Today we visited the Mothers Love Orphanage where Xiao Qiu lived from 2 months old to 6 months - then she went into foster care but came to the orphanage every month for a check up (we have been given copies of those monthly reports) - several of the carers recognised her and fussed over her - she of course took it all in her stride - we saw lots of little babies being cared for and we all wanted to take them all home right now - we talked with one American Chinese couple who were working at the orphanage for 2 months as volunteer carers - we are welcome to come back with Xiao Qiu in the future and do volunteer work and we think we would like to do that when she is old enough to help too.

We were very disappointed to learn that the parcel we had sent to the foster parents the month before had not arrived. We had sent a letter in Chinese (thanks to our good friend Wenqing from Wuhan) promising to love Xiao Qiu forever and promising to send photos regularly. We had sent a disposable camera for the foster parents to take photos of Xiao Qiu in her foster home so that she would have memories of that year of her life. We had sent a toy kangaroo plus photos of Geoff and I holding the kangaroo so that the foster parents could introduce us to Xiao Qiu by photo over the month and so that she could recognise us - we took a second kangaroo with us which we held at the Hand Over. Fortunately Hand Over wasn't too stressful and we had assumed this was because of the careful preparation by the foster parents but now we know the parcel did not arrive. What a pity.

We were also disappointed that we did not get to meet the foster parents at the orphanage. In some batches there has been further opportunity after handover to talk to the foster parents. We only met them for about 2 minutes on hand over day and it was all such a blur. We all took gifts for the foster parents but we just had to leave them at the orphanage. We were told the foster parents' names and told that Xiao Qiu had been their second foster child and that they had already been allocated a third child so that they did not grieve too much for Xiao Qiu who I am sure they loved very much. There are so many questions I would have liked to ask them about Xiao Qiu.

This afternoon we did a little bit of shopping and lunching by ourselves - we even crossed the road by ourselves (there are no traffic lights and very few pedestrian crossings and the traffic does whatever it feels like but somehow most people survive! We bought her a small bracelet made from Hepu pearls - she was born in Hepu, a coastal town famous for its pearls - at 2 months of age she was transferred from the Hepu Social Welfare Institute where she was left on the steps on her day of birth. We can't begin to imagine how awful it must be for the birth parents to have to do this and we feel selfish to have become so lucky because of someone else's misery.

Anyway what has been done has been done and she is ours now forever and we have promised the Chinese Government that we will look after her from now on. Every day is a special day but today is a special day because she received her Chinese passport. When we return to Australia we fill out paperwork to officially make her an Australian citizen (she will be entering Australia on a permanent residents visa which we collect in Guangzhou on Monday at the Australian Consulate).