Lost TA

Seems the consulate lost the copy of our TA (travel authorization paper). They claim they never received it with the CA (consulate appointment) request, so they can't confirm our date. Our agency is resending a copy of the TA now to the consulate AND to their local rep in case she needs to hand deliver a copy. Since the consulate is 13 hours ahead of our time (16 hours ahead of time zone where our agency is located), they are closed for the night right now. Our agency rep said she will check her work email from home tonight and would let me know if the CA confirmation comes in (could be as late as midnight my time tonight). This is good, because checking airfare for our (hoped for) travel dates today I discovered that the round trip price for older DD's ticket went up $200 from yesterday's price. Frequent Flyer miles are still an option for DH, Alice and my tickets - as of today. Who knows about tomorrow. And did I mention, even with the FF miles, that cost went up $150 two days ago, because it's less than 21 days until travel.

So far Chinese New Year delays have cost us an additional $350 even with delaying our trip a week. I sure hope this week starts improving soon. A letter from Alice or an update with pictures would be really nice about now --- but not likely.