Posts Tagged ‘China’

Kids and Culture: What’s Most Important?

Every year for Chinese New Year, our foster home celebrates the holiday by engaging in all the most common traditions – decorating the home with paper cuttings and chuen lian (door post hangings), lighting fire crackers, eating lots of oranges, making jiaozi (dumplings) and stuffing ourselves until...

February 24th, 2010 | Advocate, China, Culture, Haiti | Read More

Sleep Tight: A Night at the Foster Home

I often forget we work at an orphanage. After all, we call it a foster home. And, if you go there during the daytime hours, the place is buzzing with so much activity that one has no time to think about the fact that all of the children are orphans. Compared to most orphanages, the place is paradise!...

January 28th, 2010 | Feature | Read More

Christmas in China

In 2005, while the husband and I sat in a darkened theater waiting for an acrobat show to start, we couldn’t help but grin as we listened to Christmas carols being piped over the loud speakers. Nor could we help chuckling at the often life-sized Santa posters bedecked with glitter and lights peeking...

December 16th, 2009 | Feature | Read More

The Orphan Next Door

Two steps and a knock from my front door, and I’m in an orphanage. We don’t call it an orphanage, but a rose by any other name is still a rose. No matter what we call it, Mommy and Daddy don’t come home at night. She’s eight. Sometime in February 2009, she lost everything. ...

November 26th, 2009 | Feature | Read More

New Research Encourages Going Beyond Culture Camp

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute just released the executive summary of its recent research study entitled Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption. I’m so excited to see this published study because, although the results aren’t really all that new if...

November 13th, 2009 | Feature, Korea | Read More

What is a Tongginnator?

On February 28, 2005 my husband and I first saw our daughter just outside the doorway of a hotel ballroom in Nanchang’s Gloria Plaza Hotel. We’d traveled halfway across the world to adopt this little girl: a tiny, nearly one-year-old who peered at me with curious eyes. She came to me easily,...

October 23rd, 2009 | China | Read More

How To Feed Your Newly Adopted Child in China

Babies from birth to six months in Chinese Social Welfare Institutes (SWIs) typically solely eat Chinese baby formula which has high sugar levels and therefore tastes sweeter than American formula. Unfortunately, it contains little protein and lower calories than American formula. In...

October 21st, 2009 | China, Feature, Health | Read More

Common Given Names in China

Common Given Names in China // Males Wei (伟; Great) Jianguo (建国; Build the Country) Dong (东; East) Ming (明; Light) Tao (涛; Great Wave) Zhuang (壮; Robust) Females Qing (Ching) (情; Sentiment) Ying (英; Petal) Ping (萍; Duckweed) Ting (婷; Attractive) Ling (玲; Tinkling of jade) Jing...

October 6th, 2009 | China | Read More

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival

On Saturday night, people across Asia will celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival or 中秋节 (Zhōngqiūjié) in Mandarin. This holiday always occurs during the Autumnal Equinox, so people often refer to it as the Moon Festival, since the moon appears bigger, brighter and closer to earth at this time of...

October 1st, 2009 | China, Feature | Read More

Across the Generations

I remember the very first time I ever considered adopting a child. It didn’t happen for me inside an impersonal doctor’s office or while I prayed in church during a particularly moving sermon referencing James 1:27. It didn’t happen for me while I stared at red-inked hearts scattered...

September 11th, 2009 | China, Feature, Korea | Read More