We are Family

I just had to send this photo to post.

After our ordeal today, we went to Lucy's then, Lisa, we went to Jordan's. He is great. We had written down some phrases that Faith says a lot so he could tell us what they mean. There was only one that he didn't understand. Then we went to the playroom with another family from our travel group and just relaxed for a while and let the little ones play.

Now, as you can see, the kids are lying on the bed watching The Discovery Channel. It is the only channel in English. They have been running a series called "Discovering Malaysia” the entire time we have been in China, and Mitchell says if he ever hears the word Malaysia again, it will be too soon. : )

Now that we have the medical clearance we need, David will bring some final medical papers for us to sign tomorrow, and then the only thing we have left (I think) is our appointment at the Consulate. Just as a side note, those TB tests are entirely new. They have only been doing them since July 1st of this summer and have been causing trouble ever since. Adoptive families are starting to circulate petitions against them.

Today Faith pointed out the window and said, "Momma, boat!" (She understood). She also said, "Ba Ba a high-dee", and we understood – “Daddy's shoes”.

Good night - only 2 more nights in China after this.

Love to you all.

Miss you like crazy.

Oh the Joys of Third World Medicine

EVERYTHING IS FINE! For those of you who did some late-night praying for us last night, thank you so much! God is good.

We have heard stories of kids testing a false positive on these TB tests. All the parents head to the clinics wary of them because the tests are not reliable. We got a false positive this morning, so they sent Faith for chest x-rays. When they read the x-rays they told us she had possible TB, a lung problem, and some type of congenital heart problem. Obviously, we were not given the medical clearance that we need in order to get her home.

David took us to a respiratory hospital in the city. This made me really nervous because he told us it was the SARS hospital. They told me they were going to give her anesthesia and do an MRI. On the way there, in the cab, she fell asleep, and when we got to the hospital David took us right in, in front of the entire line of people waiting (I have no idea how he does that, but he always does). They allowed me to lay her sleeping on the machine! I was so glad because I was concerned about them putting her to sleep. And she slept through the MRI!

We waited in a hallway then. David kept calling the clinic doctor and putting him on the phone with the radiologist to push them to hurry the result (Mitch and I decided this would not work in the U.S.).
Waiting in the hospital corridor was a really different experience. It was nerve wracking because not only were we waiting for the result of Faith's MRI, but as we waited we kept inching further down the hall trying to move away from all the people gagging and coughing. I finally planted myself on the far edge of a bench at the end of the hall holding Faith while she slept. One lady came and stood about five feet from me and just stared at me. My first impulse was to turn away, because I was crying and extremely irritated. I began to turn away and then caught myself. I turned towards her, smiled, and said "Ni Hao". She immediately began to rattle off to me a mile a minute in Cantonese. I tried to show her I didn't understand. Her daughter came over. She spoke to her daughter. Her daughter said to me, "She wants to know why your daughter is Chinese." I explained and she relayed the information. She lady smiled and walked away....one mystery solved.

After another 30 minutes, David came out with the reports - it was a clean bill of health! A clear TB result... NO heart abnormality... and NO lung problem! Praise the Lord! David said the local clinics are giving out false positives often because they are afraid to issue the clean bills of health in case they are wrong. (Did you know you can get an MRI for $116 cash in Communist China?)

You know, yesterday was such an easy day... I should have known a doozey of a day was coming today. The reason it's so scary is because if they don't give you a clear TB report, you CANNOT bring your child home.

It's funny how perspectives change... this afternoon, in a crowded and noisy hospital on the other side of the world, where we couldn't understand anyone but David, with people who would just stand and stare at us, we, the foreigners, were able to just push past all the locals (whom David said have a difficult time getting care), and I thought about how we don't truly appreciate the comforts of home. As I thought about the possibility of not being able to leave for home and being detained here for longer, I realized how I live in an absolute castle in a free place.

We came back to the hotel, stripped down, washed from head to toe with anti-bacterial soap and we are.... you guessed it... hungry! We are going to take our healthy girl and try to find something to eat, and then get our laundry done.

Write to us. We love so much to hear from you. Thanks so much for praying.

Love to you all.

Miss you like crazy.

For Leslie...

Leslie, I am so glad to hear from you! I have been hoping you would write.

I do have access to email, so if you can get a message to me I’ll be able to reply. I don't have an address for you, but Raymond should have my email address. I think my guys may have figured out how to see their facebook on the blackberry just now, but I'm not sure. We are really, really, really homesick.

