The Incident

We were told on December 1st that we had travel permission and all the appointments were scheduled. We would leave for China on December 12th and return on December 24th. We booked our tickets immediately through Wyman of Delight travel.  Then we got another call from our agency. There was some confusion about the appointment at the American Consulate.  Our agency thought that they had appointments scheduled, the Consulate disagreed.  The Consulate, at half staff for much of December, could not schedule our group until December 30. We decided to contact our Congressman, John Kasich, and ask for help scheduling an appointment.  Ginger and I had decided that with or without an appointment, we were going to China to get our daughter on December 12th.  We talked to several others in our group, at least 6 families agreed. Having Jiang Li stay in the orphanage for another week was unacceptable. Even if we had to stay in Guangzhou waiting for an appointment on December 30th, we had decided that it would be worth the extra cost.  I amused myself by considering if 9 families standing in front of the Consulate on Christmas Eve would be worth network news time.

In the end, our agency reached an agreement with the Consulate. For the good of the children, our agency would accept full responsibility for the incident, and the Consulate would grant us interviews on December 22. We are grateful to our agency, the Consulate and our Congressman for getting this to happen.

The reservations had to be changed. We would leave on December 12, and return December 25th.  We ended up receiving our tickets about 3:00 PM on December 11.