We got her!

We flew to Chongquig, the province where Sarae is from, Monday morning. We got into our hotel around 12:00 and had an hour and a half to unpack. Leslie and Heidi were incredible in helping me unpack and put everything away to prepare for receiving Sarae. During this time we were practicing with the camcorder and for some reason it decided to stop recording. Thank goodness we realized this before we left and we had another couple agree to let us use their camcorder. They weren't going to videotape theirs, since they both were going to be focusing on receiving their daughter so Leslie offered to video tape for them and Heidi to take still shots. It ended up working out for everyone. We drove to the Civil Affairs office to get our babies and when we walked in you saw babies everywhere with nannies. There was about 15 minutes where we were waiting to go into our room to receive our babies and during that time we were each anxiously looking at the different babies to see if ours was there. I became overwhelmed and had to stop looking because I was getting too anxious. Leslie and Heidi kept looking and thought they had found her. They called out your name and then brought their babies to you. There were several people in front of me and for some reason, I just zoned out so when they called my name, I just stood there. Felt like an idiot when I finally heard them calling me, but all was forgotten when they handed her to me. She was smiling when they handed her to me. She's absolutely beautiful and she did not cry at all. She would look at me and then look around. At one point, she laid her head down on my shoulder and took a short nap. While they were coordinating the paperwork, (here in Chongquig the process is different and I actually finalized the adoption that day, it was interesting to see how the other children were reacting. The ages were from around Sarae's age to almost three. As expected, the older ones were having a difficult time going to these "strange looking" people. One couple in particular had a little girl (almost 3) who was crying and running from them. After watching the adoptive parents and the caretaker run after this crying child, Leslie finally went up to her and picked the crying girl up, took her to the parents and explained they needed to hold her and take her away from the caregiver so she would stop crying. They followed her advice and although it wasn't smooth sailing, the father was able to start working with her and she ended up bonding with him. It's amazing, but almost every child bonded with the father initally instead of the mother. In my case, no problem, she bonded to me.