A Day Off

We were glad for a day to rest today. Although, having nothing to do made the day seem very long. Not a good thing when you are waiting to come home.

We're already getting her started on keyboards so she can join the rest of the family when we play...

We spent a long time in the playroom. I think that every home with children should have a room like this. You can see how teenage boys pass a boring time in a kid's playroom. Matthew spent an hour trying to see how far and how high he could jump over everything.

Tomorrow morning we head to the medical clinic for the last time.

More tomorrow…

Mom, we want you to know that we NEED to stop at Sheetz on the way home from the airport!!!!

Love to you all.
Miss you like crazy.

Medical Exam Day

Our guide, David, took the families in our group to the medical clinic this morning to get the kids’ medical checkups and shots. We were so glad to see Barry and Susan again. They were in the Henan Province while we were in the Jianxi. We got a few more shots than we were hoping for...six in all.

Then David brought us back to the hotel and into the kids’ playroom to spread out paperwork on the floor and prepare the next round of papers that we will need to take care of. With that done, Susan and I stayed in the playroom with the kids while the men headed to a market with David to get pull-ups and bottled water.

We spent the afternoon exploring shops and looking for just the right goodies to bring home for the kids. Christian and Gracie, we bought you some surprises!! Emma, I got you a pretty pink Chinese dress. Gracie, I got you one too! Christian, I found the neatest Chinese checkers set - I think you'll like, and some other neat stuff. The guys wanted to walk to the electronics market and so we did. Next time they are going without me!!

Tonight Mitchell copied pictures of the Fuzhou orphanage onto another family's computer. Their daughter is from the same orphanage and they were not permitted to visit. They were excited to get some pictures from Mitch's camera.

That's about it for today. It's 10pm and the boys are heading down to the pool, everything's open really late here.

Oh, I almost forgot to say how insane it is that everyone can talk to our daughter but us!! People talk to her on the elevator and in the shops.

Tonight at dinner, the waitress came over and said to me, "Your daughter telling you she needs to toilet."
I said, "What?"
"Toilet."
"What???"
"TOILET, look sign," and she pointed to a restroom sign.

Matthew and I were walking down the street and a couple walked by and said something to Faith. She proceeded to tell them something and they laughed at what she told them. Matthew and I looked at each other and decided she had told them that we are a bunch of dummies.

It's funny and sad. We were in a shop this afternoon and she said something to the girl by the door and the girl said, "Yes". I asked what she said. "She says it is raining outside," the shopkeeper told me... and sure enough, it was.

It's sad because she knows so much and now she has to start over from scratch - like what she already knows doesn't count anymore. In just a few days, no one will ever understand her Chinese again. That's sad. Today at the medical clinic, our guide, David, told us that the doctor told him our baby has a huge amount of language for her age.

We are no longer the minority. This hotel is absolutely full of adoptive families. We have been talking to families from all over the US and the UK - and one we met from Holland. Our guides have been great. They know exactly where we need to be, when we need to be there, and what papers we need to have in hand, and they get us everywhere we need to go. I was joking with David today when I needed a pack of pull-ups, and he said, "She will need large, I know right where to get them." And he doesn't even have a child yet. I told him he'll be good and ready when he does.

Christian and Gracie, my doll babes... only a few more days. I can't wait to get home.

Love to you all.
Miss you like crazy.

WHERE ARE WE???

Get a cup of tea people :)

I'm so sorry this is so long. Please forgive me, it's difficult to leave anything out when I write. If you all get sick of reading, I guess you can skim. :)

It is 1:20am and everyone is asleep but me (Cherie). Faith has a 9:00am doctor's exam in the morning and I fear I shall be up for a long time writing this post, but this is my journal of our journey to our daughter, plus it is our love letter home, so it is important to me.

Well, we were singing "On The Road Again" today. On the road and in the air. This afternoon we said goodbye to our Nanchang guide, Helen, and boarded a plane for a one-hour flight from Nanchang to Guangzhou - and one hour was about all Faith could stand... we have no idea what we are going to do with her for 14 hours on the way home!!! The seatbelt thing did not please her. Eating keeps her busy but she can't eat for 14 hours.





We are reeling from the experience, because we got on a plane in a third-world country and got off the plane in a resort area! How crazy is that? How can the surroundings be so completely different after a one hour flight?

