Last Mandarin class

I'm no closer to learning how to jazzing up this poor page. I might have to switch to one of those cutesy websites where they have the panda bear graphics !! ~~ Dec '08 Look! I figured out the graphics and found my own panda bear. I love this guy balancing the Dim Sum (dumplings) I did have something interesting happen yesterday. Ok so it was the last day of my beginners mandarin class at the Asian Cultural center IU (love them). Since I was the first student there, I asked Yeshu if she would help me with the name I had picked out and see if it meant anything in Chinese. I spelled out Ja- Lee- a and she said that: Jia (1) means good Li (4) means pretty Ya (3) means classy She was pretty impressed that I came up with that without knowning what it meant first. I was just damn glad it didn't mean anything weird !! Now I just gotta figure out how to spell it.... JaLiah goes well with Jeremiah, JaLeea looks very weird but I want to call her JaLee after her daddy hummmmm. Then I worry that you shouldn't have an "a" at the end of your first and middle name (like who is gonna know). There is alot of debate over keeping children's chinese names. Technically they are assigned by the orphanage director and are not very "original". They could be the season they were born and the region they were from. After so many children per year, you wonder how many times the director rolls the list over and starts again !!! The only way to know is to wait for your referral and see if you like it.

Where to Start

I over heard my co worker say that adopting from China is the latest “fad”. Many of Jesse’s co-workers want to know why we aren't adopting from this country and I have been asked if I can’t “have any more” biologically, that is. For all of those who have questioned our decision to adopt and do so internationally, here is some background info before you pass judgement.............. My family lived for several years in Hawaii in the early 70’s. So I "grew up" there. My best friend was Japanese, my favorite cartoons were Japanese, I was surrounded by asian culture and loved the melting pot of all of them...............

My family moved to Taiwan in the mid 70’s. It is a beautiful country and I love the Chinese culture. I was also introduced to the status of women in that culture. We adopted a little boy while there and at some point in my life, I decided it was FAR more important to give children a family than to create a family by producing children................ When Jesse and I met, I made sure he understood adoption was in my future. I assumed he would regret not having a biological child so I got pregnant and behold had not 1 but 2 boys in 2003.................. I started looking for a daughter soon after. I was looking for a Native American girl, under 10, who was in need of a home. Then I learned something…. Existing children are not just adopted but must first be fostered. This meant we needed to foster with no guarantees of adoption. There are thousands of children in the foster system, most of them older, most of them sibling groups. We really just wanted 1 more child.................. I contacted my county child services office in Dec. 2004. By the end of February, Jesse and I had all our Red Cross certifications and our parenting classes done. Now we just had to wait on Child Services. It is an understaffed and inefficient process. We waited till April for our home study visit and then waited some more. I’d email and get no reply. Jesse bumped into the social worker in August, he asked him what the hold up was with our home study and Jack said he must of “FORGOTTON’ about us. I was livid to be treated so casually when all you hear about is how desperatly foster families are needed. So after several phone calls and emails to the boss, we got finally got certified in Dec 2005, 1 year later..................... We waited and waited about 6 months, then I learned something else…. There are no single girls in the foster care system in Indiana and the other states don’t want to bother with us. I had talked to several case workers within Indiana and around the Southwest. Nobody is interested in moving kids away from their extended families. There are visitation rules and kinship rules, so they just add children to the few good foster families they already monitor. We did TRY to adopt domesticly and after 1 1/2 yrs we gave up.................... In Summer of 2006, I got tired of waiting and prepared our dossier for China. After 6 months of paperwork, we were received in China on January 30, 2007. This is known as a Log In Date or LID. This is how all families are prioritized. At that date the wait was 15-18 months.