2 China with Love: Trip to the Orphanage and Visit with Foster Family

Today was a busy day - we started out with a trip back to the Civil Affairs office to finalize Nola's adoption! She is officially ours!

We then went to the notary (we think) and signed some more papers, stopped and had lunch with our guide and the Assistant Director of the orphanage. Came back to the hotel and had a quick nap for Nola - which we had to wake her up from to get to the next appointment.

The next stop was a trip back to the orphanage and a visit with the foster family. We knew this part was going to be hard for Nola and it was. She knew where we were as soon as we pulled into the gates of the orphanage, even though she had only been there for 3 days prior to our meeting her. We took some pictures and then were led into a room where her foster family was waiting. She was very excited and ran to them. We got to take pictures with them (which we won't post here since we don't know if they would like that), and ask lots of questions. Nola's foster mom says that she is naughty - doesn't like to share food! I'm thinking naughty might also be some of the stubbornness we have been seeing. We gave them our email address so hopefully we will be able to correspond with them. We also have their names in English and Chinese for Nola for later. We found out they also take care of their 6 month old granddaughter - who Nola loved and was so sweet with during the visit. Nola started getting upset knowing she would have to say goodbye to them, so Jacob, Maddux and I left her with her foster family to take a tour of the orphanage. When we came back, the foster family had already left - we weren't expecting that so didn't get to say as much of a goodbye as we would have liked.

After they left we played outside the orphanage waiting for the director to come back so Nola could say goodbye. Nola wanted nothing to do with us (we were not surprised after her visit with her foster family). Finally after about an hour the director came back - she had a gift for Nola - a jade necklace that symbolizes safety.

We got back in the van with a crying Nola for the drive back to the hotel. Luckily after a few minutes back in the hotel room Nola warmed up to us again. We showed her some pictures last night that we had received back from her care package, with pictures of each month since she was found, including her foster family and she was okay looking at those and telling us who each person was.

Tomorrow we are going to do a bit of sightseeing and then a trip back to the notary office.

Pictures of the finalization of the adoption and a few of the Orphanage visit: