Reinvigorated

Sometimes it doesn't take much to get reinvigorated with something that's important in your life..today was one of those days for us.

This afternoon we had a chance to spend a little time with our friends in the Southern Maryland Adoptive Family Network. We were first introduced to them last fall. Laura was talking to one of her customers about adoption and that's how we found out about the group. They invited us to a picnic in the early fall. We had a great time meeting everybody. Now that the holidays have passed and people's lives are back to a more normal pace, they decided to throw a potluck lunch to get everybody back together.

We all met at a church in La Plata and spent a couple of hours eating, socializing, and watching all of the children have fun playing together. It was a great time. Every time we see so many different adoptive families with children adopted both domestically and from various parts of the world, we get reinvigorated. It makes us want to work harder and move faster so that we'll be able to adopt our child as soon as possible.

Well, I'm cutting this post short. Since we're reinvigorated, it's time to go work on our paperwork. :-)

Getting back on the adoption wagon

If you've been following this blog, you know that there hasn't been an update in two long months. Family and friends have been excited to hear about our progress with the adoption. The bad news is that over the last two months, very little has happened. We fell off the wagon (so to speak). Laura and I found ourselves overwhelmed with work and the holidays, so our progress with the paperwork came to a halt. The good news is that our life has gone back to normal (as normal as our lives are) and we're redoubling our efforts to finish our paperwork so that we can get one step closer to adopting our child. Now we're back on the adoption wagon. As we work through the remainder of the paperwork, I'll provide more regular updates. But for now, I'll recap the second day of our adoption training from last November (as promised in the last blog update).

On the second day of our adoption training, our original group split into two so that all of the people adopting internationally were together. We started by talking about how the focus on adoption differs between the parent and adopted child. In the beginning of the adoption process, the parents are extremely focused on the adoption. As you bond with your child, your thoughts of adoption start to diminish. It's always there in the back of your mind...as you teach your child about their heritage, celebrate holidays from their country of birth, etc....but first and foremost you are a parent. For the adopted child, the focus on adoption is just the opposite. In our case, our child will be young so at first he won't know he's adopted. Over time, as we explain adoption to him and teach him about his place of birth, he will become more and more inquisitive. One way that our adoption agency helps with this is by offering homeland tours. When the child is ready, the family can visit his birth country. The whole family has a chance to experience the culture first hand and they may even be able to learn more about the child's adoption story.

The adoption story is basically the information about the circumstances of the child's adoption. It may include information about the child's birth parents, place of birth, or other personal facts. Some of this information we may get when we first get matched with our child. Other pieces of information may be discovered at a later date. The important thing is that in the end, it's all personal information that belongs to our child. As parents, we will share this information with our child when we feel he is ready to hear about it, but we will not share this information with anybody else. We feel very strongly that the adoption story is our child's story to share with others, not ours.

The next portion of our training covered health issues. We learned about mongolian blue spots which is a collection of pigmentation at certain areas of the body. It normally happens in infants and slowly fades over time. It looks very much like bruises, so it's important to be aware of it and share the information with your pediatrician so that there's no misunderstandings as to whether it's mongolian blue spots or bruises. We also found out that we'll have to get some vaccination updates prior to traveling to South Korea. I'm probably good to go (thanks to the Air Force) but Laura will probably need to get a few shots.

During lunch, each person in the group got to go over their homework assignment. I'm sure you're all thinking..."homework assignment". Our assignment was to increase our awareness of our child's culture and share it with the others couples. Some examples of things we could research or do were to...

1. Visit a market or store related to the country
2. Visit an ethnic church and talk to church members about your plans to adopt
3. Research special holidays or traditions
4. Identify books, foods, or music particular to the country

If you read the earlier blog entries, you know this was a pretty easy assignment for us. We had already done most of these things on our own. We were able to share our experiences with Korean cooking and the Korean cultural festival. We also brought some Korean snacks and shared them with everybody. There were three other adoptive families (2 South Korea, 1 China) that shared their information too. It was a great way to learn more about both cultures. We all had a great time.

At the end of the day, we had our toughest assignment. Each person paired off with somebody else (not their spouse) and was given two role playing scenarios. Each scenario was based on an actual incident that somebody has experienced as an adoptive parent. One person played the role of the adoptive parent while the other person played the role of the person that was either asking lots of personal questions or was saying something inconsiderate (or ignorant) about the situation. An example of a scenario is that the adoptive parent and child are in a line at a grocery store and the next person in line says something like, "Where's he from...are you his real parents?". The goal of the exercise was to understand that as adoptive parents, there will be many times that we have to deal with uncomfortable situations and will have to learn how to respond. The way we look at it, we'll have a chance to educate people about adoption. Most people that ask insensitive questions don't do it to hurt the adoptive family. They are just inquisitive. I believe that if we're able to help other people understand adoption, it will make our child's life just a little easier in the long run.

