As I've mentioned before, Scholar is a voracious reader! We are going to send him a care package and his one request was that we would have Chinese books for him to read. He likes science, technology, and animals. I have no idea what to do with that information, that was a bit to broad. The young sales lady helping me asked how old he was because she thought it was a strange request. She was 12 when her family moved to Seattle from China and she said she loved series books and such. Maybe he likes science fiction??? This part of adoption is hard. You have a child that you don't know at all!! You want to nest, get all the things in place, and provide items that will give them comfort and make them feel safe. With a toddler this is pretty easy, with a 12 yr old it's proving to be a challenge! Hoot is hooked up!!! We will be filling in spaces for Scholar.
After perusing the book aisles we settled on a book of Seattle tourism. He mentioned he wanted to see pictures and learn about Seattle so I thought this was a good start! It listed a lot of historical places, parks, museums, and places of interest which I think will be fun for him. This gives him a chance to learn what we have in the city and he can choose places he'd like to visit. On a side note, books in Chinese are expensive!!! Holy moly, hope he learns to read english soon! He reads every single day so it may be a challenge to keep up with his reading appetite. I could think of worse things to worry about so we'll make it work. Others mentioned to stock up on books while were in China and ship them home. We may just do that as I think it will be cheaper in the long run!
Seattle!!!
Once we got our book in hand we spent another hour (at least) exploring the store! Potato bug has his favorites so we had to get juicy pork balls (small pork dumpling...he's dubbed them juicy!), coconut rice cakes and snow cakes. I also bought us stuff to make a yummy beef stir fry for dinner! Now if you haven't been in an asian market you are missing out!!! Know all those cool asian recipes you see asking for obscure ingredient's? They have it here and at usually better prices than your favorite grocery store! I can't wait to take Scholar here and see what he picks out! I'm a bit scared because 1) It could be a organ meat. 2) It could be a dried stinky fishy thing. 3) It will probably be in Chinese so I won't know how to cook it or what's in it!! This could be interesting! I am so grateful that we have this community for him though. The fact that we can go shopping and he can be surrounded by familiar foods and smells will be such a great thing for him!
I'm curious what he'll think of western food. I belong to a Facebook group for people adopting Chinese teens/tweens and many have said their children want Chinese food for every meal!! I see a lot of stir fry, fried rice, and noodles in our future! But no tofu, he said he hates tofu! Gamer is vegetarian and eats tofu so I guess that will be a meal they won't bond over! There is not a lot of dairy in the Chinese culture so cheese is usually a tough one for some older kids coming home. I'm sure I will be posting a lot of awesome pictures of what craziness we're eating and his cute face trying new flavors and foods!
As you can tell there is a lot of learning to be had on both parts!! Scholar will have the biggest mountain to tackle that's for sure! He's going to have to learn a new culture, language, food, and what it means to be in a family. We will have to guide him through this with patience, setting good examples, and also respecting and embracing his culture. With PB we have enjoyed learning about Chinese traditions and cultures. He doesn't remember China so for all he knows we're nailing it, spot on! Um, I think Scholar is going to call us out. In fact, I will be curious to see what is important to him and what he could care less about. I was talking to a friend who is Chinese and telling him about how we were going to celebrate Chinese New Years, he laughed and said I was way more Chinese than him! I hope traditions are important to Scholar, I'm a tradition freak!! I love traditions that I grew up with and ones that I have started on my own with my family. My parent's are Norwegian so we have a lot of Norwegian traditions that we enjoy as well. We have our holidays, the food, the language, and Norwegian knick knackeries in the house. My husband grew up in Panama so we have some smatterings of that as well. He didn't come from a very traditional family so I've been working on bringing more Panama into the house. Just you all wait until you see our United Benetton Christmas card....we are going to rock the world! Well at least the Asian, Panamanian, and Norwegian parts of it!
Besides the obvious English, we speak Spanish and Norwegian. Interesting combo! We speak absolutely no Mandarin!!! Nada!! I can say "hello" and "thank you", that's it! I'm a very very bad Madre!! Bad bad bad! I had the best of intentions to learn. Look what I bought last year:
I haven't opened either of them!! The flash cards were for PB to learn a few words and the other program was for Gamer and I to learn a bit. 3 levels, there are 3 levels and I have 2-3 months to learn!!! I really wanted to show Scholar that we were making an effort so that all the burden of communication wasn't on him. I know what it's like being in a sea of people who don't speak the same language as you, it's super tiring and frustrating. Tonight PB and I are going to open the flash cards! It's a start and hopefully I can dazzle Scholar with my preschool knowledge. I know Hoot will think I'm a rockstar, I may be able to dazzle the one year old with my grasp of the Chinese language!
So there is my guilt laid out for you all to see. It's been a year of dossiers, adoption paperwork, feeding therapy, communication input for Boom Boom, unpacking into our new house, keeping food on the table and clothes on our bodies (except for hot days when we only have to wear underwear!) that has bled me dry. And now I'm feeling the stress of getting rooms ready, clothes and things for the kids, and obsessing about what to bring on our trip that is filling my brain. And I'm stressed that I can only say "hi" and "thank you" in Chinese. How is Scholar feeling? Wonder what he's thinking? Wonder what these last few months mean to him? Is he counting down the days until we come? Or is he sad that the days are going so fast and scared to leave all he knows? I imagine our stresses are very very different. He's leaving his life and coming home. We don't speak Chinese and he doesn't speak English.
No comments:
Post a Comment