Gotcha day could not have gone better. We arrived 7am at the orphanage, thirty minutes too early to enter the building. We sat in the van with the anticipation killing us. Of course Brad was in the process of teaching one of our assistants how to operate the camera after he realized he was entrusting all the video about to be captured to someone who did not even know an ounce of English. It wasn't more than 10 minutes that had passed before the orphanage director came out to greet us. We collected our papers, bags, cameras, and walked eagerly to the front entrance of the orphanage. We could not believe how amazing this facility was. It was immaculate, large, and as our guide expressed, not lacking money. We walk into a large room where leather chairs line the walls and the center was empty. Immediately the director starts the paper process where we sign a bunch of papers with our written signature and finger prints. After we completed our paperwork, we waited. Our guide Helen, asked the director a list of questions we had put together. They talked in there native tongue with us both sitting right beside curiously wondering what the answers were going to be. The hardest thing was not knowing when little Barrett was going to enter the room. We would hear sounds from outside the room but they were all office staff. But there was one sound we could not mistake for staff... It was Barrett, who our guide later told us was talking up a storm and trying to make his way outside to play. As he entered the room, it was a moment we had tried to imagine weeks prior but nothing compared to seeing him enter and walk over to us. He was very quiet and shy. You could see confusion written all over his face. Of course moments prior he thought he was going outside to the play ground. Brad and I got down on our knees to meet him eye to eye and the caregiver began to introduce us to him. "Mama" she said pointing to Me. "Baba" she said pointing to Brad. Baba in Chinese is daddy. The orphanage director always stayed in control of Barrett by holding his hand. It was expressed to us that it is easier for the children not to be placed into the arms of the parents inside the orphanage in an effort to keep them from getting upset. They placed us all at one end of the room and snapped some pictures. We then all moved to the atrium of the facility and did another group photo. We began to walk out the doors and head to the van. Brad and I still had not had a chance to hold little Barrett. It was all that we wanted at that point. We climbed into the van and at that moment the director handed Barrett to me... He was now ours. Moments later, as we pulled away from the orphanage, Barrett fell asleep in my arms.
We had no dippers, no bottles and no formula. We needed to go shopping. It was expressed to us to wait until this moment before we purchased any items because we did not know what would work best. Thankfully our guide, Helen, took the lead and made sure we got to the right store armed with the answers we needed. The store was closed! It was 20 til 10 and we had not had any breakfast so we went next door to eat at "Kung Fu"... Chinese fast food. Barrett had his first bowl of congee outside the orphanage, Brad had a bowl of beef noodle soup, and I had a taro root leaf wrap with rice and chicken. Not your typical breakfast but we did not care too much. Barrett was still very wide eyed and quite. You could tell he did not know what was happening. The busy Beijing world he was thrusted into was much more than what he could process. But as each spoonful of food was consumed, his personality began to come out. We found one key to his heart... Food. Apparently he eats 8 times a day. Not small snacks but meals and full bottles of formula.
Our stroll through the store was interesting. It was a combination of K-Mart and a oriental store somewhere in New York's china town. Live fish (not for pets but food), odd vegetables, and fruits, and anything else you would need to survive in china. After getting the needed items, we headed back to the hotel for some rest because we still had to go to the civil affairs office to finalize the adoption papers.
On our way to the office, we stopped at a very small photo studio (the size of a small studio apartment), and quickly sat down together as a family to get a photo for the official papers. They printed the wallet sized photos and we jumped back into the van.
Apparently, we were the first adoptive parents to be entered into the new adoption computer system. July 1st was the roll out date for the new program. This did not go as planned for the staff. We waited and waited as our guide met with the staff. Brad, Barrett and I were alone at in the waiting area, ill equipped to be with a two year old for what turned out to be a couple of hours. However, Barrett made the most of it. He was quickly bonding to us and starting to play. He found a rack of government brochures and proceeded to re-organize/scramble the order of them on the display rack. We explored every corner of the room again and again. Brad was trying to keep his lunch down by lying on the metal waiting room bench. We figure it was the combination of motion sickness from the stop and go traffic and complete exhaustion.
Finally we got into the office to sign papers. Barrett even had to play a part... putting his hand onto an inkpad and stamp his hand print onto a paper. Helen said it was now Chinese law that Barrett was ours!
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