A long, amazing day - Tuesday, September 9

Today was pretty much all "business". After the usual breakfast buffet at the hotel (a China adoption tradition), we traveled to the local Civil Affairs office to begin the official adoption paperwork. Because 9 families had picked up kids at the Tianjin Children's Welfare Institute yesterday, the Civil Affairs Office was very busy when we arrived. (In fact, the families all seemed to be following each other around town as the day progressed and we moved form office to office :) We had a picture taken for the official adoption "red book" document that we receive with each adoption, and we signed a few more sets of papers. Then, we went to the notary office to sign some more papers. (The notary makes sure that the Chinese and the English versions of the birth certificate, abandonment certificate, and adoption notice all say the same things in both languages). Then, we grabbed a quick lunch at McDonald's (always amazing how it tastes exactly the same wherever you go :) and went to the local police station. There, they took another picture of Jensyn and we signed a few more papers (something to do with getting Jensyn's passport).

We were scheduled to return to the orphanage at that point to give them our donation and for a short ceremony, but they called and said there were too many families there and asked that we come about an hour later. So...we made a quick detour to a local shopping mall to get Jensyn a few clothes (now that we have her with us to check sizes.....we really lucked out that the stuff we brought with us mostly fits, but we didn't bring enough to get us all the way home). One pair of light-up Barbie tennies and a few outfits later, we were headed back to the orphanage.

The visit to the "Children's Welfare Institute" was mostly for a short ceremony that they do for the adoptive families. The director was there and she personally thanked each family for loving the kids that they were adopting. We gave them the gifts we brought for them and they gave us a bag with a small gift, a small banner with the name of the orphanage on it, our red adoption book and Jensyn's immunization record (such as it was).  After that, we got to take a quick tour of the orphanage (an impressively modern, clean and generally happy place...at least, as happy as an orphanage can be).

By that time it was late afternoon and we were all very tired from all the traveling around Tianjin, so we went back to the hotel, went up to our room, ordered room service and "put our feet up" for the day.

That was the "long" part...the "amazing" part was....

As we were leaving the first stop of the day (the Civil Affairs Office), our guide gave us some papers that had been in with Jensyn's file. It was a long, detailed letter from JinXin's foster mother (written in English) dated September, 2008. It gave us lots of information about the last several years of our little one's life. The foster parents were "Korean Canadian". They were raising 4 other Chinese foster kids along with JinXin. Dad was a professor in the Philosophy Department at Peking University and mom (who had taught Korean in the past) home-schooled the kids (with help from other volunteers from Peking University). They had recently moved from Beijing to the Guanxi province to work at "The Loving Heart University" for handicapped people.

According to the letter, JinXin has been studying English for about 2 years. She has completed kindergarten and some grade one math. She has finished the first grade Chinese text book and can read and write Chinese "pretty good". She can speak and write some basic Korean. She has studied piano a little bit, can play a few songs on the Chinese "er hu" (a two-stringed instrument), and has had a year of weekly lessons on the violin.

While sitting at the notary office, we decided to test her a little. We wrote "7+8=" on a small pad from Cathy's purse and gave it to Jensyn. She looked at it for a few seconds and wrote "15" on it and handed it back with a smile on her face. She could add and subtract one and two digit numbers. She could do "6+_=10", fill in the blank type problems.  She wrote, in English, the entire uppercase alphabet. It was all a wonderful surprise.

Then, this afternoon, Cathy was going to read a beginner book to Jensyn, and before she started, Cathy pointed to the title and Jensyn read "I Like Bugs" (the title of the book, not a comment on her eating habits :).

Needless to say, we feel even more now than before that we have been given a true "jewel". And we're also feeling some pressure to be as good for her as her foster parents obviously were. But what a wonderful challenge for us to have.

One last thing for the day.....here is our "jewel" modestly singing in English.