Changsha, Hunan
1:40 pm Wed Jan 7 in Changsha
11:40 pm Tue Jan 6 Central Time
The paperwork is complete with the Chinese government ... and Abby is officially ours! It was not a process full of ceremony, but certainly one that brought lots of joy to us!
We had breakfast with our travel group (5 families) and everyone is doing just great. All of the girls are adjusting really, really well and all had a good first night's sleep.
We started off by filling out more paperwork (gee, a novelty) and then went one family at a time for our official interview with the Hunan Province Civil Affairs Bureau official. We had to promise never to abandon or abuse our new daughter, and that we would give her all of the same things that we would give to a child born to us.
The official asked if we were pleased with Guo Kui Yan to be our daughter, and we answered in unison "VERY". After placing our red fingerprint stamps over our signatures and getting Abby's little foot inked up for a print from her, we moved on to a room to have a picture taken of the 3 of us for the Chinese paperwork. Finally, we filled out even more paperwork and met with a Notary Official to go over the basic details and be sure everything was correct. One of the papers we had to review was the official report of Abby's abandonment, and after the first sentence I had trouble reading it through the tears. What a sweet little girl, it broke my heart to think of her during that time.
3 of the 5 girls in our group (Abby included) had to have passport pics retaken because the first ones didn't turn out, so we drove through Changsha to some government office and did that. Sometimes it feels as though we are so much farther away than "just" on the other side of the world.
After that we went to ... where else would you go if YOU were in Changsha ... to the Wal-Mart Supercenter! Too funny. But it's not like the Wal-Mart's of home, it was actually on the 2nd and 3rd floors of a large shopping mall, and WOW was it different in many other ways as well. We bought some Chinese formula, Abby's first squeaky shoes, 2 bottles of soda, some small oranges that Abby loves (she came with one clutched in her hand when brought to us), apple
juice and some decorative chopsticks ... all for about $12 U.S. The seafood aisle was interesting with live fish, crabs, frogs all out in the open, just scoop up the one you want ... as well as a large "pond" that had huge fish (12" or longer) that you just grabbed a net and picked out the one you wanted too. This dept didn't smell really great, as you might imagine, so even though Mitch wanted to look more I encourged us to move along. :-)
There was one main attraction in this store ... our group and the babies! We had to laugh as we felt like monkeys in the zoo. The Chinese are very interested in why we are there with these darling Asian babies, and they are not afraid to ask! One lady approached Mitch and kept pointing at his face and Abby's face and we think she was trying to tell us that she thought Abby looked like him, but the language barrier was too great to know for sure.
After Super Wal-Mart we moved on to another traditional Chinese dining establishment ... KFC. Again, we were the main attraction and we ordered up food to bring back to the hotel as the girls were getting very, very tired after their long day ... and we just finished eating lunch in our room as Abby is napping. Our lunch cost less than $5 U.S. total for 2 sandwiches, 2 fries and 2 drinks.
Now we are on our own for the rest of today and tomorrow we will do some sightseeing in the area ... to a park and a pottery factory. We can't leave Changsha until we have the girls' passports in hand ... so we have to kill some time and wait. On Thurs we are going to some mountaintop in the area that Echo tells us you can get on some kind of mat and "slide" down (hmmmm) and then we will visit the orphanage on Fri. Echo is also going to try to help us all find the spots where each of our girls were found. I'm sure that will be another emotional moment, but one that we feel we need to experience.
Guess that is it for now ... may post a little more later tonight our time, we'll see how it goes!
Lisa
7:39 am on Thu Jan 8 in Changsha
5:39 pm on Wed Jan 7 Central Time
Good morning! Abby is doing just great and slept about 10.5 hrs last night. She's on the bed with dad having her bottle right now.
She chowed at dinner last night ... loved some plain macaroni, some cooked carrots and her all time favorite so far, rice congee. She just goes nuts when she sees us bring the bowl to the table. We had dinner with travelmates last night and she and Bethany enjoyed hamming it up at the table.
Two of the girls in our group have birthdays this week ... one yesterday and one today. They are all doing really well with their adjustments, and seem to be sleeping good too. The hotel put out strollers, walkers and toys on a big playmat area near the elevators, so it's fun to meet up there with the other families and let the kids play. We broke out the bubbles yesterday and they were a hit too.
It's rainy here today, and we're on some welcome down time this morning, then meeting up with the group to see a little more of Changsha this afternoon. There is another adoption agency with a group in town and we ran into lots of them yesterday in Wal-Mart. You can spot us all a mile away, no secret handshake needed :-)
Will post more pics tonight after our day's journey. Thanks to all for all the wonderful notes and well wishes. Hugs to Drew and TJ ... we'll be talking to you by phone soon! At least dad will, anyway, mom has laryngitis (sp) so can't really do much talking!
Lisa