Meeting Davina

Today has been a very good day.  We all slept pretty well.  It was our first time sleeping in a bed since Saturday. We got up and got ready.  The breakfast buffet is on the 30th floor.  There was an amazing amount of food and an incredible view.

We met with our adoption agency's representative and got all of our documents ready.  While we were in the meeting, our representative got a call that Damina was having tea and dim sun while waiting for our meeting.

We drove across town and then walked several blocks in the rain to get to a very non-descript building.  We rode up a small elevator (9 of us because we were one of two families going to the meeting) and up to the 6th floor.  All of us waited anxiously for the arrival of our precious girls. The other family's daughter came first and the mom rushed to her daughter only to be told that there was a  "procedure" and the daughter had to go do something in another room.  This family's daughter is 14 months old and she just kept crying.  Finally after what seemed like two days, we caught a glimpse of Davina coming down the hall.  She was smiling :). We waved to her as she went by, and then she finally came out and we showered her with hugs!  I don't remember much of those first moments.  Then we went and sat on the couch.  She had saved her money and brought gifts for us!  So sweet.  She was smiling and smiling (and the rest of us, too).  I got to ask the caregiver some questions and then we were off to go shopping at a huge store that included a grocery store.  We got some comfort foods, a hand held translator, and a traditional soup cooking pot.

We went back to the hotel and rested while Todd filled out some more paperwork.  Then we went out to a Chinese restaurant.  It, according to our guide, was a restaurant for locals and we were definitely the only non-locals there.  We asked Davina to order for us all.  We had tofu, eggplant, pork, and an unknown dish (that we later discovered was frog) Most of the items in the menu had an English tag, too, but not that.  Because of the uncertainty, and because it was super hot, I ate only one bite.  Todd had a couple. I don't think Davina liked it much either.  The other food is amazing.  I would never have ordered the eggplant or tofu, but they were both delicious.  We each had a bowl of rice in front of us and we would take one small amount of the food from the serving dish and put it on our bowls.  Of course, the only utensils we had were chopsticks and a flat spoon.  Davina enjoyed helping us learn to use chopsticks, and she was very entertained by our attempts.

After dinner, we came back to the hotel and had FaceTime with our family.  That pretty much covered the day.  We went to bed exhausted.  Today we have to go to a notary office to do more paperwork.

I am having trouble posting pictures here. The best place to see pictures is on Facebook.