Travel Journal - Day 6

Hello again,

Its day 6 and we are ready to come home. Now that we have our daughter, we have seen the big tourist sites, and finished our paper work, we are ready to get home and start figuring out life as a family of five! We still have to wait for her passport/visa to get processed. We leave here in one week. It seems so far away but I know that it will go by quickly. My heart tugs a little knowing that Elaine will be leaving her birth country and culture and I pray for her as she makes the transition to all the new sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc.

We had a nice relaxing day. Elaine did slept much better last night. She slept from 9:30pm-7am, just waking up once and immediately going back to sleep once she saw I was next to her. I have never had a child sleep in the same bed but all rules are out right now! I really feel like she is bonding with us, esp. me. If I leave the room, she cries and stops as soon as I pick her up. She is content is just sitting on my lap and watching things around her. We went to a beautiful garden, what they call a park, today. She walked about ½ the time holding onto our fingers. She walked up and down stairs with no problem. She would cry occasionally and we weren’t sure why. We would pick her up and carry her and then put her back down and she would be happy.

We had more tears today than yesterday but I really don’t mind because at least she is showing some emotion. She is soooo quiet, no sounds at all except an occasional cry. She is eating but needs to drink more. I am sure that the juice tastes different than what she is use to in the orphanage. Evidently, that is all she drank. She is not thrilled about water but she will sip some with a straw. Mike poured some in her mouth and she looked at him and spit it out! I told her that that wouldn’t fly in the future! But, it was kind of cute.

I have a close up picture that really show her eyes. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on the computer because she usually doesn’t open the hurt eye that wide. It is very interesting because that eye tracks right along with the good eye. I can’t wait to get her evaluated and see what we need to do for her. The picture also shows how big her clothes are on her. She is wearing 18 month size clothes and they fall off of her. I bought a 2T sleeper that she can’t wear. She really needs 12 month clothes. Her little pants keep falling off! Don’t you just love the big bow!

I also have a picture of our group. Well, this is ½ our group. The other half are adopting from other provinces and will be here on Friday. I think there are 90 of us altogether, including the babies.

Right now she is sitting on my lap eating a wafer cookie and loving it. This is huge because she doesn’t like to feed herself. But, she is really eating this! We are ordering in dinner tonight from a deli. The owner is from New York and moved her to run a deli selling sub sandwiches, pizzas and wings, bagels etc. He markets hotels were most Americans stay. We are going to order chicken noodle soup for her. This will be her second meal today with out her standard Congee.

We are going to see two orphanages tomorrow. Hers is 7 hours away so we can’t go there but our guide said these two will give us a good idea of what hers is like.

Ready to be home! Goff Gang

Click on below photos to enlarge