First……I want to thank everyone for their emails to us during our trip. It is so nice to hear from people back home. We are getting a little home sick already and would really like to be at home. I think that we are both having a hard time with our jet lag. Each day at about 4pm our bodies are telling us to sleep. It is incredibly hard to resist the temptation to sleep …….and if you do go to sleep you end up waking at 5am.
Yesterday we returned to the Adoption center at about 4pm and did our paperwork and finalized the adoption. It’s official…….she’s a Rothstein!! We did get to take a couple of photos with her caretakers from the orphanage too. They so obviously love and care for the children. They each came up and talked to and dotted over Alicia. We each got a gift from the orphanage…..it’s a beautiful porcelain vase with Chinese lettering and pictures on it. Apparently Nanchang is famous for their porcelain…….I can’t wait to go shopping this week. Yesterday was really rainy out, so after we returned from Adoption center we ordered room service for dinner and we all took a nap. Alicia slept for about 5 hours and then Paul fed her a bottle and played a little bit and then back to bed. It’s currently 5:30am and she is still sleeping………YEAH!!
I sent a package to Alicia a couple of weeks ago at the orphanage and that was returned to us. They took photos with the disposable camera, so I will be excited to see them. We also got our list of questions answered for us……..like where she was found, who found her, if there was a note with her, who named her, etc. Apparently the orphanage director named her Guang Can, which means bright and splendid, because when she was found she only had a few hairs and to give her hope for a bright life in the future. We also received the clothes that she was found in and a book about the orphanage with pictures of her and some other children. We also received the finding ad…….it’s an ad that they put in the local paper of children that are found. It’s an attempt to find the birth mother. The ad probably shows the first photo taken of Alicia. The ad ran in the paper on Aug 28, 2006.….but who knows when the photo was taken. She looks like a preemie and the ad says that she has big eyes and is a small baby. The translated list of her eating, sleeping schedule mentions that she likes to watch TV……..her and Marcus are going to get along just great!!
There are 8 families in our group and 4 babies came from the orphanage in Fengxin…where Alicia was…and 4 came from the other one. The 4 from Alicia’s orphanage all did really great during the hand over, but the other 4 babies cried and cried. It was really heartbreaking to see that, but by the time that we went back at 4pm, most of them seemed to be “OK” with their new parents. It was kind of ironic that those babies all went to the people that are first time parents. The three of us couple that this is our second child, got the quite babies. The two other couples have their 3 year old daughters with them on the trip. They were adopted at the same time from the same orphanage and the parents submitted their paperwork for their second adoption together to do it again. One of the little girl was not to crazy about her new sister coming back to the hotel with them, but apparently warmed up to her after a couple of hours.
Today we are off to the notary to has all the paperwork submitted and then to Walmart. Hopefully the weather holds out and we will venture out this afternoon.
Today ended up being a beautiful day and after we all had a nap this afternoon, we took a walk down to the park. There is a huge monument in the square to honor the uprising in Nanchang. We were very proud of ourselves in that we successfully cross the street at a very busy intersection. We ventured out this evening with another couple in our group to a restaurant across the street. We had a family style dish with duck and miscellaneous vegetables in it. I think that it was the whole duck because there was lots of bones and unidentifiable meat in it. It was very good, but a little scary…….you just have to not think about it!!
Tomorrow we have a completely free day and are thinking about heading to the zoo here in the city. We are going to wait to see what the weather is like in the morning.
Marcus - it was great talking to you today on the phone. We miss you so much and can’t wait to see you next week. We love you very much!! Have fun with your grandparents this weekend!
