The Day After Gotcha Day - She is Officially Ours!

Good morning to all. It's about 6:00 am here in Nanchang, China. Sorry we didn't put out a post yesterday but we were just too tired.

First I want to say hi to the kids. Mom and I miss you guys so much. I'm glad to hear you all are having fun with Gma and Gpa. Happy St. Patrick's Day. We can't wait to see all the things you are wanting to show us. We are excited for you guys to meet Rebekah. She's a lot like you all were when you were her age. She is peaceful, cute, timid and a complete angel as long as Mom is holding her. Once she sees me she begins screaming, kicking and fighting. I know she was meant to be our daughter. It only took Maggie 4 years before she liked me, I wonder how long it will take Rebekah... We can't wait to see each of you, hear your voices, and hold you all in our arms. We love you!

After we all received our daughters Sunday evening they wanted us all in the lobby by 8:00am the next morning to begin the final paperwork. That meant we had to be up and downstairs for breakfast before that with enough time to get back to our room and make sure we had all our paperwork ready. Nothing like a challenge for a new family with a new little girl you have only known for about 12 hours. Lucky for us she slept peacefully through the night. We heard some other parents talking about how their daughter screamed for a couple hours. We have truly been blessed so far. Today felt like Mission Impossible, if we chose to accept our mission we were to visit every government building in Nanchang. Did I mention how bad they drove in Beijing... that was nothing compared to Nanchang. Tricia and I actually sat in the front seat of the bus today so we could see where we were going... Tricia said she didn't want to do it again. I loved it, I kept throwing my hands up in the air and screaming... it was like an E-ticket ride at Disneyland.

Our first stop was to the Jiangxi Province Center of Adoption Service. This was our longest stop of the day. Here we had to make our final payment to the Chinese Government, about $7,704 RMB ($1,070US). Once this was completed each family had to weight for their turn to sit down with a Chinese official for an interview. They asked us questions about how long we had been married, how many children we had at home, what we did for a living, what our plans were for her education and if we promised to never abandon or harm her. It was very strange. After the interview was completed we exchanged gifts. It seems that every step in the process requires us to give someone a gift. After our interview we got to meet the director of Rebekah's orphanage. He gave us a colored brochure about her orphanage. It looks like a really beautiful orphanage. We found out that Rebekah's orphanage is about 1 1/2 hours outside of Nanchang. Evelyn says if we would like to she could probably arrange for us to take a ride and see the orphanage. We gave the orphanage director a gift, I'm sure he will look beautiful in the silk scarf we gave him. We also gave him a gift to give to the foster family that had taken care of Rebekah for a while. With the help of Evelyn our CCAI guide we were able to talk with him and ask any questions we had. We learned that she has been trying to walk now for the last 2 months. While we were waiting for the other families to complete their interviews, Rebekah took her first 3 steps on her own. Everyone in the room was laughing and congratulating us.

(I hope this video works, I've been having some trouble uploading it)

As you can see it was all a little noisy and chaotic. It was all just a little too much for Rebekah. Just before we were leaving she finally crashed in Tricia's arms. Tricia was in heaven... until she remembered how here arms felt after holding a sleeping baby forever. After our visit here it was off to two more government offices. We had to stoop at the Notary office where they asked us similar questions and we had to sign some more forms and give the official another gift. After the notary we went to another office where they took a digital image of Rebekah for her passport. While we were waiting in the lobby Tricia and I got to talk with a local young Chinese woman. She asked us a lot of questions about why we chose to adopt a little Chinese girl and if we already had children at home. She kept saying how lucky this little girl was. She spoke very clear English, we learned that she was an English teacher in a small village outside of Nanchang. She said her village was famous for having the sweetest oranges in the region.

At last we were done and had a chance to return to the hotel for a few hours. We had lunch in the hotel restaurant then went to our hotel room and played with Rebekah. She loves to play with these little cups that she can stack on and in one another. She loved knocking them over after I would stack them and would just start giggling. If I tried to get to close she would quickly retreat into Tricia's lap.

Our next big adventure for the day was to WalMart. It's amazing how excited we all are to go to WalMart. None of us can stand it at home but you'd think were a bunch of kids in a candy store waiting to go to WalMart. We had no idea what were in for... We knew we were not in Kansas anymore. WalMat here is a two story superstore. There are two WalMarts in Nanchang with a population of 4.4 million people. Think about it, that makes for a lot of people. According to Evelyn, this was one of the easiest trips to WalMart, she said you should see it on a Friday or Saturday, that's when it gets busy. I can't even begin to imagine. Everyone in the store was staring and pointing at the crazy Americans buying everything in the store. We all had carts full of diapers, water, cookies, crackers, and anything else that reminded us of home. We learned that Diet Coke isn't sold by the six pack or twelve pack like in the states, it's sold by the individual can. A twelve pack becomes very difficult to Carry this way... but we managed :-) Some of the sites and smells were very interesting. Did you know you can buy cooked chicken wings, cooked chicken necks, and even chicken feet in WalMart. There were some other things that we saw too that were just unidentifiable. I now know the true meaning of UFO, Unidentified Food Object.

After we found diapers and plastic containers on the first floor we headed back down to the first floor where we found the waters, sodas, cookies and all the good munchy stuff. One of the highlights for everyone and their trip to WalMart was the ride down the escalator with the shopping carts. Everyone was worried about going down the escalator with their baby's only to discover that the escalator and the shopping carts were magnetic. It was really cool, we were all taking pictures... crazy Americans. It's amazing how some items you can just tell what they are even though you can't read a word. Oreos are one of those great items. I've never been so happy to see an Oreo. As we were leaving the store I realized why they were all laughing at the crazy Americans buying everything... you have to carry it all. They don't let the shopping carts go past the door. We almost had a catastrophic bag failure with all those stupid diet cokes... Sitting here now sipping my diet coke it was all worth it.

It's time to go now. I've been trying to finish this blog now for 5 hours. We have to go see the doctor for her adoption checkup. We'll post again later. Thank you for all your prayers, thoughts, and comments. It's been fun being connected with you all from half way around the world.

We love you all. Jeff