Chinese portion of adoption is complete!

Anna our local facilitator in Changsha. She has a masters in English and has done a fantastic job guiding us and helping us with the adoption paperwork!

This morning we got up and met the Harbours for breakfast before meeting Anna and Mr. Gua (our driver) for the trip back to the adoption affairs office. We had our pictures taken, promised one more time to love, care for, nurture and educate Kylee. Of course we said no...not!!! We paid the rest of our fees, had the paperwork finalized and notarized and Kylee is officially ours! Anna will pick up Kylee's Chinese passport Thursday when it is done and we will be free to travel to Guangzhou on Saturday to finish up the American paperwork and swearing in at the American consulate in Guangzhou.

After we got done with the paperwork Anna to us to Wal-Mart, yes there are 3 Wal-Marts in Changsha! The Chinese love them just as much as the Americans do. They say they can get anything at Wal-Mart. We got Kylee some new pants, the ones we brought were too big. She is quite a bit more slender than we thought. The girls picked out new back-packs, pac-pacs as Aliya calls them. We also stocked up on drinks and such and of course some wine for Mom and Dad! Then off to of all places KFC for lunch. I swore we would never eat at KFC with so much good local food around but even in China busy families only have time for fast food sometimes!

A little about Kylee. We were told numerous times that her boarding school for the deaf did not teach sign language only helped the kids to lip read and phonetically speak. Imangine our suprise when we show Kylee ASL books. She can sign the English alphabet and sign many many common nouns, animals and such but..................
she speaks them in English!!!!! We will try to solve this mystery Thursday when we journey to her orphanage. Someone has taken a lot of effort to prepare this precious little girl for life in America. Communicating with her has not been an issue ever! She can let you know exactly what she wants, needs or feels.

When I was rough-housing with the girls yesterday, Kylee's metal hair barrette came out and scratched her face. She has been miffed at me most ever since. :-) She will point to her scratches, point at me and make a pouty face. Do I ever feel small! :-)

Tomorrow while Anna and the Harbours are out tomorrow, we plan to take a 10 minute taxi ride to "Martyrs Park". We'll keep you updated.