The importance of tones

I was at Chinese class on Saturday, and showed my Chinese teacher the picture of Sarah Grace. "This is Si Ya" I told her, and stopped, aware of the look of confusion on her face. I KNOW I say Si Ya wrong, that's one reason Sarah Grace won't be called Si Ya at home- when I was in Taiwan, she didn't even look up when I attempted saying her name, that's how wrong I had it. It's not a name that's easy for American mouths to pronounce. Kai Wei I can say well enough- at any rate, he knew I was talking to him when I used his name- I think the tones in his name are more natural to American pronunciation. What I didn't know was HOW wrong I had Si Ya. So, anyway, back to Chinese class. I fish out the characters for Si Ya, which I happened to have in my Chinese book, and her face lit up. "Oh, that's a beautiful name. You just have to be careful how you pronounce it. That's like. . . a ghost. With teeth (she pantomimes fangs coming out of her mouth)" A vampire? My poor little sister! Here we have been going around telling everyone her name is vampire or something to that effect!

I practiced a few times, and finally did pronounce Si Ya's beautiful name correctly, but unfortunately, I think I'm no longer saying it correctly. I'll have to practice again next time I have Chinese class.

Ｍaking 餃子 (Chinese dumplings)

Dough:
3 cups flour
about 1 cold water cup water
1/4 tsp salt
Mix flour and salt together. Slowly add water and stir until a smooth dough forms. Knead, then cover and let rest for at least 1/2 hour. Roll into 45-60 3 inch diameter thin circles.

Filling:
1 lb ground pork
2 cups Napa cabbage, chopped fine
2 green onions (scallions) chopped fine
2 slices of fresh ginger chopped fine
1 clove minced garlic
1 TBS soy sauce

好吃嗎？ 好吃！
Hao chi ma? Hao chi!
Are they good? Delicious!










Mix everything together. Put a spoonful of the meat mixture on each dumpling wrapper. Fold into a half circle and pinch the edges together. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add in about half of the dumplings. Stir once and bring the water back up to a boil. When it is boiling again, add in 1 cup cold water. Wait for the water to begin boiling, than add a 2nd cup of cold water. When the water boils again add a 3rd cup of cold water. The next time the water boils the dumplings should be done. Serve the dumplings with dipping sauce made of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil mixed to taste.

I modified the recipe from the one at the end of this article about a Chinese American family making dumplings together.

They say. . .

They say the wait gets harder after you get your referral. So far, that hasn't been true for me. Not knowing anything was hard. We had no idea how old the kids would be, we had no idea when we would receive their referral. We didn't know what they would look like, who would be older, when they would be home. Now, I KNOW who my meimei and didi are. I know their names, their ages, even a little bit about their personalities, their likes and dislikes, their fears. I can begin to imagine what it will be like when they are home. I can prepare for them. And that makes it so much better to me. I still don't know exactly when they'll be home, but at least we can give a range of several months as our estimate now instead of saying that we *hope* for a referral sometime before ...followed by an ever moving and increasingly distant date. I know that our wait time since referral should be somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 over. These past 4 months have gone by quickly, now that our adoption seems real and not just an impossible dream.


So, I keep looking forward to the day they come home and I can see Kai Wei and Si Ya again in person. But meanwhile, the wait has gotten easier. There's forward momentum again (speaking of which, Sarah Grace's paperwork is back from TECO and ready to get sent back to Taiwan!) I know we are waiting for them and I know they are waiting for us. We'll hang in there. The pictures and updates and letters back and forth help us along, and, hopefully it won't feel much longer until we have more than photos to look at and more than hand-drawn pictures to make us smile.

Addendum to the post: :)
In case you were curious- Si Ya, Ssu Ya, Su Ya and any variation thereof and Sarah Grace are one and the same. When we got her referral it was spelled SSu Ya. The double "s" is from the Wade Giles form of Romanization (I think), and looked confusing to us, so we removed an "s" when writing it. After looking up the character for her name, I realized the pinyin spelling (and the closer pronunciation) for her name was actually Si Ya. Since Pinyin is the more standardized Romanization system used in the US, we switched to that spelling. And Sarah Grace, in case you hadn't guessed, is what we are naming her. (We'll keep Si Ya as her middle name. Kai Wei we're going to continue calling Kai Wei, though it might be shortened to Kai. We'll give him an American middle name.)

25 YEARS!

WOW! Dana and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary on Tuesday, October 9! It hardly seems possible. That is a LONG time to be married and how could we possibly be old enough to have been married that long ago?!

Our kids got us luggage for our upcoming trip to Taiwan which was fun and exciting. We're so thankful for the grace of God to get through 25 years and we hope he'll grant us 25 more! :-)

Just a Little Thing

So my sister and brother in law stopped by on their travels last weekend with a gift for our new kids. Jan and Mark go to a lot of craft fairs and bought Kai Wei and Sarah Grace personalized lap desks!

Just having these desks on my kitchen table with the kids' names on them really made me feel like they were coming soon. I went right out and bought some clothes for Sarah Grace, something I'd been avoiding, "just in case..."

It strikes me as funny that just seeing their names in print, on a gift that is meant for them, should make them feel that much closer. So thanks Jan and Mark!

The lap desks are really fun. They have a slatelike top over a plastic bottom that can hold school supplies. They have the alpabet and numbers so they will help Kai Wei and Sarah Grace with learning English.



So our paperwork has been back and forth to TECO and is now ready to go tomorrow to our agency! We are hoping to receive Sarah Grace's paperwork in the mail any day now. . .

IT'S GETTING CLOSER! :-) :-0 :-)