This was a day of an adventure, to put it politely. I knew by the end of it I would get to see my new baby so I journeyed through it all. Our translator and a driver picked us up after breakfast but didn’t have enough room in the car for all our suitcase plus the suitcases we brought for the orphanage. They had to leave us behind for 30 min to drop off the orphanage suitcases at the Anido office for Alex to bring with him on Thursday when he came to pick us up.

It was after 9:30am when we actually got on the road. Then, the driver and translator decided to stop for coffee and a smoke, or three, on our way out of the city. They said it was a tradition… I think it was more just a need for a cigarette so they could survive an hour and a half with out one. EVERYONE chain smokes here. I hate it. They are relatively clean about it though. They don’t flick their butts everywhere like North Americans. I did enjoy the art on the walls of the coffee stop though! Boobies, bums and banana’s with two oranges on either side adorned the walls. Only in Europe 🙂

We arrived in Plovdiv and checked in to our hotel before making our way to the orphanage. The hotel room is definitively lacking but since it is just Jon and I we decided to stay in the budget places with out Sofie and splurge a little to stay in a luxury hotel when we are in Sofia with Sofie.

We found the orphanage eventually. The taxi driver had never heard of it but knew the hotel beside it that we were told has a bad reputation. We had almost booked in there without knowing. It saddened me a little that locals have no idea there is a baby house in their own neighbourhood. I was so nervous, and hot with 37 degree weather, but mostly excited. We were taken in to a room with a long table a desk and cupboards with papers and stuffed toys in them. We had to wait for them to bring Sofie to us. This was it. This is what I was waiting for! Around 12 noon she walked in holding one of the caregivers hand and climbed up on a chair. I was crying. I remember being stunned with just how perfect she was. It took everything I had not to scoop her up but I didn’t want to frighten her. We knelt down beside her chair and cautiously introduced ourselves and gently touched her fingers, face, and hair. After a few minutes of her looking at me like “I’m liking all this attention but who are you?” I picked her up carefully. She is just so precious.

 Cuddles

We played with her for about 20 minutes until she needed to be taken for her nap. We asked the caregiver a few questions that we could think of. The Director was not there to speak with directly but the staff answered all our questions well. They told us that she likes music, is independent, and that they have a journal of all the dates of her milestones, like her first steps and pictures! We were allowed to come back in the afternoon to play with Sofie in her playroom so we set out for the hotel. Navsco, our translator is a great translator but not the best guide. He took us on an hour and half hike up and down the hills through Plovidiv trying to find our hotel. Once we discovered the proper route, we realized it was only 10 minutes from the orphanage! It was quite a lovely walk through the non-tourist parts of town but in the 37 degree heat I started getting frustrated near the end. Navsco was kind of funny and fit the typical stereo type of not wanting to ask for directions. He did try to turn our trip in to a bit of a tourist walk and treated us to some drinks at a little cafe we found on top of an ancient Roman amphitheatre. Plovdiv was a Roman city from the 1^st to the 5^th century. It was really neat to think that we were sitting somewhere that was built when Jesus was alive!

My annoyance for the 90 minute journey subsided once I was able to relax my feet and get rehydrated. Navsco also treated us to lunch and asked if he could order a authentic Bulgarian meal for us. It was really delicious and I loved the experience. I couldn’t begin to name what was ordered but we started with a traditional salad. I think it might have been called Thracian salad. It reminded me a lot of Greek salad with out the olives and dressing. The only dressing was sunflower oil, a major export of Bulgaria and delicious! Lunch was a cheese bake thing with pork sausage and a tomato slice. We also got some bread to soak up the sauce/grease.

We didn’t have time to return to the hotel so we went straight to the orphanage again. We used a taxi this time. (I need to give myself honorable mention here… since we didn’t return to the hotel I had to use the toilet at the orphanage. It was a squat toilet! I think I need to take a picture for you to truly understand how terrifying it was and how proud I was for not getting myself wet!) Sofie came to us in the play room this time and seemed glad to to see us. She loved all the attention she was getting. I picked her up right away this time. One of the caregivers stayed with us and Navsco answering questions and observing our interactions to report back to the Director. She said we was surprised to see how comfortable Sofie/DiDi was with us. (They hadn’t known that we changed her name from Diyana to Sofie. DiDi is her nickname.) Sofie played with us, copied our actions very well, crashed blocks, climbed chairs, got tickled, danced, clapped, played peek-a-boo with the fuzzy we brought for her (she LOVED the fuzzy), and cuddled.

It was a really incredible experience getting to know our daughter this way. I can’t describe it adequately. So different from meeting Livi but just as powerful and cosmic. Less organic but just as empowering. I can’t say that I’m feeling fully like her Mommy yet but I can feel it growing. I love her. Wow, do I love her. But I don’t think the Mommy feeling will take full force until we are home with her.

We had to leave her in the orphanage for the night and won’t be allowed to take her with us until Thursday, despite Anido/Alex’s best effort to convince the Director to let her go on Wednesday. We get to visit her every morning and afternoon and it is giving us a chance to do a little sightseeing and hopefully shoe shopping! The shoes here are incredible! Alana, you would die! After dinner and Skyping with Livi, and uploading a picture to facebook we slept. Only until 2 am though. We keep waking up around then hungry and unable to return to sleep! So frustrating. We are going to stay up until 11pm tomorrow to hopefully get a decent night sleep for once!

With all the excitement of settling down I suddenly couldn’t sleep, despite not having slept more than 3 hours in the past 27. Since it was 7am in Bulgaria and the Hotel was serving breakfast, I decided to go and fill my growling stomach. It was well worth my efforts… Scrambled and boiled eggs, sausage, bacon, a cold cuts platter, a cheese platter, three types of yogurt, including Greek yogurt which is delicious, croissants and jam, two other types of bread, two types of cereal, juice, coffee and tea. All levels of delicious.

