FAMILY OF 4EVER: 08/17/10

Well, today I think we experienced discrimination. First time for me, that's for sure, but more on that later.

This morning we returned to the Civil Affairs Office to pay the orphanage donation and other fees, and basically reaffirm with a red fingerprint that we still wanted to adopt Hope. They also took a red footprint from Hope, while she was asleep in Jen's arms.

Hope's nannies were there again today, and our guide said that they thought Jen and I were both very pretty, and wanted to take lots of pictures of us, which they did. You can tell that these women really care for Hope, and it's evident from looking at the pictures in the photo album that they gave to us yesterday that they took wonderful care of her during her time in the orphanage. One of the nannies gave us another gift before we left - a photo copy of the newspaper article announcing Hope's finding, complete with her picture. It's another precious gift that we will share with Hope later on, along with the photo album.

Things were pretty good today. Hope cried some when she woke up, but overall seemed very happy for most of the day. She had some good moments with Jen - She fell asleep in Jen's arms at the Civil Affairs Office, Jen carried her around on part of our walk, and they had some laughs more than once playing peek-a-boo. She will still cry when I disappear from sight in the hotel room, but seems to be OK outside of it when I walk away, so maybe we're making some progress.

Now back to the discrimination "event". After a long afternoon nap (this kid can sleep!), we headed out for a walk, and a bite to eat. We decided on Pizza Hut. We had a great experience there the first time, but this time we had Hope with us. They seated us right away, no problem, gave us menus, but no one waited on us. We sat there for about a 1/2 hour, they took dishes from tables next to us, and the wait staff stood just 10 feet away when they weren't busy, glanced over at us occasionally and whispered to each other, but never took a drink order, nothing. I can't imagine that it was anything else than the fact that we were a non-Asian couple, with an Asian baby. At one point while we were waiting, a woman came around the corner and gave Jennifer an obvious, dirty look. Pretty upsetting stuff. So finally, we just gathered our stuff and walked out. No sense arguing with anyone over it. But it makes us want to hole ourselves up in our hotel room until we have to leave Wuchang. I know that our next stop, Guangzhou, will be better. All adopting families go through there, so we will not be the novelty that we are here.

Tomorrow is a free day. I almost hope that it rains so that we're forced to stay inside., but the plan is to venture out again, and visit a local park, and a Buddhist temple. Until tomorrow...