Weiss Family Update: Gotcha Day

What a day! Today is known as Gotcha Day is the adoption world. The day you receive your child. It is often celebrated yearly. Our day started out early as our luggage had to be placed outside our hotel room door by 7:30am. Then we enjoyed the breakfast buffet. A bus came and picked us all up at the hotel and took us to the airport. The weather was quite rainy when we left the hotel, but by the time we got to the airport, the sun came out, so we had some nice views of the island and ocean. The Hong Kong airport is huge. Bigger than any airport in the US. The inside looks like a shopping mall with gates for the planes stuck in. Hong Kong is really more of a province than just a city. Hong Kong consists of Hong Kong island, Kowloon and the New Territories.

9 CCAI families flew to Nanchang. There was another group of adoptive parents on the same flight from a different agency. We were met at the airport by 2 new CCAI reps. They got a bus for us and took us to the hotel. Nanchang is more what I remember Beijing being like. It is not as modern is appearance, many of the people don’t speak English, we feel like foreigners, and the traffic is much more crazy. We are staying at the Jinfeng Hotel. Apparently it is a 5 star hotel and there are lots of adoptive families that stay here. The rooms are quite nice. There is a queen sized bed, crib, and bathroom with a shower stall and bathtub. They even provide a baby bathtub.

We all met in one of the meeting rooms at the hotel with our CCAI reps to go over what to expect in the next few hours and days. Reality set in when they released us to go back to our rooms to get our cameras and toys for our babies. When we left the meeting room, 4 of the babies were already here, but we didn’t know for sure which ones. It turns out it was the Tonggu babies (Megan). We were 3^rd to get Megan. She wasn’t too impressed with us and cried for quite awhile. They told us the Megan had caught a cold on the way to Nanchang from the orphanage. The babies are not used to air conditioning, but on the ride to Nanchang, they had air conditioning (they told us to keep the room temp. at 27 Celsius. This is probably how she got sick. She has a runny nose and cough. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into something worse. Chinese babies take their bottles with formula and rice cereal mixed together and the temperature is very warm. The Tonggu babies also have sugar in their bottles. We will wean that in a couple of days. After we finally convinced Megan to drink her bottle, she fell right asleep. We laid her in the crib and she slept about 1 ½ hrs. After she woke up, she was in a much better mood. We had to have her footprint done for some paperwork and then we went to the hotel restaurant for supper. She played on m lap and ate congee. After supper we tried another bottle, but she threw it all up. Then we tried a nuk and that put her to sleep. Incidentally, she is a daddy’s girl. They say that it is common for the babies to bond to one parent at first.

Tomorrow is a busy day with registration of the adoption, so hopefully we will all sleep well.