The US Consulate

For security reasons, we couldn't take cameras into the US Consulate. My one photo is of the crowd outside the consulate, after everything was done and we were waiting for the buses to take us back to the hotel.

It turns out that the Consulate is no longer next door to the White Swan Hotel. A year ago it moved out into a new development area, to the sixth floor of an anonymous office building. It took us half an hour to drive there by bus. It's not at all clear to me whether the move is due to increased adoption flow, concerns about security (the old consulate was very visible, with obvious American flags; the new one you'd have to know where it was to find it), or both.

Most of the process was waiting, although overall, things were impressively efficient, especially as it appeared to me that at least 50 families were processed today. We waited for the usual security check, which was pretty much like an airport check. Then we sat in a waiting area, showed our kid with a copy of her passport to a clerk to verify that she was in fact present, waited some more, and heard a very gracious and brief speech by one of the consular officials. He noted that Guangzhou is the largest adoption center in the world, that they processed 8,000 adoptions last year and are on their way to far more this year. He also noted that almost all of the adoptees are girls, and that China's demographic trends will make them especially precious in the years to come. And finally, he asked us to "swear or affirm" that all of the written and oral testimony we had given the Consulate was correct. Then that was it--Juliet's Chinese baby passport was returned to us, with a new US immigration visa on one of its pages, along with a sealed envelope to deliver to customs in US.

Tomorrow we fly, first to Beijing, and then to Newark. My understanding is that Juliet becomes a citizen when we touch down on US soil.

Next post in country, insh'allah.