Monday, August 21, 2006

"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break." -Chinese proverb

We know Ellen was meant to be in our family. She is such a joy, this entire adoption experience has truly been a blessing.

This morning we went sightseeing around Changsha. Our guides, Jane and Michael, have done a wonderful job showing us around and teaching us a lot as we go. On our way home we stopped at a local store to load up on some snacks, baby food and a few toys for the kids. It was interesting to see the fish market in the store. They had turtle, snake, toad, eel, and many other live sea creatures...Connor and Spencer didn't care for the odor in this department, so we passed through as quickly as possible.

Having limited restaurant options while in Hunan, we are eating at the same places every day. And as good as it is, imagine having the same meal 3 times a day for over a week....I would pay good money for a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich about now!

This afternoon Jane translated the documents we were given the day we visited Ellen's orphanage. We were quite surprised at how detailed the record was. We learned many things about Ellen's first year and especially her close relationship with her nanny. We are sorry her main nanny wasn't at the orphanage the day we visited. Our guide thought maybe she wasn't there intentionally. From our records we learned how close she and Ellen had become and our guide thinks it may have been too difficult to see one another. Jason and I were so touched and grateful to learn more about the love Ellen was shown and hope one day to meet He Yan Hui so we can thank her for all she did for Ellen.

Learning more about Ellen from these documents only deepened our love for her and the loss she is going through. She is such a good baby, yet she is also struggling at times-and we can understand why.

There are 5 babies in our travel group and there is a "sick bug" that is getting passed from one to another. Ellen is the last one to get it and we think it's on its way. She started coughing last night and a little more today. Some of the babies have it worse than others and are on antibiotics. We hope Ellen doesn't get too sick, we'll see how she is in the morning.

A treat for us today was that 2 HUGE groups of families adopting babies checked into our hotel last night. Today was their "Gotcha day" so this hotel was just hoppin' with chinese babies! It was so fun to see all the new babies and meet many of the families. I felt like such and expert having had Ellen for days!

Tomorrow we have a lot of paperwork to fill out in preparation for our appointment at the embassy in Guangzhou so I'm heading to bed. Good night and sweet dreams from China....