That's it for the long awaited update. Now I'm going to get back to work on our paperwork. Our goal is to get it completed so that we can have our home study by the end of March. We'll let you know how we're doing soon.

Paperwork and Training

At this stage in the adoption process, we're heavily involved in completing all of our paperwork along with completing a variety of adoption and parenting training. At times it seems a little overwhelming but we know that all the effort is worth it.

On Friday (Nov 14th) we travelled to the adoption agency to take our first of two all-day classes on adoption. The second class will be this Tuesday (Nov 18th). The first class had a mix of people that are adopting both domestically and internationally. It was a pretty large group of six couples. Two couples were adopting domestically, one couple was adopting from China, and the other three couples (us included) are adopting from Korea. For all couples, this is their first time adopting. It was really great to meet so many people that are going through what we are. Two of the couples are already birth parents but it sounds like just about everybody has struggled with infertility like we have. There were some sad stories to tell and quite a few tears were shed, but we all share an enthusiasm for what is to come as we adopt children from various parts of the world.

The overall theme for the day was "identity". There are many things that play a role in a person's identify. We started by discussing the differences between nature and nurture...and how this shapes our development. An adopted child often lacks information about the "nature" side of their life. Because they are not raised by their birthparents, they often don't learn about their family or cultural history. For adoptees, it's important for them to learn their life story so that they can better understand their "natural" roots. You may have heard the saying that "you need to know where you've been to know where you're going". This is the same thought behind an adoptee knowing their life story. Part of our role as adoptive parents will be to help our child understand his life story and explain it to him which is why we're learning about the Korean culture. It's important to us because we know it will be important to him.

The next topic we discussed was the difference between the perception of birthparents that make an adoption plan and the reality. Some of the typical stereotypes are that the birthparents are poor, young, irresponsible, and selfish. In reality, birthparents consist of people at various income levels, have an average age in the mid 20's, and usually decide to make an adoption plan for the welfare of their child (which is an extremely unselfish act). Our adoption agency deals with both birthparents and adoptive parents. They see both sides. One reason that we really like the people in the agency is that we know they have a genuine concern for everybody. There are many people that are affected by adoption. The birthparents, children, adoptive parents, family, and friends...all are affected. Even though we will be extremely happy when we finally have our child in our arms, I know that we will also feel a deep sense of sadness knowing that our child will probably never know his birth parents.

In our training, we also talked about positive adoption language. The goal with positive adoption language is to give the maximum respect, dignity, responsibility, and objectivity about the decisions made by both birthparents and adoptive parents in discussing the family planning decisions they have made for children who have been adopted. We feel that one of our roles as adoptive parents is to help educate people on adoption. One aspect of that education is how we talk about adoption. For example, one of the most common things people say when referring to birthparents is to call them the child's "real parents". In reality, the "real parents" are the ones that raised the child. They are the ones that comforted him when he was sad and laughed with him when he was happy. Adoptive parents are no less "real" than any other parents. It doesn't matter if we are the birthparents of our child or not...we know that we will be his real parents.

"Real parents" is just one example...there are many other examples of positive adoption language. Here's a good link that shows both the negative phrase and a more positive phrase that should be used instead: http://www.adoptlink.com/language.htm.

We finished up the day talking about the differences (and similarities) between being a birthparent and an adoptive parent. In addition, we watched a video that talked about adoption from the view of the adoptive parent as well as the adopted child.

It was a long day of training but if flew by very quickly. We left feeling reenergized and motivated to keep working on our paperwork. We know we still have a long ways to go and a lot to learn along the way, but we're as excited as ever.

Wedding Anniversary with a Korean Twist - Part II

After our anniversary dinner at the Korean restaurant, we went to the 3rd annual Korean-American cultural arts festival held at George Mason University (Fairfax, VA). The theme of the event this year was the celebration of the 630th birthday of Nangye Park Yeon, one of the most famous musicians in Korean history.

