Gotcha Day!

Nov 20

We woke up early without an alarm clock this morning, imagine that! Sonja and I were both a bit too excited to get the day started so we were up and waiting for our guide a full half hour before our meeting time.

We loaded into a nice cab and rode about an hour thru the city of Cheng Du to the orphanage on the far western side. It was another crazy cab ride and raining off and on to add to the excitement. We arrived at the orphanage at 9 am and were greeted by the director herself, plus her staff. After introductions and document signing, Jack was brought in within a whirlwind of activity. He took to Sonja without delay which in our opinion is a good sign. Soon after we got Jack, we got to visit with 2 other children whom are waiting to be adopted, Sonja has been in contact with their families and they asked us to check on the kids while they wait for their travel approvals. Both kids were fantastic, dancing and singing for us as well as eating as much candy as we would put on the table. Jack also liked the candy pretty well, other than he did spit out the M&M’s that we brought along. We got to tour the orphanage and it was immaculate, both the grounds and the building are amazing. The kids in this orphanage have it better than most kids on the planet when it comes to housing and yard.

Without fanfare, we left with Jack on our ride back to the hotel. One item of note here should be that there were no men in the orphanage, all ladies. This presents an issue as Jack has been a bit scared to come near me, so he has been in his mom’s arms all day and also why I am writing tonight’s post rather than Sonja. This has been a tough day on the little guy and he cries pretty hard when Sonja puts him down or acts like she might put him down, as well as when he gets his diaper changed. We were able to peel the layers of his orphanage clothes off (to dress him in the clothes we brought), and as most of you know the Chinese are fundamentalists when it comes to layers. I think he might go to bed at some point tonight (this is prayer request here) with less clothes on than he has ever had before.

So we got back to the hotel, ate a small lunch in the room and he took his nap (in Sonja’s arms). When he woke we wandered thru the local shopping district and found him a couple of outfits so he now has more than one pair of clothes. Our guide took us to a diner called Western food for dinner, it turned out that they only have silverware, not chopsticks. I kind of liked the pizza with carmelized onions, chicken bones, and some other sort of meat, but it will not become a fad in the US is suspect. We came back tonight and started our registration paperwork which we will submit at 8 am tomorrow. Somehow I forgot about all the paperwork that goes on when in China. So that is the post for today, I hear the baby snoring in Sonja’s arms right now. Each time she has tried to put him down for the last 3 hours he has screamed, so he might be sleeping where he is tonight, on our bed next to his crib. I am learning a bit already about hearing impaired children, they like to be able to see you at all times. I suppose this comes from them not being able to hear you if you are behind them, anyway so all day he has wanted to keep both Sonja and I in front of him. I suspect our dog Rugger is going to love this part of his personality.

We had a great Gotcha Day and we look forward to completing this section of our trip so we can get to Guangzhou and then back home. We have missed Darby, Carter, and Jaden something fierce so the sooner we get home the better.