Gotcha Day (part 1)

It's 8:00 a.m. Hefei time and we have 10 minutes to post before we meet our guide and drive to the CCAA office where we'll meet Noelle for the first time. As you can imagine, we're jumping out of our skin excited.

Jennifer wanted me to hit some highlights for now and we'll blog later. Our computer still isn't connecting, so we're borrowing a friend's computer.

We had a great time in Beijing. Our guides were wonderful and almost all of the sales people spoke sufficient English to help us buy things! We also had a chance to attend a multi-national church service yesterday. It was incredible to worship God in both English and Chinese. We'll share more about that later.

Last night we flew into Hefei and met our guide "Fussy Nanny Jane" (her words). Jane is a very intense, highly organized woman and we already feel secure in knowing that she won't let anything slip past us. She also has a wealth of information about caring for our babies, which is helpful to us first-time parents.

We're in Hefei with Brian and Amy Woods (San Antonio, TX) and Bill, Amorisa and Zion Denzel (Ventura, CA). It's fun to be sharing this part of the journey with them. We're already making plans for hanging out in each other's rooms and letting the girls play together.

We'll leave the hotel at 8:30 (sharp! acording to Nanny Jane). She's gotten us the first appointment at CCAA. Noelle and the other children will arrive about 9:00. We'll spend about 30 minutes with the orphanage directors and have them answer some basic questions. Then we'll stop by a supermarket to pick up diapers, formula, water, etc. The plan is to be back to the hotel by lunch and to relax during the afternoon. Tuesday will be a big paperwork day. Wednesday is completely "free". Thursday we'll visit the Hefei orphange. Friday we'll travel to Ghangzhou. The way things work, this is the "bond" day where we officially announce our intent to adopt. This intent has been posted/needs to be posted to give relatives one last chance to claim their child. Since Noelle was abandoned and none of her relatives know her by her orphange name, this is just a formality. I'll let Jennifer fill in the rest of the details about what the next few days will look like.

Well, my ten minutes are up. So as much as I enjoy "chatting" with you, I have more important (daddy) things to do!

Love ya'
Eric (and Jennifer)