Cheezer and Louzer

I am reading LINK: this book now and it’s really good and relevant to our adoption from China. The author, Karin Evans, is a journalist from Northern California and she and her then new husband went through the same basic process that we are in the midst of now. She writes about her experiences and feelings as they completed the paperwork, waited for the official response and went to China to pick up their new daughter. She does this in a very easy to read yet deeply insightful way. I recommend the book to anyone interested in Chinese adoptions, women’s studies or just one detailed look at life outside the US in the 21st Century.

Ms Evans covers all sides of this very complicated story in a fair, impartial way – which is amazing since she’s very involved as an adoptive parent. The way that women and girls are treated in China (both historically and now), the way that foreigners first came to adopt Chinese children and the role that politics has played in this process over the last hundred or more years are all well described. The book seems very well researched and leaves judgements and opinions up to us.

Be warned though – there is a lot of very sad information presented here in a very matter of fact way. The descriptions of how people in China are forced or choose to work within the country’s (more or less) one-child policies is not light reading. As in the rest of the book, the author balances accounts of how babies are left in public places (and worse) with stories of people showing amazing courage in the face of a repressive and uncaring government. These chapters really tested my feelings about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I think I’ll post separately on that topic next.

I’ll post here later if my opinion of the book changes after I’ve read it all the way to the end. If you’re one of our family members and thinking to yourself that you don’t know much about China, female Chinese orphans or the like, we’ll be glad to lend you this book anytime.

Well, hopefully all of the paperwork for our Home Study is almost done. I think we’re still missing a few reference letters from our friends. I’ve tried to complete the Dossier paperwork for China at the same time, so hopefully it can all be sent into the hinterlands of the Secretary of State for certification, then to the Chinese Embassy for authentication. Suffice to say, they certify the notary is for real, and then authenicate that the certification is real. This is the only way the Chinese government can verify the documents are valid. Of course, this makes me very nervous considering the type of documents that are being FedEx’d back and forth – Birth certificates, complete financial info – yikes! Hopefully we’ll be done and our Dossier sent to China in another 2 months. Then we wait another 6 – 8 months to receive a “match”. This is the picture and info on the little girl that will be chosen for us. We can fly to China about 5 – 8 weeks after the match is made. It seems so unreal right now. Although I must confess I couldn’t resist buying my first little pink/white onesie the other day. I know it’ll be months, but I still can’t hardly wait.