Trip Summary - At the Civil Affairs Office

This next part is very hard to describe but I’ll try my best. We arrived at the Civil Affairs Office (the government office where we would meet our babies) -- see picture of Neil above left standing in front of the building -- (14 families, some with young children and / or grandparents and / or friends). The room in which we were being presented with our babies (see picture above right with Sammie on her nanny's lap) was quite large but it sure seemed small. Fourteen babies (most screaming/crying) with one or two nannies (from the two orphanages from which our new daughters were coming from) per baby, plus government officials, plus our two guides, and what you got was mass pandemonium! The parents were so excited and trying to guess which baby was their own new daughter (the referral pictures were now about five or six months old so many changes in the babies since then). I think only one family guessed correctly, and it wasn’t us! We sure got a pretty baby and she was also NOT fussing at all. When we saw her from across the room, we didn’t dare hope that this was Sammie for fear of being disappointed. From that distance and with her hair in three (!) pigtails, it didn’t look like our Sammie anyway. Although, now that I’m reflecting on this day, I guess we should have guessed it was her as she had lots of hair in her referral pictures and she was the only baby there with lots of hair. Anyhow, babies were being presented to their new families and wailing away (as were the parents!), pictures were being taken everywhere by everyone – and then ....