Dec. 11: Gotcha Day!

Today was a very long and hard day! We woke up at 3:00 am at our hotel in Beijing and left at 5:00 am to drive to the LangFang City SWI, Sarah Lu's orphanage, to pick her up. We walked up, through the courtyard and into the orphanage. When we got inside there was an aiyi (nanny) holding Sarah Lu! She didn't cry at all at first, she just looked sort of confused. The nanny handed her to me and she was ok with that, until her nanny walked out of the room and then Sarah Lu went running as fast as she could after her. The nanny brought her back to us and left the room again, but this time she shut the door after her. That was not ok with Sarah Lu, she started bawling and would not even look at us. Another orphanage worker came back in the room as so she stopped crying while he held her, but she still did not want us. The nanny came back and walked her out to the car with us and set her on the seat next to me and we were off. We had to go to Shijiazhuang, which is supposedly about a 3 hour drive from LangFang, well the highway was closed because of fog, so we had to drive on back roads all the way, weaving in and out of traffic. The "3 hour" drive turned into a 8 hour drive! Because of the crazy driving along with all the excitement of the day, I got really sick and even passed out a few times. It was definitely not an easy day to say the least! Anyway, 8 hours after leaving LangFang, we arrived in Shijiazhuang for our civil affairs appointment, only to have me faint on the ground on the way in. Needless to say, I stayed in the van for almost the entire rest of the day. But, I am feeling better now that we are at the hotel and Sarah Lu has only had a few meltdowns at different times. For example, She prefers anyone who is Chinese rather than us. She adores our guide, Coco. This is probably because she is 2 years old and very fluent in Mandarin. Another meltdown we had was when we tried to take off her shoes to give her a bath. That was not okay with her! We waited until she was ready and then I showed her her new pajamas with a puppy on them and she let me and mom change her then. Overall, now that we are at the hotel she is doing pretty good. We will see more when we try to have her go to sleep in a minute... Tomorrow is going to be another big day, but today I finally have my mei mei, Sarah Evangeline LuHua and she is now part of our forever family.
~Staci
*photos to come soon