I have defintiely dropped the ball on keeping up with this blog.  My apologies. 

I have had wonderful emails and messages from many families even up until now which makes me kind of sad that I can no longer be that line of connection between families here and orphanages ‘there’.

Decided to snoop around on youtube the other day to check out my video that I posted there about a year ago…shocked to see how many views and comments it had gotten.  This among many other things has instilled some more inspiration into me.

My past 1-2 years has gone a little something like this:

Got my bachelors degree
Went travelling to several places, including Vietnam.
Realized it would have been awesome to have had medical skills to offer there.
For that reason and many others, I decided to go back for my nursing degree.
Here I am in school.

That is all for now.

After a very long absence, I have decided to give the old blog a bit of a revival.  I’ve been surprised by how many visitors I’ve had during my little hiatus, which is why I want to try to breathe some life back into this site. 

Hopefully over the next couple of days, you all will start to see some changes.  I don’t have anymore travel adventures to blog about (for now anyways) but I want to keep this whole website geared towards international adoptions. 

I absolutely love hearing everyone’s stories about bringing their little miracle babies home, so keep ‘em coming!  For now, I’m going to be looking for and posting about ANYTHING pertinent to adoptions…resources, blogs, articles, agencies, etc.  My goal is to provide a useful source for anyone: looking to adopt, in the process of adopting, or anyone who has adopted children. 

Let me know if you all have any ideas!  Also, if you already have a blog related to adoption send me the link!

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season this year and ready for a new year.

As promised, I come bearing video footage from Vietnam…finally!  I have about an hour and a half’s worth of footage I took over there so I did my best to take the best parts from here and there and mash it all into one big beauty.  So I hope you enjoy it, I’m quite happy with it seeing as how this is my first venture into video editing.  Putting it together brought all the emotions from my stay over there pouring back, so I hope that you can get a feel from my video what exactly it was like for me being over there.  Happy Watching!

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1695735,00.html

“…a Dutch diplomat posted in Hong Kong has been accused of returning his eight-year-old adopted daughter like an unwanted Christmas necktie.”

I don’t even know what to say about this…

Lately I’ve realized how much tv endorses all the stupid misconceptions and attitudes about adoption.  

Brothers and sisters is one of my favorite tv shows, but its just as guilty of this.  In the first season, one of the brothers finds out he’s sterile and when he is presented with the option of adoption, he immediately shoots it down stating that he wants their child to be apart of them and to be a Walker (their family name).  For any one out there who has ever adopted, you understand that as soon as you receive your referrel pictures, that child instantly becomes apart of your family and of you…just as much so as when the pregnancy test turns up positive.   To solve the problem, the brother uses sperm donors from his brothers.  How desperate are we to make genetic clones of ourself?? 

 I certainly don’t have a problem with people having biological children, I hope to have some of my own one day as well.  But when nature and our biology doesn’t allow us to do so, I just don’t understand the need to go to extreme measures to bring genetically similar children into a world filled with millions of family-less orphans.  Are we that narcissistic?  

Last month I saw that new John Cusack movie, Martian Child, which is about a widowed father who adopts a little boy who was abandoned and I think John Cusack’s character says it best:

“I get the argument about not bringing another child into this world, but how can you argue against loving one that’s already here?”

Tomorrow (Wednesday), I turn another year older and let me tell you this has got to be my biggest milestone yet.  

For some unexplicable reason, my entire goal as a young child was to be 23.  I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a doctor or anything else…just 23.  It just seemed like a good number.  A couple of months ago I found an old journal that we had to keep in school and I was finally able to figure out why exactly this was such a special number for me.  I would have been about 8 years old when I wrote this and in the third grade, but it sure answers quite a few questions.

‘

Out of ‘collage’: Check

Not too old: mmm…that’s questionable

Not too young:  Suppose so

Have my own car or truck: Check

Have my own house: Not so much

Have my own pets: Unfortunately not

Not having to listen to GO CLEAN YOUR ROOM or ‘YOUR’ GROUNDED FROM YOUR GAME GEAR:  Check and Check!

I guess I’m half way there…but let me tell you, there sure is a lot of pressure on this year to be a good one.  At least I didn’t talk about being married and having seven kids at this age (that was another one of my aspirations as a child).  

