Today we went to the Civil Affairs office in Hefei, China to finalize Linda’s adoption. After all these months of completing the required paperwork, all of our efforts paid off. It turned out to be a fairly smooth process. There were three other families from the US completing their adoptions this morning as well. It was a low-key environment, and the people we dealt with were friendly. The two interviews I had to go through were fairly short and unintimidating. After about two hours of waiting, answering questions and signing documents, Linda officially became our daughter at around 11:00 am, and we received her adoption certificate!
After the adoption ceremony, we took Linda to KFC to celebrate! She enjoyed it all! There is another family in our hotel from northern California who have just adopted a 6-year old daughter. We went with them to lunch and have enjoyed getting to know them and hearing their story.
Since we have been on the go since arriving in China, we thought we would spend a relaxing afternoon in the hotel. We took Linda to the swimming pool. It took a while for her to feel comfortable in the pool, but eventually she enjoyed splashing around and playing in the water. I think she will love spending time at the beach and in the ocean back home!!
We pray that Linda has another great night sleeping and feeling loved by her new family! Mia and I are truly enjoying getting to know her and her fun personality. She has certainly come out of her shell with us, which hopefully shows us that she trusts us and is comfortable with us! She is repeating English words when we ask her to. I can't wait until our verbal communication allows us to carry on a conversation!
Here is what Mia added from the day . . .
After we had talked to you we went to the pool, which did require swim caps ( ... oh well!) It was fun though, and Linda had a great time splashing and playing in the jacuzzi (which actually wasn't that hot :). We ended up seeing the other family that we went to lunch with there at the pool, so the girls had fun playing together! Then we came back and Linda took a bath. She was so funny because when I was doing her hair she started to burst out singing some of the songs from the Mei Mei videos! (especially the "pull the carrot" one!) For dinner we went to the restaurant in the hotel and got some noodles... they were super good! Then we came back and just hung out for a while, and Linda watched her first barney episode! She liked it even though she probably didn't understand a word they were saying!:) oh and she really enjoyed the alphabet song game on the iPad!
(It looks like they got her some "sparkly" shoes! The shoes we sent were too big!)
(Love the breakfast buffets in China!)
