What an incredible roller coaster of a day. First we got up at 4:30am and met downstairs in our hotel lobby to start our drive out into the province where her orphanage was. We drove mostly in the dark, but by the time the sun rose, the mountains were huge and beautiful. What a wonderful part of the world, so much farming and very little commerce. We were first taken to her orphanage (picture above) and we were told to stand in a ceremonial room (kind of like a little lobby/conference room). Anyway, our case manager was taking these goofy pictures of us in front of those huge U-haul boxes of donations and sure enough our daughter had been brought into the room by her nanny. We missed the whole entrance somehow (typical us!).
She was SO scared of us and clearly loved the woman who had raised her pretty much her entire life (woman in the picture). It’s actually a good thing if orphans have bonded with someone prior to coming to you, so we were thrilled at how much obvious care she had gotten and how well she had been loved. 
After we visited for a few minutes with the baby (which consisted of her screaming and breaking her neck to find her nanny), we were told to give the baby’s back to their nannies and we boarded the van again to go to the provincial officials office. 
When we got there, the formal Giving & Receiving ceremony where we sign the book forever taking custody of this child was performed. The baby sat pretty much with her orphanage nanny the whole time, but it was a very simple civil ceremony. 
Once we finished the picture taking and such, we changed her clothes (very traumatic with lots of screaming), and then we all boarded the van with all the new babies and headed about 3 hours back to Hanoi. The best part about the ride was that the baby fell asleep on my chest as we left the ministry building, so she slept most of the way. Unfortunately the nap did not last long and she woke up screaming, drank a bottle, and then vomited the entire contents out all over me just after finishing. We are a bit exhausted and frantic. We brought her home and nearly scrubbed the skin off of her, so she is super clean and sleepy. We put a duvet cover on the floor and played with the baby stuff. We saw her sitting up so well, her first smiles for us and cooing, as well as putting some babble words together. She has a total of four teeth (two upper/two lower) and has a little bruise on her right cheek and a little bit of a cold. She’s pulling on both ears and I think she’s got an ear infection. WE have an international clinic that does pediatrics about four blocks from our apartment, so we’ll see how she is doing in the morning. We are absolutely exhausted. She just fell asleep, so we are sleeping as well. Please tell Ma (she always wonders) that she has a little peach fuzz of black hair. She seems to be very on par developmentally for her age. She is probably about the size of a six month old. She seems short to me, but obviously I like short people. I will write more and fill in many more details tomorrow. She took her bottle like a charm and I hope we get some sleep tonight. She’s a joy and a delight and we love her as much as we possibly could. Also, tomorrow our guide is taking us to buy a calling card, so we’ll try calling the grandparents and giving them the scoop on all that’s missing here. Thanks for all the prayers. We could sure feel them.
