A Christmas to Remember

Sorry for the delay in posts. We have been super busy, and trying to catch up on sleep which is not working so well. Anyway, that's not what you want to hear about, so here goes...


Kalia arrived in our room right on time, in fact, we were SKYPING with the kids back home so they were able to see her walk in and say a quick "hi."

It was pretty evident right away that she was completely terrified. She literally looked like a deer in headlights. She is absolutely beautiful and I am one proud momma.

After signing the 24 hour agreement, our guide took us along with Kalia, her nurse, and orphanage nanny to get passport pictures taken. Once that was done, the nurse and nanny said good bye for the night. Our guide, Aaron took us back to the hotel to meet with the banker to exchange money.

Kalia and I ran upstairs to get the money and took it back down to the banker and that is when she lost it. First it was just a few tears, but then it turned into a full fledged temper tantrum. Seriously, this was completely new territory for me. She kept screaming in Chinese and the guide said she was asking to go back to the orphanage, she did not want to go to America, and that her mother was not American. My heart just broke for her. Finally after being unsuccessful in calming her down we called and asked the nanny and nurse to come back.

She was throwing quite a fit, kicking, screaming, and rolling around on the couch. By the time they got there the hotel manager was talking to Kalia and trying to get her to calm down. As soon as the nurse and nanny got here, they were able to get her back up to the room (I wanted to get her out of the spotlight).

She was so upset and just kept begging them to take her back to the orphanage. After about 20 minutes of talking to her, they were able to figure out that she was scared about not being able to communicate with us. I SKYPED Matt right away and had him get Jaxon up so he could tell her that it was going to be okay (it was after 12:30 am). At first Kalia wouldn't even talk to Jaxon, but she finally listened to him. So, between Jaxon, the nurse, and the nanny, she was starting to calm down.

Because she is 10, she has the right to refuse being adopted so I was pretty worried, as were the orphanage people. They were telling her that she was going to be fine and that she was going to have good life in America.

We decided to all go get a bite to eat so we went across the street to KFC (note: it is not like KFC back home, considered yourself warned). By the time we were done eating, Kalia was doing much better so the orphanage people left and she has been completely fine since then.

Kalia, Steve and I came back to the room and Tangled was on so we watched that and Kalia was smiling and laughing outloud. We went to Pizza Hut for dinner then came back to settle in the room so we could SKYPE back home for Christmas morning.

We were able to SKYPE the kids and watch them open their gifts and they were able to watch Kalia open her gifts. She would each of hte kids' names and ages and seemed to be really excited.

So, for now things are going well. I will post about today in a later post. Jet lag is really starting to settle in and I am exhausted.