For other adoptive families, the people who respond to the National Benefits Center emails are not always right. I emailed on April 11th and was told that our information had not arrived there yet. I emailed on April 16th and was told that it was in the building but had not made it to the case officer's desk. In the meantime, somehow it was approved on April 12th! Other than being really fast, 1.5 weeks from receipt to approval, the date is significant because two years ago on April 12th we applied to adopt from Thailand. Pretty cool. :)
Immediately upon getting into the house from walking to the mailbox, I called our agency to let them know. Then I emailed the National Visa Center to see if they had uploaded our approval to the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok yet. As of this morning, they had received the information but not uploaded it. Then later in the day we got the email that it had been uploaded! This means that we are all set to get our travel dates. I think the speed of our approval and upload took our agency by surprise because they didn't have dates for us yet. They emailed HSF today about travel dates and hopefully we will get them on Monday!
We will be doing some travel research this weekend so hopefully we are ready to book our plane tickets early next week. The other neat thing is that another family we know of who got first approval when we did also had their I-800 approved on April 12th and they even sent their paperwork in after us! It will be great to travel with them. :)
On Thursday before checking the mail I thought nothing was going to happen until next week. After checking the mail, things started falling into place very quickly. This is why I love checking the mail, who knows what you will find. :)
1 comment:
Hooray for approval--so excited that you will get to travel soon to bring Chat home!!!
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