What a day!

Today was orphanage visit/meet Zoe's foster mom day.  What an incredibly stressful and emotional day.

It was about a 2 hour van ride to get to Fengcheng, through a mainly agricultural countryside.  Amelia's home city and the entire trip to it was very mountainous, Zoe's is just the opposite, quite flat, similar to SW Ontario, and is a farming area of rice and sugarcane primarily.

Most of the rice has been or is ready to be harvested now, some fields were being harvested as we went by.  After the rice has been harvested, apparently it needs to be spread out to dry, and every flat concrete surface to be found was being used for this, storefronts, sidewalks, and even the highway!

Fengcheng city, where Zoe is from, is a 'town' of 1 million people.  On the way through town we saw both the new and old town, which were definitely a huge contrast from one another.

When we got to the orphanage, Zoe's foster mom, Xun Aimei, was waiting outside, and was already at the door of the van when we emerged.  It was very emotional as she was crying when she saw Zoe, as I'm sure she realized this was the last time she would probable see her.  She had brought a bag of treats and snacks for her and was giving them to her the entire time.

We had a quite  bit of time to spend with her and ask questions, etc.  We've been able to tell over the last 3 days that she had taken very good care of Zoe for us and we can't thank her enough for that gift.

After the meeting at the orphanage, we all went out to lunch together, the families, the foster mom's and the orphanage director, then we made our goodbyes and were on our way.  Xun Aimei was genuinely heartbroken to see her go, we can tell she received lots of love from her over the last 11 months.

We were all emotionally drained by the time we returned to the hotel, but not too tired to make yet another trip to the pool with Amelia!  At the end of the day Helen brought us our notarized adoption documents, tomorrow we receive Zoe's passport, that being the last thing we need before moving on to Beijing on Saturday to begin the Canadian side of the adoption process.

Tomorrow we are also planning to go to a porcelain market to get some souvenirs from Zoe's province.  Jiangxi is known for fine pottery.