Article 5

Last night as we were talking about the coming weeks and months, we wondered when the next step, which is the issuance of Article 5, would happen.  In fact, Dana had sent an e-mail to our case worker at Great Wall earlier that night. This morning, when I checked my e-mail, I realized that I had an e-mail with Article 5 approval.  So we're one step closer and now we just wait for Travel Approval (TA).

We had a meeting with our travel coordinator last week and she offered 3 possible "gotcha day" options based on expected paperwork processing.  The earliest would be March 28.  The next would be April 5 and the one after that would be May 9.  Gotcha days typically happen on a Monday, but the April 5th date is a Tuesday (also the date of the Wisconsin presidential primary) due to the Chinese Qingming Festival (also referred to as tomb sweeping day) on April 4.  Then you'll notice a gap between April 5 and May 9.  In the Guangzhou area during April, there is a large trade fair called the Canton Fair.  Due to a shortage of hotel rooms our travel costs would spike so we would travel after the fair is complete.  But we can't make any travel plans until we get the TA, so now we're just waiting on that.