Gotcha Day
[we were too tired to post about gotcha day yesterday, so I am playing catch-up today]
I don't think there are words to describe gotcha day. We want to post our video but Anna is sleeping and we don't want to wake her by downloading it etc etc etc.
[NEW! Here is the Video - but only watch it after you read the post.]
As our bus was pulling up to the civil affairs office the 14 girls from YuanLiang (sp) SWI were just arriving. They were dressed in little matching yellow snowsuits (it was at least 72 degrees here yesterday) and red chinese embroidered vests. It was like a rock star sighting as everyone squeled and paniced and rushed to see if they could spot a peak at their daughter as the caretakers tried to cover their faces as they rushed in the building before us.
As a logistical note - of the 15 families in our group - 14 have babies from an orphanage that is 9 hours outside of Changsha. All of these girls were in foster care. We are the lone YouXian family, which is an orphanage 3 hours away and Anna has spent her whole life at the SWI. This means that most of the girls had just arrived to "meet" their new parents after a 9 hour bus ride with their caretakers. Calculate that truama. (meet is such a euphamistic word in gotcha day parlance. it really means "tag, you are it forever")
After they sneak the YuanLiang girls into the building the 15 families crowd into this relatively small overheated room (notice in the pictures I was wearing a tank top). We each receive our babies one at a time. We just had time to enter and start to make photo arrangements with some of our fellow parents to be when we hear them call our name. (good to be first - I suspect we have the best pictures and video of anyone!)
I was jumping up and down and crying and oh my gosh. Anna was wearing 4 layers of clothes including a big blue snow suit and hat. She was crying like crazy, oozzing buckets of sweat (and sort of smelled like a wet dog). The anarchy grew from there. Within a half hour we had a room of 15 crying babies, 35 crying adults and a handful of 3 year old sisters having emotional melt downs. I can't wait to upload the video. It was amazing.
Then imagine moving this chaos onto a bus to go back to the hotel.
I don't think there are words to describe gotcha day. We want to post our video but Anna is sleeping and we don't want to wake her by downloading it etc etc etc.
[NEW! Here is the Video - but only watch it after you read the post.]
As our bus was pulling up to the civil affairs office the 14 girls from YuanLiang (sp) SWI were just arriving. They were dressed in little matching yellow snowsuits (it was at least 72 degrees here yesterday) and red chinese embroidered vests. It was like a rock star sighting as everyone squeled and paniced and rushed to see if they could spot a peak at their daughter as the caretakers tried to cover their faces as they rushed in the building before us.
As a logistical note - of the 15 families in our group - 14 have babies from an orphanage that is 9 hours outside of Changsha. All of these girls were in foster care. We are the lone YouXian family, which is an orphanage 3 hours away and Anna has spent her whole life at the SWI. This means that most of the girls had just arrived to "meet" their new parents after a 9 hour bus ride with their caretakers. Calculate that truama. (meet is such a euphamistic word in gotcha day parlance. it really means "tag, you are it forever")
After they sneak the YuanLiang girls into the building the 15 families crowd into this relatively small overheated room (notice in the pictures I was wearing a tank top). We each receive our babies one at a time. We just had time to enter and start to make photo arrangements with some of our fellow parents to be when we hear them call our name. (good to be first - I suspect we have the best pictures and video of anyone!)
I was jumping up and down and crying and oh my gosh. Anna was wearing 4 layers of clothes including a big blue snow suit and hat. She was crying like crazy, oozzing buckets of sweat (and sort of smelled like a wet dog). The anarchy grew from there. Within a half hour we had a room of 15 crying babies, 35 crying adults and a handful of 3 year old sisters having emotional melt downs. I can't wait to upload the video. It was amazing.
Then imagine moving this chaos onto a bus to go back to the hotel.
posted by C2K at 9:01 PM
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