when your travel approval arrives.


Thank you so much for your prompt reply via email and know that we are so excited to help you plan your trip to China!


Sincerely,


Sheri Kabeya, Betsy Harper, Beth Escobar & Hannah Curry
CCAI Travel Department
 
Then, on Monday, July 2nd we received our travel approval!! Then they said not to book until we got our Consulate Appointment, which could take 1-5 days. We received our CA the very next day!!!! So yesterday, July 3 we started looking for flights! We will be leaving ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!
 
We will be in Beijing from July 12-15 and will be able to do some sightseeing while we are there. I can't wait to see the Great Wall of China! Mark and I visited Hong Kong years ago and I always looked back and wished we'd either gone to Beijing or Shanghai instead! July 15 we fly to Zhengzhou and "Gotcha Day" for both boys will be the 16th!!!!
 
Our Consulate Appointment in Guangzhou is set for July 26th, and we pick up Zach and Tian's visas on July 27th. If we book the flight that we are looking at, we will fly out on July 29th, but because of the time change will return into Colorado Springs very late on July 29th--just after midnight, in fact!
 
We are so excited but are asking for prayers that God will prepare Zach and Tian's hearts for all of the upcoming change, turmoil, and confusion. They will have no idea what is happening. Zach turned 3 in February and Tian will be 3 in September. It will be a confusing time for them!
 
We also ask for prayers that we will all stay healthy while in China. We have heard so many stories of all the "bugs" you can get while over there. We will be diligent about handwashing and also just trying to be careful about what we eat. That will be the hard part because we love trying new foods! We just will have to veer away from the street vendors. That's what got me and Mark into some serious sickness while in Thailand years ago! We think we got sick from trying everything we saw and not washing our hands enough!