The wake-up came at 4:00am and the bell boy picked up our luggage at 4:30am. Breakfast (buns and coffee) was at 5:20am and the bus left for the airport at 5:50am. Everyone was punctual...all 9 families (we were to meet two more in Nanchang). While we were all going through the motions, there was an odd unspoken feeling amongst the crowd. It was our last moments without our children. Let me repeat that...our children! We were fortunate enough to fly out of the new Beijing airport terminal that was built for the 2008 Olympics. It was lovely and a true combination of the Hong Kong airport and the Seoul airport - very modern and full of glass. We hung out with all of our new friends in the terminal waiting for our flight. A trip to the airport convenience store yielded Pringles and soda. Yum! Not much else was recognizable and I was not about to buy fruit in an airport! Our flight to Nanchang was uneventful, if a bit dramatic. The pilot took us straight into the air and straight down to the ground for our take-off and landings. It was crazy and just enough humor for all of us.
The Nanchang airport was fine, although the bathroom was a typical Chinese water closet. Our luggage made it (yippee!) and we all boarded the bus to the Jin Feng Hotel in Nanchang, which is the capital of the Jiangxi province. Our phenomenal guide, Veronica, gave us such a memorable talk on the way to the hotel. Charlie recorded it so that we could watch it again; what an amazing lady! It wasn't even anything that I can write down, just know that it lifted everyone's spirits and gave us such a sense of peace. Wow, just thinking about it now sends chills down my spine!
We unpacked and went to a local market to buy some water (tap water is not potable here) before we headed to lunch. Our last meal as a family of two! It was so eventful that the wedding reception that was being thrown on the floor above the restaurant accidentally dumped the good luck rice on me! Yes, all over me...it was in my hair, on my clothes, on the table, you name it, it was there! What a sign of good luck! Gotcha was supposed to be on the second floor of the hotel at 3:30pm, and all of the parents were anxiously waiting in the lobby...every time a baby came in the door everyone would gasp (what stalkers we were!). Veronica came down and said that they wouldn't be there until 4:30pm because the orphanage bus was stuck on the freeway because of a bus accident. Those poor babies (and those equally poor nannies) were stuck on that bus for over 5 hours! Ugh...
At about 4:30pm, there were a few babies getting out of a bus out front...they started to come in and we saw Makena! She was the second baby in the door and was being carried by a beautiful young nanny. We recognized her right away. The throng of adoptive parents was so funny! Everyone headed upstairs - babies first and then families. All of the babies sit with their nannies in a row of chairs and the families sat in a semi-circle around them. We had to have our passports, so when they called Makena's Chinese name (which took us a while to pronounce, but we've become quite proficient!) we had to take our passports to the orphanage director to verify that we were the right parents for Mak. Then the nanny handed her to me and made sure we knew that she had just started to walk! What a moment. It is impossible to put it into words and I won't even try. We watched everyone get their babies while Mak, Charlie, and I got a bit acquainted. It was pretty much mass chaos, but everyone waited their turn to meet their kids.
We brought Makena up to our room to get to know her. She was not happy, but was not crying. We played a bit and tried desperately to make her a bottle of formula. The orphanage director had given us a bag of formula and rice cereal that she ate, so we were trying to follow the Chinese directions. Ha! BTW, it is now actually Wednesday and we have it down to a science...and it turns out that she doesn't like rice cereal - go figure! Anyway, the clothes that she came in were way too tight for her and she had big marks on her legs from the bloomers and the socks. We will keep that outfit for her, but it definitely isn't going back on her. Veronica ordered pizza for us and brought it to our room while we had two hours of family time. At 7pm, Charlie went downstairs to fill out some more paperwork and then I headed down when he returned. We got Mak to sleep pretty easy that night; she was obviously grieving. Veronica recommended that we put her in one of our beds (it seems that almost all of the hotels only have two doubles...no kings) to sleep. That seemed to work. Talk about a bizarre feeling though. We just sat there and looked at her. What a little beauty! She was very quiet that day and didn't cry - boy were we in for a rude awakening in a couple of days! She did sleep for about four hours at a time that night and while we tried making her bottles at her prescribed times, she just wouldn't take them. Poor little thing...Monday was going to be a hectic day too!
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