With a few mortgage payments under our belt, we started to move on to the "family" process. It's funny... no amount of spreadsheet budgeting makes you comfortable until you actually make the payments and realize that you do make enough money for the loan(s), property taxes, maintenance, blah, blah, blah. You also realize that the days of quitting your job, pulling up stakes and traveling the world for 6 months are a thing of the past (welcome to being a grown-up).
We had done a fair amount of research on adoption the previous summer. Christi & I knew that we would only focus on international adoption. Adoption was a first choice for us, and the needs of parentless children overseas seemed obvious. However, before I start receiving flaming emails, let me state that the decision to adopt and where to adopt is very personal with many factors involved. Domestic adoption and the sometimes tangled legal issues that ensue was just something that we were not willing to undertake.
Focusing on adopting from China came pretty quickly. We attended an open house meeting on international adoption that discussed the process for adopting from Latin America, former Eastern Bloc states, and several countries in Asia, including China. Living in Northern California, especially in southern Marin County, it is not uncommon to see Asian children with Caucasian parents. Other factors in our decision: we have friends whose children were from China, I had lived in Taiwan briefly and (still) speak pretty atrocious Mandarin. We also felt we understood Chinese culture better than the other countries we were considering.
Posted by christofu at February 8, 2004 04:54 PMI have 2 cousins who adopted children. Until then we had an extended family of white bread Americans. We now have Chinese, African, Tongan, and Brazilian children in the extended family. It has added a special element to our family and I think it's wonderful.
Posted by: Guest at February 11, 2004 09:13 PM