The good news is that we picked up Ali this morning without incident!  (OK, so it has been brought to my attention that “Ali” may not actually be the correct spelling of her name.  Going forward, I am going to use that name with the understanding that it may well change at some point in the future. )  The bad news is that she has been sick the last couple of days and, while being a trooper, really isn’t feeling well.  Our understanding is that they gave her some IV fluids to help “perk” her up a bit, but we went for a walk this afternoon in the park and she ended up feeling terrible.  We went to lunch and she had to go back to the hotel with Kelly and one of the teachers from the orphanage who is here to help with the transition.

Below are pictures, but they are pictures from Brittany’s iPod as I have yet to find a card reader.  I think we will be able to find one on Wednesday, so until that point in time your are stuck with whatever I can do with Adobe Lightroom and the low quality picture that the iPod produces.

Here is a picture from the hotel restaurant on the 29th floor of the Holiday Inn.  The restaurant rotates and that rotation starts at about 8:30 every morning.  Someone SHOULD have told me that!  It kind of jerks as the gear mechanism takes hold and I seriously thought we were having an earthquake or the building was falling.  Now I understand that everything is just rotating … really, really slowly!

This is right after Ali had arrived.  She seems pretty nervous and unsure about the entire thing.  Poor girl.  There were three other families receiving children at the government center this morning, so it was a zoo!  The other children were significantly younger than Ali.  

The lady on the right is Kathy, the music teacher from Ali’s orphanage.  She cares very much for Ali and agreed to come to Hefei and spend the day and night here during Ali’s first day just to make sure the transition went smoothly. It was really nice to have her with us this afternoon and be able to tell us that Ali wasn’t feeling well and get her back to the hotel so that she could rest.  We have to head back out to the city where Ali’s orphanage is tomorrow to process her passport, and that is a 1 – 2 hour drive, so we are are hoping that she feels better by then.  No fun to have all this happen AND have to spend a bunch of time in the car when you are sick!

Note that Kelly and Ali have matching sweat suits, just reversed colors!  Nice …

Here I am signing the paperwork making Ali’s adoption official …

Kelly added her signature…

And our guide, Cherry, overlooked all the documents to make sure they were correct.  I had a little bit of a panic when I thought the the immigration official in China had not stamped my entry Visa.  But, after hunting around awhile, i found it!  Phew!

We are farther along in the process than we were yesterday!  We will continue moving one step at a time!

Cameron

P.S.  I took Abby and Brittany to the grocery store today to pick up some fruit.  On our way down the steps we ran into a Dairy Queen.  Seriously!  It was great.  There goes my foreign country induced diet!