Last day in China

We are happy to announce that we are back from the appointment at the US Consulate. First we stood in line with all the other families while waiting for our turn at a glass window. They basically just looked at our faces (Tonya's, Mike's, & Noelle's) and stamped a copy of our passports something like "approved". Then we all sat down and waited about 10 minutes. There were about 40 families there from a bunch of different agencies. 15 from AWAA. After a while an American man gave a short speech and then had us all stand up and raise our right hand. Then, all at once we declared that everything in our adoption documents was truthful to the best of our knowledge. After that the man said "congratulations" and everyone cheered. A few people threw things like blankets and bibs in the air. Then we were handed out a brown envelope with all of Noelle's visa information and her passport with the US visa. We were told not to open the brown envelope, only to hand it over to the customs officials at our point of entry into the US (Detroit Wayne County Airport for us).

We will check out tonight so we don't have to do it in the morning. Our luggage has to be packed and outside of our door by 5am. We leave at 5:45am for the airport. Our flight for Tokyo departs around 8:30am.

China has been an awesome adventure. We are thrilled that Noelle is now together with us as her forever family. We are very excited for home sweet home!

Next post to be from Orrington, MAINE!!!!!