July 15, 2006 continued from Part Three...

When we got back to the hotel, I asked the director of Talley's orphanage, Harry (who was our driver that day), to tell Georgia that she was going to be in Talley's orphanage. I asked him to tell her that we were her parents and that we had come to visit her, and would come back another time. Georgia burst into tears. It was the most emotion I had ever seen from her. It broke my heart.

We ran to our hotel room, getting wet the whole way. I was crying. Georgia was crying and holding onto me tight. In our room, I got her calmed down and took hers and Talley's wet clothing off and put dry clothing on. Tim's money belt was drenched--we had to lay all of the money out around our hotel to dry. His passport was dripping wet and wrinkled--the pages were barely staying in. We laid out everything that was wet in our backpack and then both showered and put clean clothes on.

We met everyone in the restaurant for dinner. We had ordered our food in the morning so that we could hopefully eat on time. We still ended up waiting for about 45 minutes. All of the families ate together this night. Tim and I were very somber, knowing we would leave our girls and Haiti in the morning. We ate a nice dinner of pork chops (yummy), chicken spaghetti (better than it sounds) and poutine (french fries with some kind of gravy and cheese...surprisingly good). There was a group of Christian volunteers having a raucous party in the indoor part of the restaurant. They were having a great time--loud music, laughing, talking, maybe even dancing. We ate our meal in relative silence.
After dinner, we went to our adoption coordinator's room to watch a fundraiser demo she had put together. It was very well done and super touching.

We returned to our room and began packing. Georgia just quietly watched us. Tim and I cried off and on. When we were done packing, we put Georgia between us in bed. I had Talley on my chest and Georgia at my side. I tried to cuddle them as much as possible and didn't get very much sleep. I dreaded morning.


July 16, 2006

I could never bring myself to write about our last morning in Haiti. We woke early, fed the girls, dressed and were ready to leave by 8 am. We drove to the airport with the director of our agency and our adoption coordinator. It was a wild ride, and I remember holding on tight to Talley; smelling her neck and playing with the braids in her hair. I was numb. When we arrived at the airport, we handed the girls off to our adoption coordinator, and watched them drive away. I was sobbing so hard, I could barely breathe. I made quite a scene for all of the Haitians. We had an uneventful flight home, and I spent the next month seriously grieving for our girls.