As we pulled up to the cultural arts center, the first thing we noticed was that there was a very high percentage (probably at least 90%) of Asian people in attendance. We thought there would be many Korean Americans, but thought that there would be a broader mix of different racial and ethnic backgrounds that were interested in experiencing a piece of Korean culture. We could tell that the cultural festival was an important way for the Korean Americans to keep in touch with their cultural history. When we entered the main lobby, we noticed that there were several art exhibits setup. All of the artists are from the local area. There was a paper artist, calligrapher, florist, and painter. All of the art was very nice with the floral arrangements and paper art particularly beautiful.

The performances for the festival were all musical. The first half was all traditional Korean music. The first performance was music that was performed during royal ceremonies. There was a mix of wind instruments (bamboo flutes and oboes), fiddles, and drums. All of the instruments were Korean...they are nothing like the western instruments that we're used to seeing. In addition, the sounds are very unique. At first they sounded very strange to us, but as the music continued we started to get a feel for it and began to enjoy it more. During the first performance, there was also a royal court fashion show. Men and women walked slowly onto the stage wearing outfits that you would have seen in Korean royal courts throughout the years.

The second performance was a dance called Salpuri which means to exorcise evil energies. The woman danced slowly while holding a silken scarf. The music was slow and the scarf movements were in coordination with minute foot movements. The first half of the concert ended with 3 more performances. Most of the music was played with a slower, almost reverent pace. The melodies seemed to repeat quite a bit (probably because I have an untrained ear and didn't notice the differences).

After a 20 minute intermission, the second half kicked off with a speech by the master of ceremonies. He started in English than spoke for several minutes in Korean (we're not sure what he said). When he started speaking in English again, he began talking about the history of Korea and how it changed with the occupation by Japan in the early 1900s. As he talked more and more about the last 100 years, he started lecturing the audience on taking accountability and influencing our children. The audience began to get a little restless, I'm assuming that they didn't enjoyed being lectured to.

The whole second half was performed by a Korean traditional orchestra. The setup was like a traditional orchestra that you would experience in western civilization, but consisted of Korean or other eastern instruments. Most of the music was more upbeat than the first half of music. Once piece of music featured solos of almost every instrument, so we got to hear what each one sounded like by itself. The last performance was our favorite. The piece was called Chukjae which is a recreational festival. The orchestra was joined by a saxophonist. The upbeat music featured many saxophone solos that were countered with percussion solos. It was as if the percussion instruments were dueling with the saxophone. The audience thoroughly enjoyed it...enough for an encore performance.

We really enjoyed our day experiencing a little bit of the Korean culture. We know that our child will be raised as an American, but we want to make sure that he understands his proud Korean heritage. We can't wait to share these experiences with him as he grows and explores both his American heritage and his Korean heritage.

Wedding Anniversary with a Korean Twist - Part I

Yesterday (12 Oct 2008) was our 17th anniversary. We decided to spend our afternoon and evening by getting to know a little bit more about the Korean culture.

We started by going to a Korean restaurant for an early supper. We've been to a couple different Korean restaurants, but wanted to try a different one to see how it was. After some online research, we settled on trying Yechon in Annandale, VA. The restaurant is located in an area with a heavy Korean population. The first thing we noticed as we pulled up was that the restaurant didn't look like much...more like a soutwestern steak restaurant. Looks were deceiving because inside it was nicely decorated with various Korean art. After browsing through the menu, we decided to order one of their house specials for two. We chose the Korean barbecue.

Most Korean meals start when they bring out a wide variety of different cold vegetable dishes that everybody at the table shares. We had at least 6 different kinds of vegetables. The Korean vegetable dish that most people have heard of is Kimchi (also spelled Kimchee or Gimchi). Kimchi is made by taking vegetables, adding spices, putting them in a pot, and burying them in the ground so that they can ferment. The most common kind is a cabbage kimchi. Our vegetable dishes included a cabbage kimchi that was moderately spicy. There were also vegetable dishes with cucumbers and eggplant, to name a few. I normally don't like eggplant, but I did like the eggplant dish that they brought. All of the vegetable dishes were very good (and that's coming from a guy that isn't a big fan of vegetables).

Once we got our vegetable dishes, the waitress brought the meat for our barbecue. A traditional Korean barbecue is done right at your table. There is a grill built into the table. The meat is brought to your table and either you can cook it yourself or the waitress will do it for you. Since we got one of the house specials, we were given a variety of meats. We had bulgogi (thinly sliced beef), galbi (short ribs), chicken, pork, shrimp, and lobster. All were very good. We also had a spicy soup (bean paste pot stew) that had bean and tofu, along with a rice dish called kamasot bob.

All in all, it was an excellent meal that we really enjoyed. It was a great primer for the rest of our evening...but I'll save that story for the next blog entry. :-)