Why China?

The simple answer is because that is where our child is. But such choices are hardly that simple.

When we decided to pursue international adoption we initially chose Poland. Jacek's family is Polish and my family is of Eastern European descent so it seemed the logical choice. We moved forward with the intial interviews for our home study and then attended the first required class. That's when it hit us. Poland just was not the right choice for us. I'll never forget the moment on the way to lunch that day when Jacek asked "what do you think about adopting from China?" We took a step back, reviewed the pros and cons of each program and looked a bit deeper. The result was that we realized that China really is where our future child is.

The irony is that when I was young I used to tell people that if I ever decided to have a child that I would adopt one from China...and now I am!

CCAA Update

Congratulations to all LIDs from July 14 through July 22 who who are now seeing their referrals!!! A great place to find links to current referrals is on this blog - Mary-Mia has been keeping the China adoption community up to date on referrals and travels and now she'll be seeing her very own referral today!

The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before July 22, 2005.

4 Months LID

We've passed the 4 month mark in our wait for our child. Currently the time from LID to referral is 13-14 months and I think most are expecting it to grow more. The past month flew with the new job, vacation prep and of course our time in Honduras. The coming months will speed along, too, I'm sure - we have a friend's big 40th birthday party, another friend's wedding and two of Jacek's friends visiting for a weekend - oh and my parents are due for a visit as well...keeping busy really is the key.

Relaxin' on Roatan

Posts have been slim recently - but for very good reason. We were getting ready for our diving vacation to Roatan, one of the bay islands of Honduras. It was an amazing trip.

We arrived at CoCo View Resort and were instantly relaxed. It's a quaint island resort dedicated to making your dive trip as easy and effortless as possible. Service, food, accomodations were perfect. The hammocks were so comfy we bought one in West End to bring home with us. The diving was incredible - vertical reef walls covered in an array of corals and sponges hosting all kinds of sea life...seahorse, squid, barracuda, parrotfish, jawfish, scorpionfish, filefish, spotted drums, squirrelfish, lobster, crabs, lizardfish, moray eels, and so much more. We also did a dolphin encounter at the marine science center and a shark dive. The shark dive was phenomenal - about 15 sharks, the biggest was 9 feet, swimming among us, under us, at us, next to us, on top of us...they were so close we could see every detail - it was a wonder they didn't hit us - they are truly graceful fish. Diving all day turned into relaxing on the deck at the bar all evening sipping monkey la las and watching the moon shine on the ocean...