We are absolutely jumping for joy - our new surroundings seem like paradise to us! It started when our new guide, David, met us at the airport here in Guangzhou, and his English is so clear and easy to understand!! I don't have to ask him to keep repeating himself. Then he took us out to the curb and we joyously cried, "a meenee bus!!" (For those of you who missed my earlier post about the meenee bus... that's how Susan our Beijing guide pronounced it) The bus he picked us up in was nice and CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN! Did I mention it was CLEAN?! If you all could have seen where we have been for the past week and what we have been riding in... we're talking filth here, people... well we were ELATED!! We drove for about a half hour on roads with actual traffic patterns and no horns beeping. David told us all about Guangzhou and Shamian Island, and we all kept looking at each other and smiling.

Just as a side note, it's very interesting to us that the people here are Cantonese and they have just a little bit different look to their faces. It's hard to put a finger on what it is, just something a tiny bit different. And, of course, they sound different.

Anyway, he helped us get checked in and we oohed and aahed over the gigantic lobby area with waterfalls, shopping mall, and beautiful fish that Faith loves. And then he took us out behind the hotel and showed us where all the shops are.

Sue and Lisa (by the way Lisa, I am praying for your foot and thinking about you all the time... let me know how you really are doing when you comment) (And Kim, the proud aunt thing made me smile so much) Anyway, you two will have to endure reading this description.

Behind the hotel is this quaint little area of shops and there are really not many cars to speak of on the streets back there. We only got to explore a little this evening but I'm excited to explore more. The hotel is on a little island, so to speak... it's actually surrounded by a river, but it is beautiful. We stood on a dock and watched beautifully lit boats going up and down the river and it was wonderful. Faith would yell, "Momma, Momma," and then point to the boats. Our room is gorgeous and immaculately clean, and we have a gorgeous view of the river, and Faith can stand in the window and watch the boats.







We had cheeseburgers and french fries for supper and you would have thought it was a gourmet feast. (Of course Faith stuck to her congee. She loves her congee. She puts everything in it. Mitch handed her a french fry and she put it in her congee. We joked that if we gave her a drink of coke, she would probably pour it in her congee.) We were starved! We have eaten so very little in the past week. Trying new things is nice, and having an opportunity to experience what people eat in another culture is nice, but when there is nothing else but that to eat for a week's time, and you can't eat any fruits or veggies... well, we were hungry, to say the least.




Today Faith had her first stroller ride. That was nice. She had her first experience of sitting in a high chair in a restaurant and ordering something from a menu. More importantly, she had her first Western style potty experience... and... OH YEAH... she did great and I am ecstatic!! I desire to completely break the squat thing before we get home!!!

But something much more important happened today - the most important thing. Today, Faith became truly ours. Oh, not because of paperwork or anything like that. But, today she truly became ours because we packed up and took her with us. Today we brought her out of where she has always been, and brought her with us, kind of on the first leg to a new life.

It's more of a feeling than an actual event. But, it was substantial in the journey. You see, for as long as we were in Nanchang, there was always the hotel lobby where the orphanage director had brought her and the foster mom had handed her over. I always had the fear she would get upset when we walked through the lobby. And for as long as we were in Nanchang, Faith fussed everytime our guide was around, and I think it's because she associated her with the whole event that turned her world upside-down. And for as long as we were in Nanchang, Faith would stand on a chair in our hotel room window looking out over a most depressing scene of poverty.


And for as long as we were in Nanchang, I felt like we were frozen in that moment when we first got her and couldn't move forward... and I felt like she sensed the same type of feeling. Now I know she did, because she seems different, even in just the one evening that we have been here. Something is different. Something has been severed and something has been bonded...and it is good.

She is such a dear little girl. She is so smart. She has one dimple... just one, on her left cheek. Tonight she would not let me hold her, she would only let Matthew or Mitchell hold her.

At her 9am exam she has the dreaded TB test (please pray that we don't get a false positive... it's been known to happen). David tells us she will get between four and seven shots. We are hoping for the four.

Christian and Gracie, you are gonna love this girl! You 2 are going to be great English teachers!

I guess I'd better get a little sleep. Tomorrow is another day.

Love to you all.
Miss you like crazy.

A Down Day

Today we have declined any tours and chosen to stay in the hotel. Tomorrow we leave for Guangzhou and none of us has any desire to venture out again before that. Helen brought us our last documents from the Civil Affairs Office here in Nanchang, and now we have everything we need to take to Guangzhou. It will be a busy time there...that is where the U.S. Consulate is and a lot has to happen there.

The last document we need from Nanchang is done and in-hand!! Praise the Lord!


This girl would eat 24/7 if I let her. Anytime anyone gets out food she is there in a flash looking for a hand-out.




