Gotcha Day
We arrived to receive Tyler shortly after 3:30pm. Once he saw us, I think he knew what we were there for because he started crying, but he didn't cry for too long as his caretaker comforted him a little. Mom started on the paperwork she had to complete. My sister and I showed him a couple toys that we brought for him. One was a truck that you put a little car inside and push a button and the car shoots out across the floor, the second was a doodle pad type. He seemed somewhat interested in the first one but wasn't nearly interested enough to get down on the floor to play with it or even play with it on the chair he was sitting on. The doodle pad, he would hold, but he didn't actually draw on it or use it.
It took about half an hour to fill out all of the paperwork and then it was time for Tyler to come with us. Naturally, as you can imagine, he didn't like this idea either. He cried a lot going out to the van. Once he was in the van, mom held him as he cried some more, but he really didn't cry hard for very long. Our van ride was only about 10 minutes, and probably more than half the time, he wasn't really crying much. We were all surprised at how short he cried, he still wasn't happy and we knew that he was going to cry more.
Can you imagine what he is going through? He doesn't speak any english, he actually doesn't speak much Mandarin Chinese, the general Chinese language and the language our guide speaks. Tyler speaks what they call 'local dialect', which is different in different areas of the country. There are three local dielects just in the Fujian province. They said he had started kindergarten, so he knew a little bit of Mandarin.
Coming up to the hotel room, he did alright, but as soon as we stopped walking and were just standing in the hotel room, he wanted out. He started crying again and made his way to the door. After a little bit, the guide suggested that we take him outside and walk around the hotel.
There is a park (not the kind with toys and swings, just a plain park) behind the hotel that we could see from our window, so we decided to walk over to it. He seemed a lot better walking, he quit crying. He was wearing sandles and we found out that he doesn't like to walk in the grass. I remember when Zach, my nephew, first walked in the grass, he didn't like it either. This was probably the first time he has walked in the grass, possibly the first time he has really been outside. We walked quite a ways going wherever he wanted to go. When we decided we had gone far enough and we needed to turn around, he didn't want to, but just for a little bit. We made our way back to the hotel where our guide had been looking for us to take a picture of mom with Tyler in a room they had set up for adoptive parents. I guess when she said to walk around the hotel, she meant just around the hotel, not 4 or 5 blocks away.
By this time, he was doing well about not crying as long as we were moving around. After getting his picture taken, Amy took us to a local grocery store. It was setup kind of like our stores, but if comparing to ours, definately an old, 'small town' type of store. The door is like most of the other stores, it's a rolldown door from the top so it is open air. The cashier sits right beside the door. As you walk in, there are fish tanks on one side where you can buy your live fish, on the other is the meat area where they will cut your meat. Several of the things that we saw were sitting out in the open air where you could take as many as you want and bag them, from different types of beans to a chicken and chicken feet. We went on back to the shelves and got some water & juice. He wasn't really interested in getting anything, but we also got some wafter cookies. Before we left, we decided to get some fruit. We walked over to where the fruit was and asked him if he wanted something, and he immediately pointed at the bananas, so we got some of them. We asked him about several other fruits, but he shook his head no to all of them. We paid for the groceries and came back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel, we couldn't get in to our room. The key card would turn the light green, but the door still wouldn't open. We went back down to the reception desk and asked for help. It took them about 10 minutes, but they got us back in. With all of the commotion, Tyler must have moved the indoor lock over just enough that we could get the door open, but when it shut, it was in front of it enough to keep the door from opening. Once we were back in the room, we found some cartoons on the tv, but Tyler didn't seem too interested in them at that time. I went to bed early so that if we needed to sleep in shifts, as we had heard some families have had to do, I could stay up through the middle of the night. It turned out that he slept well through the night, so I didn't have to be up.
Continue on to Tyler's First Full Day or go back to the Main Page.
I'd like to welcome you to come along with us by checking out this site every day for updates. You can also visit my mom's web site at http://www.rainbowhorses.com/tyler.html, and I strongly encourage you to join us at our forum to ask questions, post comments or anything else.
Thanks for checking out our page!
Print