Amharic, Part II

So Monday, Ms. A, eagerly came over to our house. The plan was for an hour language exchange, but we ended up working together for two hours. Daniel gets very excited and passionate about teaching people English, which is a good thing, as that is his profession. Ms. A came over with a list of body parts in Amharic, and we practiced saying hair, head, eyes, lips, teeth, arm, hands, finger in Amharic. And, also trying to remember the phrases and greetings she and taught us before. I wish I was better at learning a new language. I am always amazed by those adults that can speak 3 (or more) languages. I wish I could just learn by osmosis.

Daniel started his census job last week. He did a week of training and then will start going door to door to enumerate in the afternoons this week. He was excited to have a young Ethiopian man in his work group and has been practicing his new language skills with him.

Amharic

Today two lovely Ethiopian girls came over to our house, in what we hope will be a chance to learn each others languages. Daniel had met and been talking with some Ethiopians that work at the store around the corner. He approached the young woman about coming to our home and meeting me and possibly trading Amharic and English lessons. She called him several times about the opportunity and seemed very interested. This evening she came over with her cousin to meet us, and they spent about 2 hours at our place. We weren't sure what to expect, Ms. A, has been in the US for about a year and can speak enough English to survive, but not enough to make conversation easy. She is in her early 20's. Her cousin, Ms. B, is also in her early 20's and has been in the US for several months and seems to speak/understand English a little better. What brave women! We struggled through conversation and they understand that we want to learn some Amharic because we are adopting a child from Ethiopia. They are both hoping to learn English well enough to take a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) class, and begin the path to becoming nurses. After our time together, Ms. A, agreed to come back on Monday for our first round of language lessons.

Upon their departure, I immediately headed to the bookstore for an Amharic phrase book and dictionary. They both kept telling me their language was really easy, but I am not convinced.

Henna Hand

The product of craft night yesterday with Manju. Afterward, I panicked, I have to be fingerprinted on Thursday for the FBI/homeland security. Yikes! But I guess my fingerprints are still there, right. And it will probably wear off by Thursday anyway.

The 50% Plan

Over the next 12 months:

Drive your car 50% less
Consume 50% more local goods
Eat 50% more local foods
Reduce household waste by 50%
Replace 50% of your lawn with fruits and vegetables
Use 50% less water
Increase you community participation by 50%
Consume 50% less
Work 50% less
Produce 50% less
Enjoy life 100% more

This is a plan that Daniel read in his Adbusters magazine, and that he/we are trying to follow. This is what we have been doing/contemplating.

Drive your car 50% less - We definitely have this down since moving to P-town. Working from home for me and living in a walking neighborhood and a biking town. To reduce it 50% more...hmmm that might be tough. The only place I drive regularly is the gym, and yes, the irony of that is not lost on me.

Consume 50% more local goods - I have always enjoyed buying from the local artisans and local shops. I make it a habit to visit all the street fairs in the summer to buy local goods...now I just have an excuse to do what I already love doing.

Eat 50% more local foods - We are trying not to buy produce from far away places like Mexico or Chile, not because we don't like Mexico and Chile, but because that food is being transported so far. It's been awhile since I had a fresh tomato (at home). I did break down yesterday and buy some grapes (from Chile). I was in a bad mood and the grapes were going to make it better...and they did. We are also in the process of buying a large quantity of local, happy, grass fed beef with our neighbors (to split the large amount and reduce cost). And we frequently buy produce at local farmers markets and co-ops.

Reduce household waste by 50% - Still trying to figure this one out... of course we recycle, and compost in the city container. I guess I need to finally build a compost bin for us. Buy things with less packaging? or don't buy things at all...that's right, consume 50% less.

Replace 50% of your lawn with fruits and vegetables - Daniel is planning the placement of his apple tree already and planning more garden space. I am trying to remind him we need some grass for our little guy to play in one day soon. I have been trying to convince Daniel to stop trying to get grass to grow on the side of the house (where is just dies), so now we are planning for a rock and fern/scrub garden there.

Use 50% less water - Working from home...I gave up frequent showering long ago! And we have been talking about rain barrels for awhile, and are getting closer to getting a few of those.

Increase you community participation by 50% - More regular attendance at church. The thought of a child in our home also brought this on.

Consume 50% less - A constant struggle. We are always reminding ourselves of this, and it's hard in a world that seems to be all about the newest and the best.

Work 50% less - I wish!!

Produce 50% less - This one we aren't really sure about. What does this mean?

Enjoy life 100% more - We can only hope....

Joy and Grief

I couldn't be happier to announce that we received a referral for a 7 month old boy last Tuesday, on March 30th. It was late in the afternoon. Daniel and I had just returned home from a walk, and I went upstairs to finish my work. I had been having problems with my work phone earlier in the morning, so was running behind and still had lots of patients to contact. I remember looking at my cell phone and it was almost 4pm, and thought to myself... 'I guess they won't be calling us today'. Maybe 5 or 10 minutes later, my phone is ringing and who is on the caller ID, but Holt. I couldn't believe it.

