The Referral
On September 23, we got an email from our agency telling us that our dossier
was now in the matching department. We were elated, the first news of movement
in ten long months.
At 3:45 PM on Friday, October 17th, a voice mail message was left at
my work, "Hello, this is Andrea from Great Wall China Adoption. Could you
please give me a call as soon as possible at (512) 323-9595? I have some
good news." I tried to call Ginger, but her voice mail picked up. As soon
as I hung up, my phone rang, Ginger was trying to call me! Andrea called
and left voice mail messages on both of our phones, she also attempted
to send a fax, but my fax number had recently been changed. We both
listened to our messages just shortly after Andrea left them (under 5 min).
We then called Great Wall together and got the news. They asked Ginger,
"Are you ready to be a mommy?" We had a daughter by the name of Chang Yu
Zhu waiting at the Changzhou Children's Welfare Institute. She was born
on 10/16/96. They would be receiving more information by the end of next
week. Ginger cried, I asked them to fax the information because I just
knew I would not remember it. Just as soon as we had hung up I realized
that we had not asked what the characters mean. We called back, but
they did not have the characters, just the pin-yin.
Monday, we called our agency because we had a couple of questions, how
many in our group?, anybody we know? As we were on the phone, the
package with the picture and information was delivered to the agency.
They describe the picture, BIG Eyes! rosy cheeks, and a really cute expression.
They faxed the picture but it came out black. They also faxed the
medical report. I told my coworkers that we had a referral and they
took me out to lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. I asked the hostess
to read the name, and what the characters mean. She told me that they mean
Jade Bamboo. On the 21st , we stayed at home from work until the FedEx
driver delivered the package with the picture and medical report (delivery
9:54 am). We then went to Kinko's and made a bunch of copies. I took
the original to work and scanned it, then posted it on our home page. We
then posted our referral to the APC list. Our home page got nearly 300
hits in 24 hours! Concentric, our ISP, suggested that we might need to
consider a commercial account due to our volume. Oh- we also fedexed the
acceptance back to our agency.
We were concerned about her age, we had certainly wanted a child under
a year old. We rationalized that she was just a year old and that with
speedy travel, it didn't really make a difference. Ginger and I asked for
updated information on Yu Zhu, since the report on her was six months old,
and proceeded to get visas, pack and collect the remainder of the documents
necessary for travel. We asked on the APC list for information about the
orphanage, and a couple of people volunteered to try and look in on Yu
Zhu when they picked up their daughters at that orphanage.
Our group consisted of nine families, all non special needs. Our agency
asked Ginger and I to be the group leaders. We obviously did not
understand that concept at the time. The next weekend we called or email
everyone in our group to introduce ourselves. We had a couple of "youngsters"
in our group that would not turn 35 until December. We found out
that one couple had their referral rescinded, the child had been referred
to another couple. They were hoping for a quick re-referral.
The next week, we called our agency to see if they had any newer information
on Yu Zhu, and if they had any idea when we would travel. They told us
that they did not have any new information.
