What is the cause for such delay?

USAA, our agency, informed us that they expect us (G115) to receive our first call the end of March or the beginning of April. They are estimating that we would travel in May. This process has just about perfected in us a great virtue: PATIENCE!!!

Really, we are generally doing well. We do get frustrated every so often but since it is out of our control...we just enjoy life as it currently is. Every moment in ones life is a gift, we didn't want to wish it away for the future to come sooner. It'll be here when it is good and ready!

OK, so why is the wait for China adoption taking longer than in the recent past? Here are some of the reasons we were told and also heard from rumor mills:

• In 2006, China officially opened up domestic adoption. The building in Beijing that used to process only International adoptions are now expanded to include domestic adoption processing.
  Chinese culture traditionally does not warm up to the idea of adoption. Bloodline is everything. However, hello to modern globalization! Couples are waiting longer to start families (thus sometimes have a difficult time) and culture in large cities are more westernized...thus perceptions have changed. Chinese families are now adopting quite a bit (I know it's still a relative term and I don't have the actual statistics...but I know it's enough to delay us and a portion of the Beijing office is being dedicated to doing just that!)
  
• Significant increase in International applicants.
  
• 2008 Olympics! This happened to Korea when they hosted the Olympics. When a country is standing in front of the world, it is hard to admit that it can not care for all its citizens. Letting go of all these babies is not an image the country necessarily want to advertise.
  
• Not enough paper-ready babies to meet the demand of increased applicants. What the heck does that mean? Well, there are lots of orphans in China but many of them reside in orphanages so remote and poor that the kids don't make it into the system to be adopted. It takes trained workers to fill out paperwork in order for the babies to be included in the system to be matched with a family.

Anyway, we hope to have more exciting news next time we post. Stay tuned...