I answered the phone, and our social worker says hi to me, but then a pause. Gosh, they shouldn't even use a standard greeting. When the phone is answered they should just blurt out 'we have a referral for you'. The few seconds of suspense is mind boggling. I asked her if she had news for us and she said something like is " Yes, is Daniel around?" My response, something like "Who...what?". "Daniel", she says. I think, oh yeah Daniel, my husband, and say, "He is downstairs, let me go down there". As I announce down the stairs and hallway, "You'll never believe who is on the phone!". He kind of already knew, as he had just checked his messages and had a message from our social worker to call her back. He was actually on hold with the front desk, waiting for our social worker, while I was on the phone with her.

We were breathless as we listened to the information she had to give us, and heart broken to hear the details of his life so far. I had read/heard from other parents, that they had not been prepared for the grief they felt upon receiving a referral. So, I had been trying to prepare myself, but to no avail. The grief hit me harder then I expected. We were, and still are, very sad to think of what our boy has had to lose, and what he will continue to lose in the coming months. (And we know there are millions of children with similar stories around the world.) But he will gain...he will gain a loving family, lots of nutrition, health care, a good education, and lots of opportunities...and did I already say lots and lots of love and nurturing.

After all of this, which took a couple hours to process and be able to function again mildly. I had to go back to work. I couldn't see how I would ever be able to concentrate on work again. But this week, I think I have my concentration back. It's back to work, back to the gym, back to cleaning out the closets in the baby room, back to cleaning out and organizing our nest, and back to waiting.

Now we wait for a court date in Ethiopia, and hope and pray that everything is in order for this date, so we can pass court on the first time. We are not legally his parents until the case gets approved in the Ethiopian court system.

Another Mini Milestone

Today we received our appointments to get fingerprinted for immigration. It might not seem that exciting to most of the world, but if you're in the process of adopting internationally, or have adopted before, it's exciting to check these types of things off the list and get closer to being able to bring a child home. These fingerprints are used by immigration services in the department of homeland security, to approve our application to bring a child into the country .

Adding to our Family!!!!!

Daniel and I have been in the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia for several months. Well, sometimes it seems like a few years. It was about two years ago, April 2008, that we seriously started looking into international adoption and having conversations with adoption agency's. That summer, as we were contemplating international adoption, we had the opportunity to buy my great grandmothers house in another city and decided to move about 3 hours away and buy our first house. We spent the summer, fall, and winter buying the house and working on fixing the house up. In the Spring of 2009, we started thinking about adopting from Ethiopia again (we never really stopped thinking about it), and again started talking with adoption agency's.

We finally decided to work with Holt International Children's Services, which is the agency that Daniel's parents used to adopt their daughter, my wonderful sister-in-law. We applied to Holt's Ethiopia Program on August 28, 2009. September 5th we got an introduction call from Holt and a few days later the first packet full of paperwork we had to start filling out.

It took us a few months to get all the homestudy requirements together, as I was distracted in the fall by taking a statistics class at PSU. Plus, it was all a little overwhelming. We were able to turn in all our paperwork at the start of 2010, and got our homestudy completed in February. A few days after our homestudy was approved, we turned in our dossier to Holt on March 9th, which was approved and sent on to Washington D.C. for further processing.

A few days after being officially placed on the waitlist for a child referral, there were rumors and news that Ethiopia was going to start requiring two trips to the country for adoptions. Previously Ethiopia had been a "one trip country", only requiring travel after the official court process. The trip is to, of course, meet your child and bring them home, but also to be at the Embassy in Ethiopia for the child's visa appt. This two trip talk from the Ethiopian High Court, is to have prospective adoptive parents come to Ethiopia and meet their child prior to the court processing, and state that they do indeed want to adopt the child. Then, the parents would return a couple months later for the visa appointment with the embassy and to bring the child home. There are many other countries that require parents to make two trips to the country for adoption, so it's not unusual. But, it was definitely shocking news. This would/will add, probably, $5,000 onto the cost of our already very expensive adoption process.

But, things are still up in the air regarding this new adoption rule. And in the mean time, our agency is working very hard to process as many children and families that are ready before the new rule is instituted. When we first went on the list for a referral, I was not very hopeful that our case would be submitted to the courts in time. In the last week, though, Holt has referred many children to waiting families, and we have moved further and further down the list of waiting families. If we are offered a child referral and accept the referral, and if our dossier makes it from Washington D.C to Ethiopia in the next week to two weeks, we might just make this deadline for one trip to Ethiopia.

However it works out though, we are thrilled to be expecting a little boy!!!!!!!