I slept well after that. Too well. We had only meant to sleep until noon at the latest but I didn’t wake up until 2pm. Oops. That mistake really messed with my jet lag too. I only slept for 3 hours the next night then too 😦 Although, maybe it wasn’t the jet lag, maybe it was my excitement for seeing Sofie!

Once we finally woke up we walked a few blocks to do some sight seeing. We first stopped at a sushi place for some lunch. It was the only place that we could find that was open on a Sunday and would either accept Euro’s or credit card since we hadn’t changed our money yet.

After our tummy’s were satisfied, we went to Alexandar Nevsky Cathedral. It is “only” 200ish years old but amazing. It is an Orthodox Cathedral, not Catholic as many of us westerners might assume. We are in Eastern Europe remember 🙂 I actually got a little choked up with the awe of it all. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside though 😦 There was also what used to be a crypt under the Cathedral, which has been turned in to a museum of icon’s. One piece dated back to the 4^th century.

We did a little more looking around that day, a lot of walking and headed back to the room for some more, or less sleep. We get to meet Sofie tomorrow!

I some how left my baby. Like I said, it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I held it together for most of the trip to the airport. I only quietly cried once in the car. As we were walking to the security check though I could feel the tears coming. I just started bawling. I had hoped I would be able to keep Livi from seeing me cry but that plan was an epic failure. I was able to talk to her with out heaving though! I kissed her and hugged her, told her how much fun she was going to have, told her how safe she was and that Mommy and Daddy would be back in two weeks! I tried to sound excited but she was confused with all the tears. Even Jon got choked up. He “says” he didn’t shed a tear though. My sister’s helped save the experience for her though. They got really excited for her and had her waving and shouting how much she loved us through security. It made me cry more but I could hear that she was having fun.

We got through security extremely quick so we grabbed some comfort food/alcohol at Milestones to cope! We actually did need to eat dinner. Our plane was on time and we started boarding around 8:15pm. I’ve never been on such a big plane and have never actually seen a first class with my own eyes. It was a weird feeling being herded through the luxury seating like second class citizens. It reminded me of Titanic for some reason…

The flight itself was fine. I actually managed to get about 2-3 hours of sleep. I’m not sure what quality that sleep was and it only came with the help of a Gravol pill and two ibuprofens for my cankle pains. My feet ended up swelling a bit, despite my best efforts to move around and stay hydrated… I have a sneaking suspicion the salt infused plane food was what pushed them over the edge. We had a little turbulence over the ocean but nothing that deployed the air masks. I was so uncomfortable through most of it. The staff were not the friendliest people in the world either. I suspected they were on their last flight of their stint and crabby from their long shifts. In fact, most of the English people we ran in to today were not overly pleasant. One bus driver we had yelled at the entire bus for someone accidentally holding the call button down… We actually think it was Jon but we didn’t want to call attention to that fact after that.

We had decided to skip any excursion into London because we were both so tired, we weren’t sure if we had enough time to go in to the heart of London and we hadn’t researched it very well because it wasn’t one of my priorities for this trip. But, as we were walking through the dreary halls of Heathrow Airport I happened to ask an attendant where we could spend our 9 hour layover. She encouraged us to “jot down to Windsor castle”. She was actually quite helpful and does not fit in the same category of the English people I was talking about earlier. She gave us specific instructions for which bus to take and assured us Windsor Castle was quite close to Heathrow. We decided to go for it. I mean, when are we ever going to be in London again?!

The bus took about 30 min to get to Windsor and was quite a pretty drive. I couldn’t get enough of all the brick houses, town homes and bridges. It was like I was in a movie… Well, I’ve only seen them in the movies 🙂 Unfortunately, when we got to the castle it had just closed. Apparently, everything touristy closes early in England on a Saturday. It was the same problem we had run in to when I was looking in to going to Westminster Abbey during the layover. There was still tons of stuff to look at and do… Like the Thames river! Famous in lots of literature and where we were you could frequently see the Eton boys sculling. There is a large touristy shopping area there with cute shops and yummy looking food. We went to the King and the Castle Pub (I think that’s what it was called). It was a beautiful old building with real wood, broken stone, a tree in the middle of it’s patio and hanging flower baskets everywhere. Jon got his mandatory pint of Guiness and I had the deliciously cliched Fish n’ Chips! (Thanks Leanna and David!)

We got back to the airport with more than enough time to catch our flight and found a Gordon Ramsay restaurant!!! Gordon Ramsay Plane Food. Neither of us was hungry but this restaurant was a must! I was so excited. We decided to go for dessert and coffee. Jon had Gordon’s Chocolate Pecan Brownie with Vanilla Ice cream and I, of course, had his Lemon Creme Brulee. Do you like how I’m calling “G” by his first name now? We now have a relationship so it is okay to be so informal. Let me tell you… this dessert is definitely the highlight of our trip so far! I took more pictures of the food than of the Castle! The maitre’d saw me taking pictures and came over to make sure everything was okay. He was worried something was wrong with the food and I was a food critic or something and was going to write about it 🙂 I assured him we were just tourists who had crushes on Gordon Ramsay. Then when he found out we were from Vancouver he told us to take as many pictures as I like because he saw what angry Canadians can do over just a hockey game! He was quite funny actually.

A few hours later we flew out to Sofia. We were exhausted and did not get very much sleep the whole trip. I think in the 27 hours we were in transit, I slept maybe 3 hours and Jon only got 1 or 2. Thankfully, we had arranged for our hotel to pick us up at 4am and take us directly to our room. After quickly saying hi to Livi on Skype and taking a shower we tried to get some sleep.