We are so thankful, though, that she is very healthy and has been well fed. We realized how blessed she is at breakfast this morning after chatting for a while with a family from the UK - a mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, little girl, and newly adopted baby. They got their little girl 2 days ago from the orphanage in Fujin. She is one year old and is so malnourished she can barely hold her head up. She drinks formula from a bottle and can barely take any at a time. They were up all night feeding her. We couldn't believe what she looks like. She is skin and bones and looks like a 3 month old.

Another family in our hotel here from the UK got their baby from the same orphanage and she is in a little better shape but still not good. So, we are really thankful that Faith was well cared for.




Every day we see more of the many adjustment issues we'll have to deal with. For instance, she has no idea how to deal with it when you tell her "no." She sits and cries totally distraught. She will learn.

We are starting to pack up our things in preparation to leave tomorrow. We are so relieved to be finished here!

We just want to thank you for your messages to us in the comments section. We haven't been able to see our blog since we left the states, but we do have email and my aunt forwards us all your comments. They are such a breath of fresh air! This morning we argued over who got to read them out loud. So keep them coming!

Love to you all.
Miss you like crazy.

Peeing in the Pagoda

OK, so I wasn't going to share this story but decided to anyway….

The little kids over here all wear something called split pants. They are seriously pants with no crotch. Now you may be wondering, "You mean the little ones run around with their behinds sticking out?" The answer is "Yes." And they just squat and pee wherever they are when they are out. (yeah, I know. I don't like it too well either.)

So, having a little one who has been trained in this manner has been challenging thus far. She came to us in split pants, and within 10 minutes had her bottom covered by me. When she needs to go, she yells and pulls on the pants because they really are in her way.

Anyway, yesterday - remember I told you we went to this ancient pagaoda? Well, didn't she have to go in the middle of the pagoda - and there are NO bathrooms. She was yelling and I was frantic, and Helen (our guide who thinks I'm really dumb) was instructing me to take her pull-up off, lay it on the floor in the middle of the museum room, and let her "squat" over it.

It became quite a scene as I was refusing Helen's advice while Faith was yelling, and Helen was trying to rip off the pull-up, which by the way, she DID get off and then the rest is history. When all was said and done, I began yelling for my baby wipes from my backpack, but Mitch (who had my backpack) was no where to be seen. You see, he and the boys had made a hasty exit from the pagoda so as not to appear to know me. It was really fun - and I enjoyed it very much.

TRIP TO THE ORPHANAGE

Ya'll better grab a cup of tea before you sit down to read this post, because I got a little long winded.

Today Mitch and Mitchell took a trip out to the Fuzhou Orphanage. It was a two-hour drive from Nanchang. Their description of the drive was hilarious. They said there were no shocks on the car, and they beeped the whole way, zipped around police cars and drove right through the middle of work zones. The roads were totally filled with potholes and so dirty that they couldn't even see the lines. Mitch says he saw his life pass before his eyes many times. :-)

There were cows tied to trees the whole way along the way. (Before I describe this next part, remember from a previous blog where I said the streets are packed with old mopeds and bicycles, and they are pulling carts and hauling things piled high?) Well, they saw a guy on a moped hauling planks of wood piled 6 feet high on each side of him. He could just see straight out through the planks to drive. They saw one moped with a really long rope hanging behind it with a guy on a broken down moped way behind holding onto the rope; and a bicycle with pieces of plastic piled so high they couldn't understand how it could balance. You have to understand, these things are on the streets and highways mixed right in with cars, trucks, and double-decker buses. It’s unbelievable how they survive.

At the orphanage they were taken to a board room and shown a file of Faith's papers - some we have, some we don't. There was a photo of her when she was a newborn. (Mitch took a picture of the photo)


They met the lady who found her when she was abandoned.

She said Faith was wrapped in a simple blanket lying in a box by the gate of the orphanage and she found her on her way into work early one morning. This is Faith’s “finding place.”

When Faith was a newborn, she stayed in the baby room of the old orphanage building, but Mitch & Mitchell were not allowed into it because it was closed and empty now that they've moved into the new building. (Mitch took a few pictures through the windows.)

They learned that she had been staying with a retired orphanage worker, her adult son, and his son, in a 100-square-yard apartment. Mitch asked if they could see the apartment, and they said no because the worker is completely retired now. Faith was the last child she was fostering.

This next shot may look like a random photo, but it is not. If you remember my earlier posts, there was a picture of Faith standing by a metal railing in a hallway of the orphanage. This is Mitchell walking down that same hallway.


