All My Children

In our 14 years of marriage, we've shared our house with quite a few children. In the early 2000's we were foster parents and shared our home with 8 children. (not at the same time) None of them stayed too long and one in particular broke our hearts when she was taken from us. It is a long story so I won't get into it here but we realized that we couldn't handle the revolving door of foster care. My hats are off to the special people who do this work. I guarantee it is not for the money.

Infertility forced us to make a decision about what we were going to do about having a child. We pretty much exhausted the fertility route and decided we needed to look into adoption. That is where a wonderful organization called CCAI came into our lives. They guided us through an International Adoption which is not an easy thing to do. Since then we've become a family with (IMHO) the most beautiful and precious girl in the world. But it doesn't stop there.

After we got our little Jadyn home, we realized that we were at somewhat of a loss to keep her connected with her heritage and frankly, (forgive the pun) she was a little dis-oriented. Shelly saw an ad in the local paper that was looking for host families for foreign exchange students. She asked me what I thought about it and I said, "I wonder if they have any Chinese students." As fate would have it they did, so we signed up to host a wonderful Chinese girl for the school year. That's how we became associated with P.I.E. (Pacific Intercultural Exchange) Her name was Feng Meng Chen but we called her Mandy. She taught us so much about China and Chinese culture and taught Jadyn to count to ten and a bunch of Chinese words. She was a very studious girl and was determined to be successful. Today four years later, she is back in China going to Dental School.

With the first year of hosting under our belt we decided we should take a year off before doing it again but the agency called us with an urgent need for a last minute placement of another Chinese girl. We checked out her profile and decided she would be a good fit for our family and once again we were hosting a wonderful young lady named Zhang Qiqi. We called her Qiqi (pronounced Kiki). In China, the last name is always written first. She was so sweet but she was shy and had trouble with English so she did not develop many friends while she was here. She did however get a job working for tips at one of the local Chinese restaurants on weekends. I asked her what the most authentic food they served was and she said it was the soup. I asked her which soup, the egg drop, the won ton or the hot and sour? She said, "None of those, it's the soup they make in the kitchen just for the employees." I will say though, the food we had in China wasn't all that different than the food we have here except that it was so much better in China. Of course we didn't try anything too exotic like ostrich liver (which was on the menu of one of the places we ate)

After Kiki, we took a year off and this year we decided to try something different so we are hosting a young lady from South Korea named Sojung. Now, the South Korean culture borrows a lot from the Chinese however it's distinctly Korean and of course the language is totally different. Another thing that's different is the cuisine. I would say (and I'm no expert but it's my blog) that it's kind of a Japan meets China fare. There's a lot of seafood, (ala Japan) of course rice and a mixture of other things such as pork (ala China) and even things we would consider pretty yucky. Surprisingly our student from Seoul has told us a lot about her homeland. Seoul is a world class city with a high standard of living. It also has the most developed IT infrastructure of any country. Not at all a scene from M.A.S.H. South Korea boasts the highest national IQ in the world.  Half the population of South Korea live in Seoul. It puts South Korea in a delicate position because Seoul is a mere 30 miles from the North Korean border. (The D.M.Z.) Certainly if North Korea invaded the south again, it would go directly for Seoul. Consequently, the people of Seoul and the South in general hate the North.  

That is about it for kids, but we also share our abode with 3 cats and 2 dogs. 

Toby

Gracie

Our new puppy Holly

Jasmine

Pepper the tuxedo cat on the left