Today It's Official!

We had our Giving & Receiving Ceremony today and our adoption is now official with the Vietnamese Government!

It was quite an exhausting day today. Chianna was up a little after 5am (but its not like we got too much sleep anyways - we both were jumping up at every little sound to check on her!) We needed to leave the hotel at 7am to go back to her orphanage to sign some paperwork and pick up her things. We also picked up the orphanage director to head to the G&R at the Justice Dept. Traffic here is horrible. It takes about 30 - 45 mins to go 2 miles!!! And this is not good for Myke, who gets car sick very easily, all the stop & go & exhaust just adds to the mix. At least the happy occasions have made the rides just a little bit better for him.

So we arrive at the Justice Dept. to be told that Myke cannot get in because he is wearing shorts! Thuy had no idea about this rule, as it is a Ho Chi Minh City rule, and had not so in any of the other provinces she had worked with before. So, poor Myke had to get in a taxi again and go back to the hotel to put jeans on. In the mean time, Thuy started the paperwork. I was so worried that Myke would get lost or not make it back in time, but luckily, none of that happened. However, the G&R here was even less of a ceremony than it usually is, we had no ceremony, I had signed the paperwork while Myke was getting his jeans and then he signed when he got in. No pictures, no speeches, no fan fare of any sort. After the signing was done, Thuy had to go to another building to get paperwork done and told us just to hang out and wait for her. So we went across the street to a little outdoor cafe and celebrated with Chianna's first ice cream!

Here are some pics of the day. I am uploading some videos to YouTube, but have to get to bed, so go and check them out, they should be done in a little while: www.YouTube.com/user/ssmshari