Gotcha Day

Today has been amazing. I woke up at about 4:45am. I did some blogging and jumped into the shower.

The city of Nanning was rainy and overcast; it lightened up throughout the day. We went downstairs for some breakfast and I have to say that I was not impressed. They had hard boiled eggs, fruits, sweet cakes, congee (which I thought was nasty but children eat this day and night). French toast (without syrup) the closest you will get to syrup will be honey. The coffee was good. I just pretty much had some bread rolls and butter, the broth of some noodle soup and some cookies with coffee, not your healthiest breakfast but it will do.

After breakfast we met with David, the rep for CCAI. The Cole family and ourselves walked to a nearby bank to exchange our funds. We exchanged $7000.00 U.S. dollars in Chinese Money and the exchange was for 6.14 to 1. So how much Chinese money did we have to walk with in my bag? Approximately 45,200.00;

Immediately after we walked back to the hotel, we opened the safe (which I have to say, is bolted down to a cabinet but the only problem is that the cabinet is not bolted to the ground, so anyone can walk off  with the safe and the whole cabinet.

Hubble was a little concerned about putting the money in the safe but we didn’t have a choice. It was either that or walk around the city with 42,000 (not happening). We put the money in the safe and locked it, when we went to open it again to put more stuff in it, the safe door jammed and we could not open it for the life of us. So we called David our guide and told him what happened. He came upstairs to try and help us and it didn’t work, so they had to call the hotel manager to come and open the safe. Eventually she got it opened and she saw all the money in the safe. This made us a little nervous, although we changed the code again; this woman has a master code and could open the safe at any time.

Again we have to trust that everything would be fine. After this whole ordeal, we left the hotel with the Cole family and with our guide David and took public transportation to Wal-Mart. It was very cool, we got to see part of the city and we got to go shopping at Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart is China is very different than the Wal-Mart back in the states; I will post some pictures soon. We spent about 70.00 U.S. dollars at Wal-Mart; we bought snacks for us and Isabella. Afterwards, we took a taxi back to our hotel with all of our groceries and it was about $2.00 U.S. dollars. We had about 1.5 hr rest time before it was time to meet David downstairs in the lobby to head to the Civil Affairs Office.

We arrived at the Civil Affairs Office at about 3:25pm. The Orphanage director and the two nannies had not arrived yet. There were other families there waiting for the Orphanage directors to bring their children to them. Finally, our van arrived with the two girls. One nanny got out with the Cole family child, she is cute as can be (18mths old) and then another nanny stepped out cradling Isabella Yong Mei. Our sweet girl had just fallen asleep about 15 minutes prior to them arriving. Their trip from Yulin City to Nanning is approximately 3-3.5 hrs. Our rep. told the nanny holding Yong Mei that I was the mama and she immediately handed her over. I was able to snuggle her up and squeeze and kiss her as much as I wanted because she was asleep. Shortly after, all the families were taken upstairs so we can take our family pictures together. I handed Isabella over to Herb while she was still sleeping and after about 5 minutes, Isabella opened her beautiful eyes and looked dead on into Herb’s eyes. There eye’s had met for the first time, baba & daughter. I then called out her name Yongmei and she quickly looked over to me and then smacked the glasses off of Herb’s face and busted into a laugh. I thought “oh wow, this is going to be fun”. We then took our family picture which they will give to us on Thursday and headed back to the Wharton Hotel. We did run into Joan Curley, a mama from my September 2006 LID group online; she too was waiting for her sweet Hazel.

We arrived back at the hotel at about 4:30ish. Isabella loved the revolving door to get inside the hotel. Herb was playing with her while carrying her, he kept going around and around and she was just laughing out loud. She truly did great, I took her a bath. She was a bit reluctant meanwhile observing everything around her. I tried to give her some rubber ducky’s to play in the water but she was afraid, so we put the rubber ducky’s away for another time.

At about 7:30, we fed her dinner. She refused to take the bottle at all yesterday. So she ate a lot of snacks and at dinner time we gave her some Raman noodles in chicken broth with vegetables and she really enjoyed them, followed with some grapes for dessert and water.

At about 9:15 she fell asleep. I put her in the crib and maybe 35 minutes later she had her first night terror. What is a night terror (like a nightmare, it’s very common with children that our adopted during this stressful transition). From that moment on it was sleeping on and off and crying hard until almost 5:00am.

She woke up around 6:30ish am and so are day begun.

                                                  packed and ready to pick up our girl

                                             The crib at the Wharton International Hotel

                                  David, Jay, Bonnie & Herb waiting for public transportation

                                              Entrance to Walmart in Nanning Province  

                                                        They sell dry fish at Wal-mart  

                                                         Dry shark for sale at Wal-Mart

                                            There I am ready to go and pick up our girl

                                            The Civil Affairs office in Nanning Province

                                         The Van that brought the girls from Yulin City

                                       My first picture with our sweet Isabella Yongmei

                                 

                                                                       "Is that Baba"?

                                            Already has baba wrapped around her finger

                                                               Walking into our hotel 

                                          Running towards Mama