Hefei - Capital of Grace's province

We flew into Hefei in the Anhui Province on Sunday night and we would be able to meet Grace on Monday morning. I was getting very nervous. Typically you go the Civil Affairs building and the orphanage director would bring the child there and hand them to their new parents. It is such an abrupt change for the child. Since Grace has been in foster care for at least a year and a half she would not even know the orphanage director. Everyone was saying that the foster mom would not come and that we would not get to meet her. We pleaded with our guide to try to find out more information for us and sent emails home asking everyone to pray that somehow it would be possible for the foster mom to be present and for Grace to have time to warm up to us. We left for the Civil Affairs building and a few minutes after arriving they said that Grace was there. We watched her walk down the hall holding her foster mother's hand. What a powerful moment. Grace is almost 3 so 2 white strangers taking her from the only life she knew was going to be very difficult. We were able to get her to interact with us a little bit but she was very reluctant even to be near us. Her records had indicated that she was shy and not fond of strangers so we were not surprised. We would find out later that they had not prepared Grace at all for the adoption. We had sent pictures of us but they did not show them to her. They said she was too young to understand. Peeling her away from her foster mom was too much for me to handle so I asked our guide if by chance the foster mom could come to our hotel with us. The director agreed and said he would pick her up later that day! Wow! I couldn't believe it. We did our paperwork and left for the hotel. At the hotel we played outside for a long time and had a chance to ask the foster mom every question we could think of about Grace. Grace called me Mama for the first time there. We all had lunch together at the hotel and Grace would feed me and let me feed her. She ate a lot and her foster mom kept trying to make her eat more and more. We then went to our hotel room and tried to get Grace to sleep. We tried again to persuade the foster mother to say goodbye even if it would be hard and we would have to take Grace from her screaming but the foster mother refused. She insisted on sneaking out. Grace wouldn't sleep but let me take her to the bathroom. We washed our hands afterward and then started playing in the sink. She love to unscrew lids and dump the little containers of things in the sink. Like any 3 year old would! We had stacking cups in there and we played with them and put our feet in the sink and then took a long bath. All out of site of the foster mom. During this time the foster mom snuck out. Grace was very tired after the bath an nearly fell asleep squatting on the bathroom floor stacking the cups. Then she stood up with them to walk out of the bathroom and slipped and banged her head on the door. So the inevitable started. Poor thing just cried and cried until she was exhausted. She would not let us near her for a long time but then came to me and said Mama with her arms reaching up for me to hold her. This would be one of many sessions of deep grieving. We were prepared for this but it certainly did not make it easy. Things were about to get harder! After Grace fell asleep that night I started throwing up. There was a wonderful doctor there who had also adopted from Grace's city. He had lots of great meds for me but I quickly got behind on fluids and could not recover. During the next 4 days Rob took care of Grace and I was in bed. He was amazing with her. She was shut down a lot of the time but we would see glimpses of the Grace we had met on the first day. Nap time and bed time were extremely difficult and poor Rob had to deal with it all. I was so glad that Rob recovered so quickly from being sick before the trip. To think he might not have even been there! Both Rob's parents and I continue to comment about how amazing Rob was during this terribly difficult time. Thursday night I took a turn for the worst and we were supposed to be flying out on Friday. I was determined to get out of there and I knew there was no way I could get on a plane as I had not eaten or had much to drink in 4 days so we made the tough decision to go to the hospital. Our dear guide, Snow, took Kirk and Rob and I to the hospital in a taxi in the middle of the night. We went to the best hospital in the capital and I can't begin to tell you how filthy it was. A bug crawled under my arm when they were taking my blood. There was filth and bandages and Qtips on the floor and walls. People would just spit on the floor and parents would hold kids over the trash cans to go to the bathroom. The bathroom floor had a 1/2 inch of liquid them. Hopefully water? No toilets but holes in the ground. Rob headed back to the hotel in case Grace woke up and we ended up being there 8 hours. The medicine knocked me out but Kirk couldn't sleep in the chair so he was up all night. I got three bags of something through IV and felt great by the time we left. It all cost 44$. Unbelievable. Glad we got out of there without getting anything serious. We flew out the next day to Guangzhou.