Reposting Sept 6 adoption/orphanage visit

Here is the post from Monday adoption/orphanage visit, the pictures from this day is on the previous 2 post. I woke up today at 6:30 with Monika and Jenny laying in Jenny's bed on the floor reading books.  Erin was still sleeping and looked so peaceful.  I called my mom and talked to her for awhile.  Erin and Dave got up around 7:30.  Not two minutes after she woke up, Monika introduced her to UNO.  She caught on fast, and they played it until it was time to get ready for breakfast.  We ate the buffet in our hotel, this buffet was better than the one in Beijing due to having more variety for the girls.  Erin continues to want to help her little sisters out as much as possible and trying to get them to eat the same stuff as she does.  The girls are politely saying "no" to the things they don't like.   Erin gives them a funny look at times, and then goes on with her eating.  We practiced more sign language with items at the table.  We are learning that there are similar signs in Chinese and American but not don't mean the same.  Our guide called us while we were eating breakfast stating that the orphanage director forgot our paperwork in the taxi and was try to track it down.  Thankfully she did.  We walked over to the Civil Affairs, both of the families that were there on Sunday were back today.  One of the babies was doing pretty good, the other one still had some tears, but this family has adopted before and understands the crying and what to do.  Both of these children were from the same orphanage as Erin, but they resided at a foster home, so Erin didn't know them.  We also had another family come in and they got their daughter today.   Since we were just sitting around, I videotaped the family getting their daughter for them.  The parents were grateful.  I think we spent a couple of hours there, and then we went for lunch at a local restaurant.  We made the initial mistake of giving Erin the menu, she tried to order everything (it seemed like everything), but our guide stepped in and reordered things for us.  They serve so much food to us, we are unable to eat it all.  Monika struggled again finding food to eat, but she was at least trying more food.  When we were almost done eating, two workers all dressed in traditional culture clothes and a gentlemen came by with rice wine.  We were warned by our guide that they were going to do this.  They held a glass up to each of our mouths (the grownups) and poured it in.  It was strong and I felt a little light headed afterwards.  The cost was pretty reasonable and the food was good, some things were spicy.  We got picked up and made our way to the orphanage.  When we arrived there was one of the families from the civil affairs there already waiting for us.  There was also a bus full of kids that were getting ready to leave.  We had the honor of bringing gifts to one of Erin's friend that will be adopted hopefully by the end of the year.  Erin couldn't visit very long with her friend (soon to be named Kennedy) due to her having to go to school.  We noticed that Kennedy had 8 purple bracelets on which we had sent to Erin in June.  Erin has 8 pink ones on.  We first went into the assistance director's office and talked a couple of minutes before she took us on a tour.  We gave Erin the camera and encouraged her to take as many pictures.  She didn't take a lot initially.  The first stop was in the baby/toddler/preschool aged kids that have something wrong with them (missing limbs, Cerebral Palsy, premature, mentally delay, etc.)  It was suppose to be nap time, but with us there, that wasn't going to happen.  They were showing the other family where their daughter spend whatever time she was there and not at the foster family.  Of course I had to go and touch the children, there was a baby that was crying and got her head stuck between the bars, I picked her up and held her for a couple of minutes and she fell asleep in my arms.  The whole time, Dave is looking at me and shaking his head no at me.  We took a bunch more pictures of the kids (but I can't post them on line).  I touched a lot of them and made one of them cry.  We then went to the half the sky preschool , the children were getting ready to sit down,  When they saw us, they got distracted and I again had to go and touch them all and even held a couple of them,  they crave for attention.  A 12 year old girl that has dwarfism attached herself to Dave.  We then made our way to Erin's floor.  We went to the room that she stays in when she is not at the boarding school.  She shares a bed with Kennedy and then there is 3 other girls in the room.  We took some pictures of the bed, wall and room.  Erin left the room briefly and brought back a 17 yr old girl that is her friend, she also brought in a caretaker.  We have discovered that the nannies are called teachers, so we have teachers at the orphanage and teachers at school.  We didn't spend  much time there due to the assistant director had a meeting.  When we got back on the bus, you could tell that Erin had changed.  She sat in the back of the van and put her head on the back of the seat in front of her.  She was very quiet.  I sat next to her and rub her back for about 5 minutes before she lifted her head.  I asked her if she was sad, she said no, but when asked what she was feeling, she said that her sisters/friends hit her and it hurts.  I not sure who the sisters are and who are the friends, or if they are the same people.  She told us she didn't like the orphanage.  When asked if she would miss it, she said no, but she would miss her friends/sisters.  We are still working on the language, hopefully as time goes on, we will get a better understanding.  After the orphanage visit, Erin got the sad look in the eyes, she also changed the way she was interacting with us, especially to Dave and I.  She latched onto my sister.  I think part of it is due to Cindy able to understand her better then we can and that Cindy knows more signs then us.  Erin also told us some things about the orphanage and why she doesn't like it.  We feel that is part of the reason she started to pull away from Dave.  We stopped at her school and took a picture of her in the playground area, we weren't allowed to go into the school or stay longer than a minute.  The people here keep saying the "deaf and dumb" school, which I hate, but know it is what they think, but they do tell us the Erin is smart.  When we got back to the hotel, the girls rough house for a little bit and play a game, we then put a movie in for them.  We then got adventurous and walked to a restaurant that our guide had recommended for supper.  Our guide had written on a piece of paper some basic instructions to the server.   As we walked to the restaurant, we got stared at the whole time.  Night life is very busy here, and it was crowded.  We had a difficult time with the server understanding what we wanted; Erin then wrote something on a piece of paper, so then Erin and the server was writing back and forth.  Dave and I didn't like not knowing what they were talking about and also we didn't want her to feel "responsible" to translate, but everything worked out.  When we got back to the hotel, Erin went straight to the laptop and put in another movie.   Once we got the younger girls to bed, Erin put in the 3rd movie.  The sadness in her eyes is still there, you can see she has changed, we are figuring she is grieving now.  She still laughs and smiles, but definitely different from the first day.  We are thankful we have her and she is safe now.  She fits well in our family, but can also tell we have a lot of work ahead of us.  She is a strong, self confident person, who holds her head high.  The girls are finding ways to communicate with Erin, Katie and Jenny are still struggling and not wanting to try that hard.  I have been spending a little more time with Katie when Erin is busy doing something else.  Say a prayer for Erin and our family as we work with one of probably the many episodes of grief she will go thru.