We woke up on Wednesday after a good night’s sleep and not so much screaming from Amelie at bedtime. Mike has a master technique with her and it’s a relief to me that he can put her to bed so well. We went down for breakfast and had to head straight up to our room to wait from 9 – 10 am in case our guide Grace called from the Consulate. Grace called a little after 10 to tell us that everything was fine and to be in the lobby at 2:10 pm to head to the consulate so Amelie could be sworn in. I got the girls a bath right after that and we got Amelie down for a nap. The rest of us had a nap too and then got up to get ready.
We got to the Consulate in about 40 minutes, went through security (they take your camera and cell phones because no photos are allowed inside). We waited around for a while and then the head of the adoption unit came out to explain to us what the process would be. She told us that there were 3000 adoptions from China in 2009 and 3400 in 2010 (60% special needs children). So far in 2011 she said that 73% of the children were special needs. I read in a Chinese newspaper a couple days ago that so far 60,000 children have been adopted out to the US and 90% were girls. Then she had all the parents stand up and take the oath for the children. Everyone clapped and cheered when we were done. Then she said we would wait for our name to be called so we could sign the last document for our adoption (insert more clapping and cheering).
Once our turn came up Mike was about to sign when I noticed that we had the Hameloth family’s signature page and I said, “Stop, that’s not us!” The woman looked very confused, but then she went to see what happened. Somehow they ended up with 2 copies of the last page and our last page was missing. They called us back and we signed the form and we were officially done. All of our group headed back downstairs and here we are with our soon-to-be new US citizen.
Here is part of the group on the bus after the swearing in.
After returning to the hotel our guide Grace took Lynnea and us to the photo shop to get our film from the orphanage developed. Once that was dropped off we decided that we would eat dinner at the Guangzhou restaurant which has been around since 1935. It has a pond on the floor inside which is pretty cool. Once they got a table put together for us they came over to ask us what kind of tea we wanted. We all said no tea. Then they got really stressed out and they showed me a translated booklet that basically said ‘everyone gets tea in our restaurant’ and the woman who couldn’t speak much English was saying it was custom to get tea. So we all had tea because what else could you do but leave? Then we placed our dinner order. It was really fantastic and I was once again wishing that my stomach was bigger. We had dumplings, shrimp fried rice, Guangzhou style fried noodles, some fish dish, a beef dish with veggies and shrimp balls with Mushrooms.
After dinner Amelie decided that a meltdown was in order and we took off to the hotel. We got Amelie to sleep in no time flat because she was so worn out. It was a good day.