We headed out 4am Friday and before we even left our street, the battery in the van died. We were able to get the truck to jump the battery and were on our way about 20 minutes later than planned. Our friend Angela drove us to the airport and brought the van back to our house. So thankful for good friends who took care of replacing the battery for us!! Thanks Emil!! God is so good!
We had a short flight to Chicago and a long layover (5hours) until our 15 hour flight to Hong Kong. We had a good flight and got in late to Hong Kong. We slept in the Airport Marriott and then took a van to Guangzhou the next morning. We got thru the border crossing into China in under an hour and without any issues. Our flight out of Guangzhou to Nanning was only an hour and we met our guide and were in our hotel by early Sunday afternoon. In a little over 23 hours we would meet our daughter!
Our first meeting was full of smiles and shyness. We met Joy and were so happy for this day! It was unreal seeing her in person after so many months! We spent the evening with her hanging out in the hotel room playing frisbee and getting to know her. We went out for dinner at the nearby mall with our guide along with us. Joy doesn't speak any English so it was nice to have our guide there to help translate.
We all got to bed around 10pm and had an early morning meeting to finalize paperwork. It really wasn't a lot of time to get to know Joy in only a few hours time, but we didn't realize a lot of this until later in the week. We signed all the paperwork and she signed her papers too and the adoption was finalized. As an older child (over 10 yrs old) she had the option to refuse to sign, but I don't think things were necessarily clear when all was said and done.
The next few days she grieved very hard as the realization of the change hit home. She was very sad and thought that she change her mind and go back to live with her foster family forever. It took the help of the orphanage workers, the foster family and our guide to help her to understand that China would not (could not, i believe, according to their laws) allow the foster family to be an option for long term living.
We are so thankful she had such a loving foster family for the past 10 years! We understand how much she was loved and cared for by her foster family and how leaving that for the unknown is understandably very scary! We went to visit her foster family after a rough morning of grief. We are so glad we did! Her foster family is amazing. We visited for about 4 hours and were overwhelmed with such love and welcoming. We are so thankful that Joy has had the opportunity to experience family life and bonding. The separation now is hard, but the benefits of learned skill and life is priceless.
Once we left and had bags of clothes and food in tow, Joy was much better and had a better understanding of the new life she had opportunity to follow. She was still sad to leave her foster family, but in the week to follow she was able to contact them on video chat and it helped her transition a bit.
We flew to Guangzhou and met our guide there. We are so thankful for our guides who were able to give Joy a voice and translate for us! We still had a lot to discuss with her and boy does she like to negotiate! :) We were able to get through the medical visit and other required paper work with no issue. The rest of our time in Guangzhou was waiting for official documents to be processed.
We were able to do some site seeing that week and visited Shamian Island. It was a beautiful week weather wise (sunny and mid 70s). We did a little souvenir shopping and lots of walking.
The next day we visited the Safari. It was another beautiful day and the safari was amazing! There was a train ride through the park to see the larger animals and then a walking path through a maze of trails to see monkeys, birds, and other small animals. It was a fun day and nice to be out!
Our last full day we spent hanging out in the hotel room and later in the evening taking the Pearl River cruise. It was neat to see the city at night with all the lights. I even had one local ask to get a picture with me. haha!
We got all of our documents and official papers and headed to Hong Kong to catch our flight home on Thursday. The drive took about 3 hours and we are so thankful we were able to have a direct flight to the east coast!! A long day of travel and we made it home by midnight Thursday. When we arrived to the USA it was a cold 30 degrees! Thankfully we had our coats in the van and my parents brought extra scarf, gloves and hat for Joy! We bundled her up before heading outside and she was quite overcome with how cold it was. She was glad to get in the van and out of the cold weather. She grew up in southern China where their winter cold was only about 60 degrees. So, 30 degrees is so much colder for her. We hope she will acclimate quickly. While we were in China everyone was bundled in their coats and scarves at 70 degrees and we were in t-shirts and light jackets. :)
The past two weeks were filled with ups and downs and we are just so thankful for the prayers of our family and friends! God is truly working and we pray one day that Joy will know just how much we love her just like her foster family loved her. Each day we are taking step by step and trusting in God's help to show her Christ and His love through us.
Please continue to pray and the language barrier is still huge, but not impossible to over come. We will hopefully "officially" begin English lessons next week as God has provided a tutor who is also a Christian and speaks Mandarin as well! What a blessing!
We hope to continue to update the blog as we go. The holidays hopefully will not be too overwhelming! But we are excited for her to meet our extended family and have opportunity as both sides of the family will be gathering over the holiday season!!
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