First trip - Day 3, 1st meeting!

I will always remember September 10, 2012 as the day that we first met our son.  We woke up early that morning as we were excited but yet anxious on how it would go.  We were not sure if we could communicate with Andrei despite sharing deafness as a common ground.  We met our translator, Didi, downstairs in the lobby of the hotel and started walking to the orphanage.  Everything was within walking distance so we were able to walk to and from the orphanage, to the restaurant to eat our meals, and even to go shopping.  That was a nice bonus.  Anyways,  when we came upon the orphanage, I started getting really nervous and emotional.  I am not one to hold my emotions in, so thankfully I was wearing sunglasses to hide my eyes so that no one could see me tearing up.  Once we were let in, we had to wait a little bit as the director had forgotten we were coming that day.  All my senses were heightened because I was able to look around and get a feel of the place.  Finally we were ushered into the Director's office and asked to sit down.  We were asked if we had any questions and we couldn't think of any as we wanted to meet our son and then come up with the ideas as we learned more about him.  We were then told that our son was about to enter the door!  I then grabbed my husband's hand and needed his comfort for the moment that we were going to lay eyes on our little boy.  The door opened and in came this sweet shy little boy holding onto a worker's hand.  Immediately, I teared up because he was smaller than I had expected a 7 1/2 year old boy to be.  I felt such strong love despite just meeting him for the first time. Andrei came to sit down next to me for just a couple of minutes and then we were told to go ahead and go outside with him.  We all went walking down the hallway towards the back and I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that we were actually there with our son!  Once we got to the back, we went to find a place to sit down.  After we sat down, I gave him a match box car.  Andrei was so shy but was willing to take the car.  I started signing to my husband and he would sign back while Andrei was watching us.  After a while, Andrei started warming up and playing with the car we gave him.  After a while, Andrei told us to follow him so that he could go play on the swings.  I helped to push him on the swing for a little bit.  Unfortunately there isn't really much to do at the orphanage and I wanted the first meeting to be about us, not gifts that we brought for him.   We managed to find things to do and that there was a little bike that Andrei would ride despite it being too small for him.  It's actually more appropriate for a 3/4 year old.  Andrei and one other girl are the oldest children at this orphanage.  The rest of them are 5 and under.  Andrei, after he really warmed up, started to smile and communicated in his country's sign language.  See, when we first arrived, we were told that Andrei attends a deaf school during the week and goes back to the orphanage on the weekends.  Our visit was the best timing because he was going back to school the following Monday after a summer break.  We managed to communicate despite having two different languages and we quickly realized that Andrei is like a sponge, so willing to soak up new things and learn anything and everything.  Time quickly flew for us and it was time for us to leave.  We told Andrei we would be back, and it seemed like he understood and he waved goodbye.  We left and started heading back to our hotel just thrilled with how our first meeting went.  :)