A Less Than Stellar Day :(

The above pictures were taken by Susan from New Jersey when she adopted her daughter, YanMin about one month ago. I thought you might enjoy seeing the type of beds the girls slept on as well as the orphanage itself. YanMin is the little girl in the lavendar dress, and you can see from her eyes just how much she is grieving. Joanna, of course, is wearing the black & white dress.

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September 12th started out good. In fact Bob e-mailed me a note saying that things went very well in the morning. He got a few smiles out of Joanna, and they had a "wrestling match" over the TV remote control. They spent some time at a museum. In general, he felt that things were going smoothly. Then - after lunch and after the guide had left, her mood seemed to change. First of all, I should tell you that our agency put Bob & Joanna up in a business hotel in the business district of town. While it is a very nice hotel, there is absolutely no contact with the other adoptive families who are staying at the Dolton Hotel, which is known as the adoption hotel in town. This has not been a good situation, and our guide told Bob to be sure to tell the agency that in the future, they should use the other hotel. Those families are able to draw a lot of support from each other, and it helps the kids to see other kids and know they are not alone in their situation. With that said, I will tell you that there have been a lot of boring hours to pass. The guide disappears in the afternoon to take care of the government paperwork, and there is not much to do. I think this gives Joanna too much down time to think and feel desparation.

During the afternoon hours, she has pushed the limits on several issues, and at one point she tried to escape from the hotel room. Bob caught her and brought her back, but then there was a flood of tears and some screaming. Afterwards, they sat and looked at each other for an hour until the guide returned. He spent another hour talking with Joanna, and it took 45 minutes to get her to apologize and promise that she would not run away again.

Because of the hotel situation, Ashley (guide) and Bob made arrangements for them to be able to leave Changsha on Saturday instead of Sunday. This should be helpful in several ways: 1) Many times when kids leave their home province they begin to realize that things really have changed, and there is no going back. 2) Support from other adoptive families and the chance to see the other adopted kids. 3) More activities to pass the time and less time to think about her losses.

So... without trying to spell out the actual prayer requests, I think you can see what we would like you to pray for. The situation is difficult, but we suspected it would be, and Bob has sounded very up for the task in the last few phone calls. I should add that I have spent several months reading blogs from other older child adoption situations, and the things I have described above are NOT uncommon - just frustrating and disappointing. In fact, this morning I wrote to the mom of a little 10 year old who was adopted earlier this spring, and she gave me some specific ideas to pass on to Bob; she was very encouraging. I intend to read this to Bob during our next phone call.

As a funny sidenote, Bob did meet a lady at the provincial office who was also adopting a child. She recognized Bob & Joanna from the blog or from my travel group and asked him about his luggage. She promised to tell me that he had managed to dress Joanna very nicely even though her bag had been missing. Bob managed to forget her name, but he got a picture and said I could tell him who it was when he gets home. Unfortunately, most of the people I have corresponded with are faceless to me, so I'm not sure I'll ever know who he ran into. (If you are that person and are reading this, please let me know!) Bob laughed and thought it was funny to be recognized by someone from the USA whom he had never met while over in China - lol!