Day 3

Yesterday I ended my post with my coma-sleep at the airport.  We had already eaten quite a bit the night before and had breakfast on the plane--and things be expensive when you're using Euros, dog--so we decided to skip lunch and hold out for a nice meal at dinner.  Can't wait to see that bill on our credit card.  ;)

I ordered a penne with Gorgonzola cheese, but asked for light Gorgonzola.  It came with a little wedge of cheese on top that I began to cut.  For my first bite, I was bracing myself for that strong blue cheese flavor and instead, it was so delicious.  That wasn't your American Gorgonzola/blue cheese crumbles blech.  It was smooth and cut through with some sort of alcohol that added such a nice flavor.  In short:  wow.  Who knew Gorgonzola could be so stinking good?

So we made it on to our last flight.  The airline guy at the gate said that this is always a bit of a crazy flight as passenger after passenger came nonchalantly strolling through to get onto their flight right up until just about when the gate was supposed to be closed.  We were the very last so that he could unlock a special elevator for us to take our stroller down.  Going through all of these airports with a stroller and no baby had me often cooing to our little "baby backpack".  Which ultimately would just kind of make me miss our littles back home and/or wish Caleb was there in it.

From my seat on the plane, I got to see the machine that sprays ice off of the plane.  I had the laptop so that I could write that blog post from yesterday, but during the time that you're not allowed to use electronic devices, I fell asleep.

I woke to "Miss..." ... "Miss..." ... "Miss..."  I seriously don't know how many times they said my name.  I was against the window with an elderly couple beside me.  They weren't exactly smiley toward me when I had shown up at the very end to take my seat.  ("Smiley" doesn't really seem to be a cultural norm.)  So it was nice of them to take the time to wake me up.  (I really hope my mouth wasn't all hanging open.)

I was so disoriented.  I don't know how many times they said my name before it began to overlap with whatever I was dreaming about and suddenly I realized that reality was a different thing and it was trying to get my attention.  And I opened my eyes to see this elderly couple staring at me and my brain was trying to piece it all together.  After I opened my eyes they said something to me that I couldn't understand and I think I maybe even held up my hand, blinking my eyes over and over, saying something like, "Thank you.  I'm trying to understand things.  Just a moment."  And finally I got my bearings and I noticed the cart in the aisle just past them and they were letting me know that it was dinner time and I thanked them.

We landed.  We went out through customs with no issues.  Our driver was waiting for us and we exchanged some currency before he took us to shop at a 24 hour market.  I thought we were getting in to late to do any grocery shopping, but out we went.  Got to our apartment and it's really nice and pretty huge.  I'm not sure what I expected, but this wasn't quite it.  I think our apartment building is actually relatively new.


DAY 3

Got up this morning for our appointment.  Though we have only been planning to adopt Caleb, I wanted us to at least inquire about other children available at the orphanage.  Just to remain open since we've come this far already.  So first were shown a file for a little girl, a few months older than Titus, the only other little girl available meeting our home study.  She was very cute, but we thought that most likely, we would not move forward to adopt her.  It was hard for us to decide whether or not to accept her referral and at least meet her at the orphanage.  We actually decided that we'd go ahead and just meet her to cover our bases when we switched our decision and decided to decline.

Then Caleb's file was brought out.  We were able to switch out a photo of him that we hadn't seen with a copy of one that we already have.  A thick red folder was pulled out (full of our paperwork!) and it looked like she double-checked that his special needs were written on our home study.  We signed a book and we should get our paperwork tomorrow so that we can get on the overnight train to head to his region. Coincidentally, there is another Arizona family here right now that we'll travel with on the train tomorrow as we all head to the same orphanage--isn't that crazy?

Overall, our appointment was very anti-climactic.  We should actually receive information about him once we speak with his orphanage director.  And I must say, I felt especially glad about our decision to only see Caleb once his file came out.  It feels intimidating enough to look at these photos of this boy in his crib and to not know what to expect and to know that we'll be meeting him in a few days and I'm glad that we can just focus on him and on that in this time.

We then sat in on a bit of a facilitator-meeting, with four of the members of their team present, as we discussed our travel arrangements to our region.  Everyone was very nice.  Then back to our apartment for lunch.  And now Matt has been taking a nap.  I couldn't let myself, knowing that another coma would be coming and it'd be so hard to get back up.  So I'm waiting it out until I can go to bed for the night.