The woman in charge of the kids' paperwork at the orphanage took them out to lunch. They went to... you guessed it... a Chinese restaurant. They tried to be very polite, so they ate duck feet, steamed egg, some type of gray slime, and something they described as spaghetti with fish eyes. :-) (We'll let you know tomorrow how that all pans out.)

So it was a worthwhile trip and they took lots of pictures around the city so that Faith will have them some day.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go to an area park with our guide but Mitch is on the phone right now getting us excused from the outing. We don't really want to head out again. ONE MORE DAY TILL WE LEAVE FOR GUANGZHOU !!

OK… so Faith can now say "Barney." Hooray, an English word! She understands when we say "put it in your backpack" and "put it in the trash." She peels little jellies open with her teeth and dumps the jelly in her congee.

You know I told you she has to have her shoes on all the time? Well, the boys are trying to train her to go barefoot and when they take her shoes off she yells, "High-Dee, High-Dee" (Chinese word for shoes). Mitchell just said to her, "Oh, take your stinking high-dees off!"

She was so tired this afternoon, she fell asleep sitting up on the floor:


With big brother, Matthew


Dad, the boys want you to know we visited a Chinese "bavillion" yesterday, but that they like the ones at the Morrisons Cove Park better.

Mom, guess what? We had a fifty dollar bill rejected today because there was a mark on the corner of it! Insane, huh?

Lisa and Sue, we can't wait for those grilled cheese and Pringles!!

When the guys left today I started to cry. Knowing it was 9pm there, I wished I could get on AIM and talk to some of Mitchell's friends, but I didn't know how. Stephen, I told Mitchell I would even have settled for talking to you… ha ha. Mitchell feels they should be counted for double school days because they've been traipsing all over China by day, and watching Discovery Channel all night. He says they've been racking up lots of educational television credits.

Tomorrow is half-way-to-home day. Praise the Lord! I miss you Christian and Gracie!!


Love you all,
Miss you like crazy!

Transitions

It is 11pm and everyone is asleep but me (Cherie). I just got Faith down. She goes back and forth between being happy and playing to being sad and crying. She is pretty insecure. When we walked into the government office this morning she cried. It seems like she's afraid we're going to leave her somewhere. She cries a good bit. That's okay, because I cry a good bit, too. I really want to come home because I miss Christian and Gracie like crazy.

Tonight at dinner (I say that like we actually ate something) the waitresses were talking to Faith as usual and she kind of gave them a little sour look, said something, and they laughed. I asked what she said and they told me, "I don't want to play with you." They can't understand everything she says because the people from Fuzhou speak a different dialect of Mandarin than the people from Nanchang, but they can understand a little.

We tackled brushing her teeth for what I know was the first time. It was easy to see that she had no idea what we were doing and that no one had ever brushed her teeth before. She has 2 cavities that I can see.

She has to have shoes on at all times. We try to take her shoes off and she hates it. She must never have walked around in bare feet before. Also, I think one of my biggest challenges is going to be switching her to a western style toilet!! She is completely potty trained, but on a... you guessed it... squat potty. So we will struggle with that when we get home because the toddler potty the hotel put in our bathroom is NOT western style. Oh joy!

Watching her eat is an amazing thing. Mitchell said, "You know it makes me sad watching her eat." If you have ever seen any TV commercials for groups like "Feed the Children," or something like that, and seen children eating... that's what she reminds us of. She puts her chin clear down on her bowl and shovels her food in while holding her other hand underneath to make sure nothing drops. When the bowl is empty she keeps scraping it and then scrapes her chin with her spoon and puts that in her mouth, too. Then she picks up her bowl and licks the rice off that was stuck on the sides. She eats Congee, which is like watery white rice, and everything else I give her - little vegetables, bread bites, little potatoes. She puts everything in the congee and eats it like a soup in the manner I described. She would just keep eating and eating if I would let her, but I don't want her to get sick. We said, "And to think, we throw leftover food down the disposal!"

At 9am tomorrow (9pm Tuesday for you) Mitch and Mitchell are leaving to visit the orphanage. It is a 2 hour drive and Matthew and I are going to stay here with the baby. We feel that if she sees the building she will think we are taking her back, so we thought it best not to take her.

Miss you all. We are making a list of all the things we want to eat when we get home - like pizza and Ritchey's ice cream and salad and chips and ....well....ANYTHING!!! And I want to hold my kids!

Love you!

Special Request for Lisa Parnell

This picture is for you.

