The Paperchase

birth certificates, marriage certificate, financial forms, criminal clearances, fingerprints, physicals, reference letters, employment letters, photographs...

notarized, certification, authentication...

I-800A, I797C,  I800,  passports, visas...

Harrisburg, Washington D.C., China...

We have found ourselves consumed by "the paperchase".  And we are determined to break records for speed in getting our documents prepared to be DTC (dossier to China).  This is our goal in the next two weeks, to have each of the 13 documents for our dossier ready to be shipped off the China before the end of September.  But before that can happen there is so much to do...

First, and this was the easy part, we had each of the documents notarized at the local UPS store. 

Then, on Wednesday, August 29th, Sean's brother, Tim, and I took all of our documents on their first road trip, to the Secretary of State in Harrisburg, PA to be certified.  (Basically to have another form stapled on top of the document that says the notary who signed it is legit.)  We were in and out in about 45 minutes.  No bad...and only a 1.5 hour ride each way. 

The next day we went to Washington, DC (Thursday, August 30th) to have each of the documents authenticated.  Our first stop was the US Deparment of State.  They stapled another form on top of each document stating that the PA Secretary of State is legit.  And even that's not good enough.  So, the last stop of the day was to the Chinese Embassy to get their stamp of approval for each document.  Tim is a crazy traveler...so we were on the road to DC at 3:30am!  We arrived at the Department of State just before 7:00am, 30 minutes before they open for the day and there were already about 12 people in line.  Once we handed in our documents we only had to wait about 1 hour for them to be ready.  After that we found a Kinkos to copy each of our 12 documents and their certification and authenication papers, about 60 pages total so far, and we're not done yet!!  (The Chinese Embassy needs not only all of the original documents but also a copy of each page.)  Then we were off to the Chinese Embassy, which was only 2.5 miles from the US Department of State.  We arrived there at 9:45 and were on the road home again by 10:30 (we will have to go back next week to pick up all our documents...it costs way too much for same day service!!)  It felt really strange to walk out of the Chinese Embassy without our dossier paperwork.  Kind of like when you leave home and have that feeling like you are forgetting something.  We assured ourselves that our documents were safe in hands of the Chinese Embassy employees who handle these things everyday.  Then, as we left the parking garage and drove by the front of the building we heard the fire alarm sounding and saw everyone evacuating...all those employees that we had just entrusted our priceless documents to.  Still praying that was a false alarm!

We were home at 1:15, after 10hrs and 350 miles....all in a day's work to get our little girls home!

Next step:  once our I-800A approval arrives in the mail we will repeat all the above steps!!