Gotcha Day

*Pictures are coming very soon in a separate post!

I was much more nervous than I expected for Gotcha Day.  We were to meet her in the front office of the orphanage.  Remembering from what others have said, we knew it would be a quick meeting and that we’d get whisked away to the notary.   I was shaking as we did some initial paperwork.  Her building (or what I assumed was her building) was directly across the way from this little office.  I wanted to make sure we had video of her walking in, so I stood by the window waiting.  It was about 10 minutes or so after we arrived that we saw a teeny, tiny little girl being escorted across the street by two ladies. 

She looked like she knew what was happening as she determinedly walked, but the moment she came through the door and reality set in, she seemed to change her mind.  She got scared and immediately started crying.  I can imagine it must have been the scariest moment of her life, to know she was leaving all she knew, with three strangers.   Our guide said she’d been asking about us since her best friend was adopted a month or so ago.  She had her passport picture taken in the last couple of days and had said, “I want to go.  Where are my mommy and daddy?  When do I get to go?”  The realness of it is far different from that fantasy of having a family, so those first moments are quite a shock.

We had a very long day in Shijiazhuang, which began with a 4 am wake up, a (very cool bullet) train ride, and then trips to the orphanage, a notary, the civil affairs office, back to the notary, and then to the police station, each of which were a 20-30 minute drive from the last place. 

We were off to our first stop with Jinny in tow.  She had tears running down her cheeks for the entire drive.  We reassured her with as many Mandarin phrases as we could from our adoptive parent Mandarin book. 

By the time we got to the notary, she was doing better, and she slowly came out of her shell the rest of the day.  She did amazingly well even with all the waiting.  We ended up finishing a little after 5 pm and rushed back to the train station to see if we could catch an earlier train. 

Let me just tell you about this bullet train system.  It’s amazing.  It’s cleaner than anything I’ve seen in China and way more comfortable than an airplane.  It was cruising along at 191 mph!  The train station is staggeringly huge and efficient.  There are a few pictures of it scattered in the above pics.  It’s quite an incredible form of transportation and very popular here. 

We were not expecting Shijiazhuang to be quite so large.  It is actually a city of 9 million people.  It’s known for industry, which would explain the very poor air quality.  It was so smoggy that you couldn’t see much past a couple city blocks.  It became difficult to breath by the end of the day.  (We’re dealing with a lot of respiratory gunk today.)

We arrived back at our total around 8pm.  I could have gone to bed at that moment, but we needed to play and have some down time with Jinny.  We Skyped with the girls at home, and I showered Jinny (which she totally loved).  She’s a squealer!  The girl has a very high pitched voice, and when she gets excited, watch out!  She will giggle uncontrollably and then start squealing.  It’s hilarious!

She started doing that in the packed out Police Station, and it was quite the attention getter.  Not that this gigantic blond trio needed any more attention! 

She went to bed snuggled next to Erin (so cute!) without any problems.  It’s almost 8am and they’re still sleeping.