Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Gotcha Day 12-19-06

Well, she's with us! Here is how 'Gotcha Day' went. We awoke on Tuesday and boarded a plane for Lanzhou, Gansu. The capital of Kaylee's province. As we did this, our girl was in a van driving 6 hours, on icy roads to come meet us. We arrived in Lanzhou at about 12 noon and drove 1 hour to our hotel. When we arrived, we found out that the babies would not be to the hotel until 430pm. Ugh! So, all the families went to lunch in the hotel. Which, I guess was a good thing because that took 2 hours...because the plates came out ONE AT A TIME!! I think all us white folk threw them off!!! Then, the group walked to the grocery store. This was also an adventure. The city is disgusting...I cannot even explain it here! The grocery stores are more like department stores with grocery included. They sell everything from refridgerators to Diet Coke (but it is in a can and tastes nothing like ours...but when youre desperate!)! That took us to about 330pm. We came back to the hotel and unloaded the things that we bought, collected our gifts for the nannies/directors and off we went. The actual experience of getting Kaylee was a little strange. We went into a meeting room in the hotel and there were 6 babies. They quickly called out the babies Chinese names and handed us the baby. We then were told to take our babies to our rooms for 30 minutes. When we got Kaylee, she was very playful and friendly. She only cried when we started changing her clothes and diaper. When she cried, our tender-hearted boy got very upset and cried right along with her..which made Mommy cry. We all had a bit of a melt down. We then had to go get a family photo made. We went to this terrible photo studio and had a photo made...interesting! We came back to the room, Kaylee had a bath, which she did not like and was asleep at about 830pm. David went to sign some papers and got to ask the nanny/director some questions...a privilege not often granted!

The photos above are of our experience. The photo with 2 ladies and Kaylee...the girl on the left is Grace, our travel guide. She works for GWCA and will be with us thru the entire experience. The lady holding Kaylee is the director of Kaylees orphanage. She was very friendly. We met Kaylee's nanny but did not get a picture of her with our camera, but received a few snapshots from the director that had the nanny in them. You will also notice Kaylee wrapped in her Bai Jie Bei (Our guide knew about this tradition, which made me feel better that it does exist!)

More later! Love to all!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update. No pictures came unless I don't know how to open them.
Can't wait to see all of you!

Love Meem

Anonymous said...

I am so glad that you have kaylee now. So the diet coke isn't good there huh? Sure do miss you. I can't see the pictures either.

Love Barb

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