We met ZiRong!

Sunday afternoon, we met ZiRong at the civil affairs office.  She was waiting for us and came to us without tears.  We signed papers, drove back to the hotel, had dinner, and collapsed into bed by 8:30 PM.  We were all exhausted.  ZiRong had traveled by overnight sleeper train on Saturday night, and Eric and I are still battling jet lag.

Monday was an entire day of waiting in offices and doing paperwork.  The morning was spent finalizing the adoption, and the afternoon was spent applying for her passport.  Lots and lots of waiting in offices.  :)

But within all that, we've gotten to know her a little bit - here are some highlights.

• Fascinated with watching life on the street - we've had at least 3-4 hours on buses these last few days, and she's content just watching out the window.  Watching out the window of our hotel and pointing out things is also a favorite past-time.  Buses (gong gong qi che) are her favorite of all transport items.
• Food Vacuum - like the other three, she is in the "Food Vacuum" stage, consuming insane calorie counts each day.  Breakfast on Monday was at the hotel buffet.  It is one of the biggest hotel buffets we've seen in China and very tasty.  She ate 6 hard boiled eggs, two salad plates of watermelon, noodle soup, and various other things.  
• Orthodontia / Dental - that looks to be our first priority!  She won't let us near the left side molars with a toothbrush and she clearly needs some teeth pulling/aligning/moving.  
• Tidy / neat - yesterday, Eric took the kids to the mall to buy water bottles while I napped.  When they returned, she spotted the disturbed sheets where I'd slept and immediately straightened them.  After dinner last night, she spent 5 minutes wiping the tabletop and edges.
• Language - she seems to understand my Mandarin fairly well (PHEW!).  She is talkative in Mandarin, and our guide can get most of it, but I can't understand a lot of it.  Partly - she has a lot more Mandarin than I do.  :)  Her orphanage had warned us that her speech was understandable but not always clear.  I can hear that some of the sounds are hard for her to enunciate (-ng is one), so we probably have speech therapy in our future.
• She's copying English words (bus, car, motorcycle, water, numbers).  
• Academically, she's like a preschooler.  She can count and write the numbers 1-30 as well as the letters C and Z.  Yesterday, we worked on writing and identifying A.  We've got a lot of catch up to accomplish!