February

Happy with that!
My mom and dad came with us to go pick up Laina and I was really happy to have them along on the trip. I invited them to come along with us on this trip. I didn't expect much since my parents have done a lot of traveling in Asia this year. They spent much of the summer in the Philippines where my dad was teaching a class on business ethics or something like that. Then they took off to Vietnam where my mom was volunteering for Project Vietnam teaching doctors and therapists how they can case manage their population of developmentally disabled people. Well-that's not exactly what she did, but she gave lectures to hospital staff and not directly seeing patients. My mom is a Pediatrician with a specialty in developmental disorders.

So during the Christmas break my mom confirmed that at she would like to come along on the trip to go pick up Min. That will be so nice to have them along, both be along on the trip and also to help wrangle Laina while we get used to Min...and she gets used to us. Oh...and do you suppose there would be anything good about having a pediatrician along at all? So that will be great. We're going to be doing some sightseeing/visiting prior to pick up day. We want to go to Jinan (that's in Shandong Province) and then to Nanjing (that's not too far away from Shanghai). Then we'll go to Hangzhou.

So, tentative Pick UP day?? February 25th. This is provided we get our TA in January as expected. Although our LOA came on the 14th, the LOA packet wasn't sent back to China until the 26th because someone from our group didn't get the LOA signed and returned to the agency until then. I'm not bitter...too much, because I don't think we would have traveled until the middle of February anyways. So now, we wait--and tick off some things on the "to do" list. Notice how so many of them are ticked away...like...none of them. I procrastinate like crazy.