We all woke up today (Monday, August 28) with a feeling of great excitement. Today was going to be the day that we would get to meet Alyssa for the first time.
After a few hours relaxing around the hotel and resting from our long airplane trip, we (five adoptive parents, three grandparents and two previously adopted children) all piled into a minivan with a mountain of luggage to make the three hour drive to the Ham Tan Orphanage.
Soon the van filled with sounds of joy and happiness from two young girls. Jessie and her new friend, Gracie, who is four years old and was also born in Vietnam, were having a wonderful time, laughing and giggling. Their clear love of life made each adult on the van pause and realize once again what a positive impact this fantastic journey of adopting a child internationally had on everyone’s life, not only the children, but also the adults involved. It was evident that their presence only reinforced each parent’s decision to adopt a child.
The trip took a little longer than three hours and we enjoyed seeing the sites as we drove along. For many of us this was the first time outside of Ho Chi Minh City and after about an hour the urban landscape faded and gave way to views of country life in Vietnam. We were traveling along a busy road and soon became used to watching vehicles — trucks, buses, cars, motorbikes and horse and oxen drawn carts — all moving together in a gentle rythm accompanied by the sounds of tooting horns. Only the occassional blast of a large truck’s horn interrupted what appeared to be a well-orchestrated flow of the various forms of transportation. Even the occassional oncoming vehicle veering to avoid our minivan didn’t seem troublesome as we bounced along the way to meet Alyssa.
Eventually, we arrived in Ham Tan and as we neared the orphanage the van quieted considerably as everyone contemplated the once-in-a-lifetime moment that was about to unfold. The van pulled into the orphanage and we anxiously got out and hurried to a room filled with baby cribs where we found Alyssa waiting in her caregiver’s arms. Nancy clutched Alyssa while Jessie and Grandma Patsy looked on and I tried to record this wonderful first encounter with a video camera. After many tears of joy, we were able to compose ourselves and sit down to really meet Alyssa. At the same time, two other families were going through the same experience, all in what I’m sure was a chaotic scene, but no one cared or even payed attention.
It’s impossible for me to explain in words the emotions and feelings of that very special moment. Anything I could write wouldn’t do justice to intensity of the event. Just imagine after waiting almost two years, here we were finally meeting baby Alyssa and holding her in our arms, watching her bright eyes and listening to her soft cooing. All I can do is add in a couple of pictures of our happy family, now in a single moment increased to a family of four. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the pictures.
I’ll stop this post for now since it is getting long, just like the day it describes - August 28, 2006. We spent several hours at the orphanage, traveled another hour to our hotel and celebrated Jessie’s birthday. I’ll write about that in the next post.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.