March 17, 2008

Family Day- We Have Catherine! 43

by Wendy • Adoption Shmoption 

Family Day was a long day for all of us and we knew it would be. It began at 8:45 on Sunday morning when we met up with our facilitator at the White Swan Hotel in Guanzhou.  We headed off to the airport to take a very crowded and bumpy flight from Guangzhou to Chongqing.  I was pretty nervous on that flight because I couldn't understand the pilots or the attendants.  And the people on the flight were so loud, it pretty much freaked me out.  Luckily it was only less than two hours.

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From there we quickly loaded into a van that had been hired to drive us to Fengdu where we would pick Catherine up at the social welfare institute. Again, vans in China are not made to Westerners or their luggage. The drive was a horrendous 3 hours long.  While the scenery and the sights were intriguing, John and I will never again complain about road work, construction, or pot holes.The roads were awful and bumpy the whole way there and then back. A bird also hit the the windshield which scared the heck out of us and was also pretty sad. We drove through some of the most deprived areas we have ever seen and I have spent some time in some pretty poor areas in Mexico; it was very moving and made every one on this trip appreciate how fortunate we are and how good we have it in America.  My heart breaks for the people here in China.

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Three long hours later we arrived into the city of Fengdu. Fengdu is a pretty large city. I was actually surprised by the buildings and the surroundings.  We met up with the orphanagedirector, who drove us to the orphanage.  It's a large, multi-story building that houses both children and the elderly and special needs adults.  I was so excited to be there but I wanted to take it all in.  I felt like I had been there already because of the videos and photographs that the missionaries shared with us.  We went to the directors office to sign paperwork and get some basic instructions.  We then waited about 10 minutes while the nannies finished feeding the babies.  During that time we took pictures of the orphanage.  All of a sudden the babies were ready and we were ushered up to the third floor and into the nursery.  The orphanage director was holding Catherine and I recognized her right away.  It was almost like everything else faded away and all I saw was her. He asked who her parents were and I shouted me, me!  And he handed her over to me.  At 4:51 we became a family of three.  She looked at me, put her hands in my mouth and when I kissed her fingersshe screamed for dear life.  After that she cried for nearly 2 hours.  She cried big crocodile tears.  We weren't able to stay, so we had to leave within 10 minutes of getting the babies.  We were rushed back into the van to head back on our three hour journey to Chongqing.  It was a long, long trip since Catherine was not a happy camper.I have never been so relieved to see a hotel in my life!

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Luckily we are in a very nice hotel that has everything we could need.  We pretty much crashed.  We changed her, bathed her(which she loves), gave her a bottle, and worked on putting her to sleep. She had a hard time going to sleep.  She was so tired but so full of anxiety that she cried for about an hour.  She finally fell asleep and slept through the entire night.

It was a wonderful day but so very, very long.  I am glad that we were able to do it this way because I would not have been able to experience the sites and smells of so many areas of China.
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