Day 5 Gotcha Day

 Gotcha Day is the day families first get to see their soon-to-be adopted child.  We had to wait until 3 pm to see Kai.  Up until the last couple of hours before, I was relaxed, but as the time neared I became uptight and anxious.  I was fighting the temptation to be easily irritated and impatient.  Once we were in the van on our way to the Adoption Center, I began to calm.  We were with one other family who also have bio kids so our path to adoption had a lot of similarities.  I was grateful to have them for support even though neither of us knew what to expect. The Adoption Center was a small office in a 20+ story opulent building, which had marble-like tiles covering the walls and floors, and thick marble trim around the doorways and the floor.  In the lobby was a huge, floor to ceiling, mural of baby Moses being pulled from the rushes by the Eygptian princesses' servants.  I would love to know how a story from the Bible was chosen to decorate this building!  When we reached our floor we walked a few steps and I saw Miriam and Kai.  Miriam has been Kai's foster-mom for the last five years.  She is a single woman of German descent, but grew up in Africa because her parents served there.  Miriam and I exchanged big smiles and greetings, but Kai was a little reserved.  Miriam and I have been emailing each other since July, so we have gotten to know each other and finally seeing her face to face was so exciting.  We spent a couple of hours at the Adoption Center, but it seemed as though it was only a few minutes.  I filled out paperwork, while Russ stayed with the kids and talked to Miriam.  I wish I could have spent more time with her.

An interesting part of filling out paperwork is that we had to place a red-inked thumbprint over every signature.  This seems like a pretty good way of reducing or eliminating forged documents.  We left with Kai and went back to the hotel.  We had KFC for dinner, which Kai loved! We were told to let our adopted child keep their clothes on because it would be familiar to them, but Kai was sitting on our bed sweating, so I asked him if he wanted to take his sweatshirt off.  Underneath the one sweatshirt was another sweatshirt!  This is how people dress in China.  We are certain this is one of the reasons that there are not overweight people here.  They don't eat much and they keep their body temperature up! When it was time for bed, I was going to let Kai sleep in his clothes, but it seemed that he wanted to change. We essentially took off three layers of pants and he slept in a tee-shirt and undies. He went to sleep easily, and I think he slept through the night.  Yay, we have another son!