Today I asked for clarification of exactly how long we would need to be in Beijing. I received the following instructions:
Sandy,
In Beijing, families usually take temporary custody at the orphanage on Sunday, complete the adoption processing at the Civil Affairs Office on Monday, and apply for the child's passport the same day. Sometimes the passport will not be ready until the following Monday, but the family will need to fly to Guangzhou on Friday in order to have the child's visa medical on Saturday (assuming that the family has a visa appointment on a Tuesday).
If this would be the case for your family, your guide in Beijing will express mail the passports to your guide in Guangzhou and she would receive it in time for the visa interview. If your family requests and the consulate confirms a visa appointment on a Tuesday, there should be enough time to receive both children's passports before the interview. The visa process takes 3 days now, so the earliest we advice families to depart Guangzhou is 3 days after the visa appointment, which would be Friday for your family (if the visa appointment is on a Tuesday). Following this travel plan, the trip would last around 2 weeks.
Yeah, now you know how very complicated this entire process is, and why we can't follow what is going on 1/2 the time. I did figure out that we should plan to arrive in China on a Saturday and leave on a Friday. That's good to know.