Another Interesting Day

Everything went well at the notary office today, then we toured a pavilion from the Han Dynasty. It was beautiful. There was a traditional Chinese program and our guide, Helen, told us the stories of some of the paintings that were everywhere on the walls.
















































Lisa and Sue, we want to know if there is any western food at the White Swan??

Green Beans and Mighty to Save

When Faith eats, she holds her little hand underneath whatever she is eating, like rice or crackers, to catch every little crumb and then she makes sure to eat every crumb. She doesn't let anything fall. I gave her a little cup of green beans and she drank every drop of juice out of the cup and then ate every single bean and scraped out every scrap into her mouth. She never lets a bite of food go to waste. She listened to Hillsong United on my ipod. I called these photos "Green Beans and Mighty to Save"

We tried to brush her teeth this morning and that didn't go well. It is easy to see she has never had her teeth brushed before. She said 'drink" last night...IN ENGLISH. She chatters a mile a minute in chinese. I just keep repeating the English words of everything over and over again. I think it will be good when there aren't waitresses to talk to her in Chinese all the time. I think she will have to listen more intently to the English words we are saying to her.

We are heading to the notary office in one hour.

Missing Freedom - and Water.

Well, the boys say they can't find any way to upload a video. Everything is blocked out! I am thankful that we are able to get words and photos through.

The internet is crazy here...there isn't any internet. You can send email and look at basic weather or maps and that's about it. Everything is blocked. It's funny, friends of ours who came here for an adoption said that it's like you can feel in the air that there is no freedom. And now I understand what they meant.

At dinner tonight we sat for a long time because we said we wanted to kill enough time so that we could just go to bed when we got back to the room. Mitchell said he misses water. We discussed how when we get home we are going to stick our toothbrushes under the water, and splash water all over our faces, and shower with our mouths hanging wide open. It's funny the things we take for granted.

Be sure to see the next TWO posts.

Now Faith is the Substance of What We’ve Hoped For

“Gotcha Day“…It was a hard but beautiful day. Our dear little girl from the Fuzhou Orphanage was brought to us in the lobby of our hotel - by the orphanage director, a nanny, and a retired orphanage nanny who had been giving her foster care in her apartment. She was so beautiful and so sweet and so afraid. They stayed for about ten minutes. We took a few pictures and then the orphanage director picked up his briefcase and walked off with the nannies! What in the world must go through a dear little child’s mind at a time like that? It must be a feeling of total abandonment. She cried and I cried.















She cried for about an hour and then she started to come around and started to play ball with the boys and smile. Once she was content, we took her downstairs to dinner. She was absolutely hilarious - a little chatterbox (all in Chinese of course). She would look at us and rattle off these sentences in Chinese, over and over, telling us things and we would look at her and say, “I know.” Then we would look at each other and say, “We really don’t know.”

She chattered with the waitresses and it was hilarious. We figured she must be chatting with them about how dumb we are that we can’t even understand her.




























We just sat and laughed because she was totally self-sufficient – and ate like a horse! She fed herself with this big spoon so neatly. She even held her other little hand underneath the spoon as she brought it to her mouth in case anything fell. Then she wiped the rice that was stuck on her chin with the spoon and put that in her mouth, too. We tried to give her bottled water in a sippie cup - she turned up her nose at it and took the water bottle, held it under her arm, unscrewed the cap, drank, and put the cap back on. Then she sat it back on the table and went back to eating. We laughed so much. “None of that baby stuff for her,” we said.















She was happy as a lark all evening - went right to sleep, and slept from 10:30pm to 9:00 am.
She awoke this morning a little uneasy, but okay. Then, we had to walk to the civil affairs office. (That walk, and those offices, and this city are another story of their own which I will tell later…whoa!!!)
Anyways, she was ok until they made us put her in a chair to get her picture taken. She got afraid,
rubbing her arm back and forth across her eyes like she’s trying to hide.

We got that done and Mitch and the boys took her to a waiting area at the end of the hall while I went into a little room that was completely gray and completely empty except for one man in a chair behind a glass barrier (I cannot describe what this place looked like but I’ll try later). Here I exchanged dollars for yen and paid the orphanage and civil affairs fees. In the waiting area where Mitch and the boys were, there were about 4 other families either meeting their children or coming to do paperwork like we were. Faith was walking around a little and when our orphanage director walked into the room, she ran to Mitch. She started to cry and has not been happy since. She absolutely will not let me put her down and hangs real tightly around my neck. She’s asleep in the crib right now.

And that’s where we are. Please pray that she will quickly understand that we are forever. She’s very sweet.