Monday May 10th Day 3

Early morning wake up call at 4:00am. We all left on a bus for the airport with packed breakfast in hand. We had one of the earliest flights at 7:30am and it was an 1 1/2 hour flight. The plan for the day was to fly into Ningxiam our daughter's province, and drive to the capital city yinChuan where our hotel is, which is apx 45min from the airport. We are very grateful that we are with one other family from our group who is also adopting from the same orphanage, their daughter who they are adopting is almost 4 years old. They also have brought their other daughter who is 6 years old, and she was born in the same province as Mary (Hunan). We landed at the airport and our guide was there waiting for us, he introduced himself (his name is Tony), and then he quickly stated that there has been a change of plans. We were originally supposed to go straight to the hotel, freshen up and then to the civil affairs office to meet our daughter's. He said our plane was too late and that instead we needed to go straight to the orphanage to meet our daughter's then proceed with lots of paperwork. Typically you do the paper work on the Tuesday, but for some reason things had changed. We were all pretty anxious. Both families and our guide then went to our tour bus and headed to our destination. It took about 50minutes to get there. Once there, we just took in all our paperwork and left all the luggage on the bus. They made us all take our temperatures before heading in and then they took us to a business room where they all introduced themselves and asked us to sit. We did about 20 minutes of paper work to prove who we were and showed them specific documents that were needed to proceed. Then out of the blue, they brought two girls into the room, we were so disorganized. James quickly tried to find the camera etc...a caregiver walked towards us with XiangEr in her hands. They asked her to come to us and she shook her head no! She looked at us again and took one look at James and cried. It took about 5minutes for her to come to my arms (I actually thought it wasn't going to happen). She didn't know what to think, but she did so well. We spent another 10minutes in the room, and then they led us to the main entrance, where they brought out some of the other kids, and a lot of the care givers. They all came out to say goodbye to the girls. The nannies took her from me and all were giving her kisses and hugs goodbye, there was just so much going on, we just felt pretty numb. Eventually they gave us the girls back and we proceeded to leave.
Our guide informed us that we had a full day of paperwork ahead of us when all we wanted to do was go back to the hotel and get to know her.
We went first to the civil affairs office and spent 1 1/2 hours there, then went to a photo shop and had our picture taken with her documentation papers, then we went to the police department, then to the police station for a passport photo (we waited there for over an hour ). By this time we were all so exhausted and it was becoming very stressful. By around 4pm we got to go back to the hotel.
We took her back and spent the rest of the evening just watching and interacting with her. We ordered in room service and ate on the bed. After dinner we thought we would try the bath. Judging from her reaction she has never been in a bath North American style, I'm not quite sure how they washed her but she did know to take water in her two hands and was her face. She had a complete ball with Mary in there. She never sat down fully but squatted the whole time.
After bath time it was time to try teeth brushing. It is our guess that she has never had her teeth brushed before, judging from the condition of them, and how she reacted when they were brushed, she laughed hysterically the whole time. We laid her down for bed with Mary and she fell asleep in about 10minutes.
What a blessing she is to our family.