April 4th, 2011

Today we got to go to the orphanage to see our little girl. We got a taxi from the hotel and drove to the orphanage. We had no idea what to expect. It was on the outskirts of town, near some soviet style tower apartments. The building looked like an old school, maybe from the 50's or 60's. It looked quite run down, with some old playground equipment and some basketball courts that had seen better days. We went into the building and first met with the orphanage director and the state issued social worker who is there most every day. We talked (though our interpreter) about her and the social worker stated that she was very excited to meet us. Note to everyone, smoking indoors is the norm in Bulgaria, they are just now laying down rules for non-smoking areas, etc. We were then ushered into another section of the building, and into a little waiting room. We could hear children about, but we didn't see any. As we got into the waiting room, the most heartbreaking thing happened. The children spotted us. I think they were moving from one area to another, but they noticed someone was in the waiting room and they rushed the door. Through the frosted glass we could see little faces and hands, most of them yelling "mama" "mama". The caretakers quickly pulled them away and moved them on, but wow...I have no words to describe what we felt. A couple of minutes later the social worker and a caretaker brought the little girl in the referral to us. She was absolutely terrified! She was older than the picture (we later found it was from about a year earlier) and her hair was different. But she was still the most beautiful little thing! Since she was so scared, they tried coaxing her with food to come to us, she actually took a granola bar from my hand, but ran off behind the social worker. They decided to move us to more familiar surroundings for her, and we went over to the other building. We got to interact with her a bit, we played blocks and she had a talking stuffed animal that she liked. Rani started to warm her up with hair barrettes which she loved, and some other little toys she had brought. We found out that we had been introduced to her as her actual parents, her mom and dad. I found that strange, but then again, how are you going to explain an international adoption to a 4 year old. After a while we left, and came back that afternoon to see her again. We would repeat a morning visit and an afternoon visit for the rest of the week. In between visits we would explore a little bit of Dobrich by walking though the (massive!) central park and eventually we made it up to a little supermarket. It was smaller than my house (about a thousand square feet) but it was called a supermarket. If only they could see a wal-mart here, they would probably have a heart attack! We purchased some snacks for us and for her, as the way to her heart is through her stomach. She will eat anything you place in front of her!