The Day After the Day After

Today was also another first...first time getting pee'd on carrying
Mikayla around in the baby carrier in a leaking diaper. By the end of
the day today, I think we are starting to see what kind of child Mikayla
is: extremely active, aggressive, and she cracks herself up. She will
just sit and play with an empty box and laugh. Over the past two days,
we have spent at least 6 hours just sitting on the bed playing. It's too
hot outside to do much else. We went to McDonalds for dinner tonight and
had to take a taxi. I can't believe how many more people were on the
streets tonight and how much imminent danger they all seemed to be in.
It seems like the taxi drivers actually aim to hit people, especially
bicycles, like they have no business being on the street. I also had an
experience today at the supermarket with my necklace. The cashier
motioned to the woman at the cash register next to her about what was on
my neck and said "heysus eye knee" which of course is not the literal
spelling but how it sounds when they say "Jesus Loves You". She then
waved to the cashier on the other side and they were all smiling. We
have learned allot about the underground church over here through a
couple in our group. I believe there are allot more Christians over here
than the world is led to believe. There is actually more Christians here
than in the US, but percentage of the population is much less. Now, to
finish my post from Sunday, now called "Forever Day" instead of "Gotcha
Day".....After spotting Mikayla, they called our name and we had to show
our passports before they would give her to us. She did not seem scared
at all, I think we were more scared than her. It wasn't long before they
ushered us back out to the bus to take us back to the hotel. When we got
back to the hotel, we had 15 minutes to go up to the room and get our
paperwork and be back down in the meeting room to fill out forms and ask
the nannies questions. I don't remember all the questions we asked or
what the answers were, but I have it all on tape. All of the nannies
seemed to really love the children and wanted to play with them. Now,
since it was Mid-Autumn Day which is like Thanksgiving and a big family
holiday where family usually travel great distances to be together for a
meal, we decided to invite the nannies to dinner with us and celebrate.
The nannies had to stay in the hotel because it was too far to travel
back. I bought some mooncakes at the store to give them and passed them
out and then after dinner, we got to go be with them one last time and
let them hold and play with the children they've raised for the last
year. I also got each of the nannies to write a note to Mikayla for her
later in life. I don't know what they say yet. We are going to the
orphanage tommorow so maybe we will see them one last time, but only 1
of the 3 orphanages represented in our group has this opportunity. So
now, I direct you to the web site for Day 7 pictures of Mikayla's big
smiles and video from Sunday of the big moment. (Direct link to Video
page
http://www.lanes2china.com/videoalbum.asp?folder=95Day%205%20-%20Forever%20Day).