Where is Samuel (Mingjie) Liu?

Samuel's Chinese name is Mingjie Liu. Although we think of him as Samuel, it is recommended that we call him by his current name for the first few months he is home with us and then slowly transition him over to his Canadian name. To complicate matters, we aren't sure how he is addressed by the 'Aiyee's' (nannies or, literally, 'aunties') who have been caring for him over the past year. That is one of the first questions we will ask when we meet our son for the first time.

He is currently living in the city of Danyong in Jiangsu province. When we go to get Samuel, we'll spend the first week in the capital city of Jiangsu. The capital city is Nanjing. Sam will be brought from Danyong to Nanjing (about a 2 hour drive) to meet us. All his Chinese paperwork will be done in Nanjing. The Chinese side of the adoption will be finalized and he will be issued a Chinese passport. Once that is done, we'll fly to Beijing and spend a week doing the Canadian side of his paperwork (meaning immigration paperwork). He will be a permanent resident when we land in Canada, but we will have to do more paperwork (and pay more fees) to make him a Canadian Citizen.



You may be asking yourself at this point when will we be going to get Samuel. The answer to that is, 'We don't know.' We were very hopeful that we would receive our Letter of Acceptance this past week, but nothing came for us. Since the first week of October was a national holiday in China nothing will be sent out this Friday (they usually mail paperwork to the adoption agencies on Fridays) so we won't receive anything during this upcoming week. Now we have to wait until Friday, October 12th for a possible mailing which would arrive at the agency on either the 16th or the 17th. I don't think we'll receive our LOA until October 24th though. Anyway, all that means that we likely won't travel until the beginning of December and will then arrive back home the weekend before Christmas. That is where things stand at the moment. Obviously, I'll keep you posted.