What is the TA and a CA? And why are we waiting for them?

Every work place and bureaucratic processes have their acronyms! So, what are TA and CA along the adoption trail? The TA is the Travel Authorization, otherwise know as "Notice of Coming to China". It is a document sent from the Chinese Center for Adoptive Affairs (CCAA) saying you have permission to come to China to get your child. Once this notice is sent, a person's adoption agency is able to make a family's U.S. Consulate Appointment (CA) in China. Why do you need a CA? Well, this is the last step in the paper trail in China for your child to be able to come home. It is at the CA, that the adoptive child receives her visa to travel back to the U.S.

Esther officially becomes our child by Chinese adoption law when we sign her paperwork in the province of her birth. But according to US law, she comes home traveling with a Chinese passport stamped with a visa to the U.S. So, as the Great Wall pictured above was fashioned...we wait for the TA and CA that place one more brick in place adding to the whole of a journey bigger than we can grasp...