More about referral

We weren't expecting to get our referral yesterday. I've been tracking the adoption rumor websites like a bloodhound the last couple of weeks; nobody was expecting anything until the end of next week. Usually there's someone who knows when the referral packets have been mailed (and we knew we were going to be in this batch) and so most people are expecting "the call" on a certain day. So it was a big surprise to get it yesterday (it made it even more fun).

There's a tradition in the Chinese adoption subculture that ladybugs bring good luck, and lots of people claim to see ladybugs right before referrals come out. It's pretty funny to read the ladybug sighting stories around the time referrals are due. So yesterday I was meeting with my boss about 1:00, came back to my office and looked down on my desk, and there's a ladybug! Granted, it was a ladybug not in the pink of health, but a ladybug's a ladybug. I told my co-worker Diane about the myths and how there was now a ladybug on my desk; she said, "Oh someone put it there on purpose." I told her I didn't think so. Then I called Joe to tell him about the bug sighting, and AS we were on the phone, he said, "Oh, we just got a message from our agency. We're supposed to call them." So we got on a conference call with the nice lady from the agency who told us our referral had come in. Yeehaw! So I'm here to tell you those ladybug stories are true!

We've decided to keep Emma's Chinese name (Jia Yan) as a second middle name -- we'll put the names together, which is commonly done. So her name will be Emma Claire Jiayan Haynie. A nice guy from China who works in my building helped us out with the pronunciation (I'd gotten a couple of different pronunciations yesterday but I'm trusting his version). Her name now is Qi Jia Yan (pronounced Chee Jyah-Yan). Qi is her surname (which comes first in Chinese) and all of the girls in Emma's orphanage have that name (it's part of the name of the orphanage, Qichun Welfare Institute). We looked up the Chinese characters for her first names and found that Jia means "beautiful, good, auspicious, delightful" and Yan means "beautiful, handsome, seductive." (Maybe we won't tell her about the seductive part.) So...she's beautiful and beautiful! Works for us. David the Chinese translator said that she very likely goes by the nickname of Jia-Jia right now, which would be common for someone with a first name of Jia. We think Jiayan is a very pretty name and are happy to be able to include it with her other pretty names.

We've included a map of China that highlights the Hubei (hoo-bay) Province, where Emma lives. Hubei is the province where the big Three Gorges Dam is, on the Yangtze River. We'll pick Emma up in Wuhan, the provincial capital city. According to the paper work we received, Emma has been in foster care, which is usually a good thing because the little girls are in a family setting and get more individual attention. Info about the Qichun Welfare Institute says that all the girls in the orphanage are placed with local foster families but visit the orphanage regularly for medical checks and to play with other kids. Our agency director said she is probably now back at the orphanage full-time awaiting her adoption. So she's already had a lot of adjustments to make in her young life. We're eager to pick her up so she can stay put.

We hope to be traveling in a couple of months or so. We'll be traveling with four families from Minnesota (our agency has a branch in Minnesota and four of their families got referrals yesterday, too). We don't have any info about those families yet, but I'm sure we'll be in touch a lot in the next few weeks. Angie, maybe some of them are from your old neck of the woods.

We'll keep you posted on further developments.