The People's Republic of China requires families to travel to China to meet their children (unlike Korea, for instance, where your child can be escorted to the states or the family can travel). The trip took about two weeks as we first visited Beijing for two days of sight-seeing while adjusting to the time change. Then we flew to Guangzhou and from there took a train to Maoming in Southern China, Guangdong Province and met Elizabeth! The adoption was finalized per Chinese law on 6.9.00. The last leg of our journey took us to Guangzhou where a VISA was obtained from the American Consulate for Elizabeth to obtain entry to the United States! Although the "official" meetings were vital, there were few of them and the bulk of the time was spent waiting on documents to be processed while getting to know our daughter and seeing more of her country of birth.