But anyways, here’s to a great year ahead!

So I’ve realized that I have a fair amount of traffic coming from adoption websites so I’m going to try to steer this whole blog towards that subject since my travels are over.

I’ve been gone from Vietnam for 2 months now and I cannot even tell you how much my heart aches for all the children there.  There was one particular little boy there that I was in love with and wanted to take home so badly…but I knew in my heart that most likely that little guy would get a family soon.  Plus, I knew that I am most certainly not in any place to be raising a child so I figured that after I was away for awhile I would get a better perspective and realize things are better off the way they are.  …..yeah….that didn’t really happen.   The longer I’m at home the more I think about him and all the other children and how much I wish they were here.   I wish I could give him a comfortable home, a room of his own, a soft bed, real blankets to snuggle up with, a quiet and clean environment, a diverse selection of food, nice clothes to wear, and above all I wish I could give him the one-on-one care and nurturing that most American babies get. 

So…for all of you who occasionally read my blog that have adopted, are adopting or are thinking of adopting…you have done an amazing thing and I admire that.  I love reading your blogs as well so that I can follow your adoptions and how you settle in afterwards, so keep sending them!  

Before I went on this trip, I had a specific career path in mind but now that I’m back, I’m finding myself more and more drawn to non-profit work so that I can continue work with these children in some small manner.  But let me tell you, getting a job with an established NGO is a lot harder said than done (i.e. the red cross, Unicef).  Anyways, my dream is to one day be able to start up an organization of my own that would work specifically to help orphanages in third world countries.  In Vietnam, the orphans get about 20cents (US) a day for their 3 meals and so many of those orphanages are running out of money for that.  So as you can see a little bit of charitable donation can go a long ways.  I’d like to be able to get something started, if anyone has any ideas out there or would like to help, please let me know!

And on another note, I’ve started putting up some australia pictures…better late than never!  This round of pictures contains the very few pictures I took in Brisbane and Melbourne and some of the pictures I took at the Lone Pine Sanctuary. 

I flew from Saigon to Melbourne and I was SO sick from some strange asian strain of something or other. I was cycling between raging fever and chills to a cold sweat ever couple of hours.  In addition, getting to a first-world country was a mixture of relaxation and sadness.  It was very comforting to be back around all of life’s comforts that I was used to but at the same time I wasn’t ready to leave Vietnam and working with all the little munchkins was so rewarding.  So to go from that to vacation mode was a bit difficult.  …So I cuddled koalas instead.  

Once I was healthy again though, the sights and animals of Australia were distracting enough and I really enjoyed my time there.  I definitely needed another month (AT LEAST) there to really get a feel for the place, I feel like I missed out on so much!  The dive trip was definitely the highlight though and made Australia hard to leave in a different way.   Enjoy the pictures!

So after a long hiatus, I have finally posted a few new pictures.  I just added a few of the last Vietnam pictures and tomorrow I’ll start on the Australia round. 

My days here are filled with a lot of nothingness.  I get up in the morning (read: VERY LATE morning) and work on job applications until the boredom (and the urge to nap) overcomes me.  I think I’m going to have to start hitting the mountains or else I’m going to turn into a giant blob. 

Anyways enjoy the pictures!

I’m pretty sure that the only person still reading this is my mother.  I apologize for my long absence. 

I made it home safe and sound, including a week in Denver where I realized how much I miss the US.  We all (myself, Eric, and his wife Cherine) flew back to Calgary after that, where my sister-in-law and neice paid us a little surprise visit.  Its been almost a year since I’ve seen them, so it was a nice little visit.  When munchkins are that young a year sure makes a big difference.

Anyways, due to some issues, my brother and wife’s return to Indonesia was delayed by a week so I booked a flight down to Denver to spend a few more days with them.  And as an added bonus my trip down there included Thanksgiving, thus making it my first American thanksgiving in 7 years!!  You have no idea how good that felt.  Words cannot express.

So now I’m back and looking for a job.  Any help? 

Well I’m going to try to update everything over the next week or so. …pictures and videos included. 

This is the worst jet lag I’ve experienced.

Waking up at 1am for the day makes for a very very exhausting day.