Officially Ours and a Visit to Xuchang

Tuesday was a very long day as we began the morning by departing at 9:00 a.m. to return to the civil affairs office where I  had received Ivy the day before to complete the adoption. China has a 24 hour waiting period before they will make the adoption complete.  If for any reason a family changes their mind they have this time period to say no.  The ceremony went smoothly and all 13 children that were received by their families on Monday became ours.  After the ceremony we had to travel to the office of notarization.  This ceremony also went very quickly.  We returned to the hotel around noon where we then had an hour to get lunch before each family headed to the city where their child came from.  Since our group was so large not all families completed this step on Tuesday, but some went on Wednesday morning.  China requires that you travel to the home city where your child is from in order to get a passport.  The drive to Xuchang took about an hour and thankfully everything went smoothly at the passport office.  It was then on to the orphanage where Ivy has lived the last two years.  I was surprised by how nice it was.  If you didn't know that this was a place where children lived and had no parents then you would just think  it was a nice day care center.  The rooms where clean the ration of nanny to child was pretty good and the children looked happy and well taken care of.  Such a huge difference from where Avery lived.  The grounds were nice as their was a small play ground outside and some lovely trees.  In Ivy's orphanage live about 150 children from the ages of 0 to 14.  Those who can go to school do and a van comes to pick them up each day.  Ivy was very well loved.  Sadly her caregiver was not there that day, but all the nannies where happy to see Ivy.  They kept taking pictures of us which made me a little uncomfortable because they were not doing the same for the other two families who were traveling with me who had also adopted a child from their orphanage.  I think she was kind of a rock star and maybe even a little bit spoiled.  It was time to say our goodbyes we thanked them and made our way back to Zhengzhou.  The journey back took us around two hours and Ivy had enough at this point.  She was so tired an hungry.  She cried the whole way back.  Poor thing!  That night we went to KFC for dinner.  I don't eat fast food that often, but boy did it taste so good. However, my dinner the night before was a snicker bar so this was a huge improvement.