Today was mostly about getting Chloe sworn in at the US consulate, but we managed to sneak in some play time at the park for the girls, as well as some more shopping. We met at 2:15 and drove roughly 30 minutes to the consulate (it used to be walking distance from the hotel, but was no longer big enough to handle all of the traffic). No pictures are available since we weren't allowed to take cameras (or any electronics) with us up to the 5th floor where all of the swearing would take place-so we just added one with the girls sleeping on the way over. It was a very informal ceremony, shich began with each family being called up to one of the windows (DMV style) and then the entire group being sworn in by one of the 100 or so consulate employess-she had a few interesting tidbits-there were 3,000 children adopted to the US from china last year, and for the first time ever they had more special needs children adopted than healthy babies (roughly 57% of adoptions were for special needs children) and it was amazing to see some of the families that were officially coming together today-one of the families was adopting 2 children (one was a 14 year old girl who was barely adopted in time before she was forced to finish her time as a minor in an orphanage, and their second daughter who was 8 years old who had the most severe clubbed feet I had ever seen)-this marked the 5th and 6th adoptions for this family-truly some remarkable people surrounding us. As we left the building after promising to uphold and defend (on behalf of Chloe) Chloe reached over to Kendall and planted a kiss on her for the first time, almost acknowledging what had just transpired. She then spent the busride home singing a song that she had made up but that we had no idea what it was-turns out she was singing "Daddy is happy, daddy is happy"-a much better result than what i had presupposed.
We celebrated by walking over to an Italian restaurant that actually had pretty good pizza, and not bad lasagna. We are getting excited about returning home (we leave friday night) and can't wait for such simple pleasures as drinks with ice, cold milk, and the ability to brush teeth without bottled water. And believe it or not, I can't wait to get chinese food when we get home-trust me-not the same
Oh my Gosh!!! These were exactly the things on my list of "can't wait to do when back in the States." We got icy cold soda at the LA airport. And since being at the house we've both had big glasses of cold milk. And yes, tonight we got to brush teeth with tap water! Woo-Hoo!!!
ReplyDeleteYay! Welcome home guys! When I went to China I begged for ice in a restaurant and got TWO measly little cubes. I devoured frozen homemade popsicles from a vendor on a bike while in my Dad's home village and I was warned not to but I WANTED something super cold so badly. I was totally fine, must be b/c my stomach is Chinese. :D My dad was more leery about the cleanliness than me.
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