The Wild Ride !

The subject line pretty much says it all ! The past 2 days before today were very difficult for all of us, but most of all for Lei. I believe in our attempts to make his transition to us go more smoothly, we may have in fact prolonged his grief. We spent almost 2 full days in Taizhou with Lei and director Liu before coming to Hangzhou for the formal adoption. While we loved visiting with Director Liu and spending time together with her and Lei, I think Lei was confused about everything going on. Everytime we were with Director Liu and his nannies and then we had to leave, Lei was visibly shaken and upset. His most emotional separation occured when we arrived in Hangzhou and we had lunch with the director, driver and assitant director. After Lunch the Director and staff left for their own hotel and we decided to walk up the street to our hotel. Lei was so grief stricken when we left separately from the director that he screamed and cried and baba had to pick him up and carry him the whole way to the hotel (a short walk thankfully). It truly felt like an abduction, but we did what we had to do and it was heart wrenching.

Once we got Lei to the hotel he calmed down some. In the afternoon, we let Lei watch some Dora DVDs we had brought that were in Mandarin and taught English. Lei watched these for over two hours and didn't want to stop. They took his mind off his troubles temporarily but once we turned off the DVD player, another meltdown ensued. We all went to bed at 9pm exhausted to say the least.

Monday was adoption day and we were very nervous as to how Lei was going to react to seeing Director Liu again. To our suprise Lei handled everything amazingly well with the exception that he was extremely over-stimulated and ran around the conference table no less than 100 times ;-). After the adoption our guide Jessica took us to a local market where we purchased a few things we needed and a few we really didn't. We picked up some Mcdonalds to take back to the hotel and we were suprised to find out that Lei knew exactly what he wanted, a hamburger. He ate a whole hamburger and small fries in record time lol. After lunch I decided to be really brave and take Lei swimming at the hotel pool. The swimming was wonderful and so funny because Lei thought it was like a big bath tub and proceeded to strip. I promptly explained to him that he had to wear his shorts ;-)

When we finished swimming I had no idea what I was in for. We dried off but still had our wet swimsuits underneath our clothes. I was planning on going back to the room to change, Lei had other plans. The pool was on the first floor so Lei decided to make a straight line right to the lobby doors. He went out on the front steps outside the door and refused to come in. I can't remember the last time I felt so helpless or at a loss as to what to do, but I truly believe the lord had a hand in what happened next. After about 5 minutes of pleading with Lei to come in a young chinese woman came up with her baby boy in hand and said hello. She was smiling at Lei and showing him her son. Feeling completely desperate I asked the woman if she spoke english and she said "some". I then tried to explain to her my dilemma and asked if she would speak to Lei and persuade him to come in. She spoke to Lei for several minutes and informed me that Lei said his friend was supposed to pick him up at 8 oclock. I had no idea what he was talking about at the time, but later found out that our guide had told him this and the guide was the friend, except it was supposed to be 8 oclock in the morning ! Long story short, this woman convinced Lei to go to our hotel room. I promise that things get better with this story but it takes a day or so. Lei is sitting next to me right now watching "Ultraman" on his portable dvd player. He is stopping to explain the movie to me every 30 seconds so I'm going to have to finish this post later.