Saturday, September 15, 2012

We got him!!

Greetings from Tianjin, China!
I don't have very long, but I wanted to get something down now that I finally have access to my illegal western sites.
We got in late to Shepherd's Field Children's Village after a long flight, but any of you who have ever been on a flight that long know that "long" is not a big enough word. After a really long time, we still had 7 hours left, and the last hour takes 4 hours by itself, so all told I think it was close to a week of flight time.
The next morning we waited as Sara crossed the courtyard to Calvin's building to get him. It's kind of a crazy, surreal moment when you're about to be introduced to your son. Within a few minutes, she was leading him back. We could see him through the window, smiling and bouncing his way to us. I snapped a few pictures and looked back: Robyn was crying already and Miranda looked like she contained more energy than the Tasmanian devil in a straight jacket. Carson was pretty calm until Calvin came through the door, and then he rushed him, apparently trying to win a bet to be the first to touch him--a bet that nobody had taken him up on, but it didn't matter in his mind. I was on picture duty and Miranda on video, and we took turns holding him and talking to him.
I don't think he really knew how to handle it all or what to think, but he was clearly excited and sat with us long enough to get the whole thing documented. He's very sweet and very smart. We went back to our room with him for a while and gave him the Transformers we brought for him and then went to the playground and we all played together. He understands quite a bit of English and speaks some also. He's obviously fluent in Mandarin, but goes back and forth between the two pretty easily. Once in a while he will speak Chinese to us, and Sara laughs because he is speaking Chinese with an American accent as if that would help us. He says "Oh my gosh!" constantly and it is hilarious.
Running low on sleep, but everything is going great! Flying to Hefei today. Sad to leave Shepherds Field, the only place he knows, but he sure doesn't seem to care at this point.

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