Today was our final day in Guangzhou. The morning was free, but our afternoon was spent going to the U.S. Consulate for our swearing in and to pick up Zeke’s passport with U.S. visa attached. We also received the envelop full of paperwork required for us to hand to the immigration officials when we land in San Francisco.
When the officer from the state department started speaking to us at the consulate, he answered some questions that we had been wondering about. First, what is the difference between a U.S. Embassy and a U.S. Consulate? A U. S. Embassy is the name of the state department office when it’s located in a capital city. For example, the office in Beijing is an Embassy. A U.S. Consulate is what a state department office is called when it is located in a foreign city that is not in the capital of the country. Thus, in Guangzhou, we went to the consulate. For Americans adopting Chinese children, all must process through the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou.
The second question concerned at what point, exactly, an adopted child from China entering the United States, becomes a U.S. citizen? We were told that it is not when their feet touch U.S. soil, but rather, when the customs official in the United States, in our case when we go through customs in San Francisco, stamps their passport as having entered the United States.
We thought these were helpful answers to questions that we had wondered about. After this explanation, the state department official had everyone raise their right hands and swear that everything we stated in our adoption paperwork was correct and true to the best of our knowledge. Once that was done, our adoption of Zeke, in China, was complete.
We are now packed and ready to go. We are scheduled to take the shuttle from the hotel to the airport in the morning at 5:30 am. We’ll fly China Southern from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong we’ll take United Airlines to San Francisco and then catch a flight to Albuquerque. If all goes well, we should be home sometime around 2:40 in the afternoon on Wednesday. While it looks like we’ll only be traveling about 9 hours, it’ll really be about a 30 hour day since we’re crossing the international dateline.
Well, better run. We’ll post once we get home. Thanks again for all the prayers and support. Please pray for us as we make our way home. Please pray specifically for Ed’s health. He’s not feeling well and we’re a little worried about him. Hopefully he’ll be feeling better in the morning.
