Well, our long awaited "Gotcha Day" has arrived and what an experience that was. We just cannot describe it adequately… very emotional to say the least. We were both shaking and had tears of joy when Nicole was placed in our arms.
Nicole is so easy going, very inquisitive and alert to EVERYTHING. She talks quite a bit of baby talk, smiles and laughs a lot. She is a doll and we are having a wonderful time with her in our motel room. She has already discovered everything there is in the room. She stands quite a bit, hanging on of course with whatever is available.
Tomorrow we go back to the same Registry Office for completing the adoption process. After tomorrow, she will be legally ours – up until then we are under a "Harmonious Agreement" with the orphanage. The Harmonious Agreement allows us to have Nicole with us until the adoption is final.
The last 2 days has been very interesting. Yesterday we left Hong Kong, stopped on the border between China and Hong Kong to go through the Hong Kong Immigration exit process. We then pressed on past "No Mans Land" to China. The No Mans Land was just a small strip on the border where nobody is allowed. It has an electric fence since Hong Kong has a problem with Chinese sneaking into Hong Kong.
Next was China’s Immigration and Customs. It was not a good experience. Our tour guide, Joann, went toe-to-toe arguing with the Immigration Officer. He was yelling at her, pacing back and forth and she was responding nice and polite. It was all about having our group of 40 bypass the other hundreds in line so we could make it to our plane flight on time. Joann had pulled Kelly and I out of the group and just walked past the entire line of folks waiting to get processed. So, here we have Kelly and I standing in a newly created line in front of a booth with no official in it, and our tour guide is trying to get the Immigration and Customs Officer to allow the group to bypass the VERY long line. We had no clue what was going on other than Kelly and I were sticking out like sore thumbs with this scene of argument going back and forth.
Joann eventually won and the Immigration and Customs Officer finally sent someone over to open the booth and process us through.
Near the Hong Kong border, China is very modern and built up. It was quite amazing. The city Shenzhen is only 25 years old yet is filled with 30-40+ story apartment buildings. It floored us that the city was so large yet so young (25 years) and fairly modern. If it were not for the Chinese signs and clothing hanging out the windows to dry, you would not know you were in China.
The flight from Shenzhen to Changsha was only 1 hour, 15 minutes. Changsha has been described as Pittsburgh in the 1950s. I don’t know about that but it is a very smoggy city with lots of car honking.