For those who don’t know about the Chinese adoption process, rather than send notices to applicants as they are matched with orphans, the Chinese government sends out referrals (notices of applicants being matched with orphans) in monthly batches. For instance, everyone who submitted an adoption application to the Chinese government between (roughly) mid-October to mid-November 2004 received a referral today (a few others may receive their referrals over the next couple of days just because of varying times to deliver mail or some adoption agencies may wait to do some internal processing before notifying applicants while other agencies may call the applicants immediately after the mailman/delivery man drops off the referrals at the agency). The Chinese government will send out the next batch of referrals in roughly another month.