Sunday, March 22, 2009, We arrived in Nanchang City after what the kids thought was only a 40 minute flight. I guess, after 17 hours of flying 2 hours now seems like a breeze. Nanchang reminds me of Tianjin, the city where James was from. Much, much different than Beijing, by being more of an industrial city with many buildings but in what looks like a hodge podge order. We passed a beautiful golf course compound with condos, but it appeared no one can afford them for they looked not lived in. Then right down the road is apartment buildings that appear they should be condemned but are very much occupied. In fact, right outside our hotel window is what appears to be about a 30 story office/hotel building that is being built but now appears to be on hold. Thus it looks like a skeleton since it has not windows but a shell of a cement framework. It looks like families have brought in their own brick and started to brick off interior rooms to live in. There are visible appearances of family life, clothes lines, bikes, garbage etc.

We were suppose to have a few hours of downtime before Leah was brought to our room at the hotel, but no sooner did we sit down on the bed did we get a call that she would be here in fifteen minutes. So down we trek to the lobby to begin a new path in the Ayers family tree. In the lobby we meet Wanda our guide during our time in Nanchang. Then a car arrives with Leah, her Ayi and the workers from the Nanchang orphanage. Leah looks at us and smiles a little but you can see the fear and turmoil that is about to erupt inside of her. After about 45 minutes we all come up to our room and the turmoil is now coming to the surface. The Ayi leaves and the tears began to fall, uncontrollable, wailing cry outs for the one of the people that in Leah’s view has been one of her many Mommas. The door finally closes on that chapter of Leah’s life and the new chapters begin. What seemed like hours but we know was less than 20 minutes the wailing cuts through our bones. Hannah escapes to the bathroom to hide her fears and how she is now grieving for her new sister. James becomes stone and has a look on his face like he can somehow remember inside of his heart the same pain she is feeling inside. I finally get her to sit inside my lap and wrap my arms around her. I whispered I am your momma now, I am your momma now, and all of a sudden the crying stops, just like turning off a faucet. She looks around, Hannah and James comeback, Jeff gets’s Leah to laugh and we are now the Ayers Family of 5. The rest of the night went by like we were just in hotel room on vacation. We learned very quickly that Leah likes organization, so we gave her a drawer and she has now organized all her clothes, books, toys into it. She then moved onto our shoes, which are now neatly arranged in a special place under her bed. When we come into the room, she makes sure each of us take-off our shoes so she can place them where they belong.

Morning has arrived and our little Princess awoke a happy girl, she unfortunately has James’ early rising powers but she awoke with a smile which I was not expecting. Everyone got into the king size bed and it felt so right that we all fit nice a snug under the covers. Each minute that ticks by we are all learning little nuggets about Leah. She put on jeans and a sweater today and you can tell she has not wore many jeans/pants, for she keeps tugging at them like they are falling down. Breakfast has now been finished and we are awaiting our guide so we can make it to another Walmart to get supplies to last the week in this hotel room.