I can't decide which was harder to learn, Japanese or Russian. Japanese starts out easy, then throws you grammatical curves worse than anything Hideki Irabu or Kei Igawa deliver from the mound. Russian gave me the grammar willies from the start, thanks perhaps to my friend Leslie's rapid primer on cases and declensions. Russia's alphabet lures the eye because it looks so much like ours, only to trip you up on the "P"s that get pronounced like "R"s. Japanese has three alphabets, and one of them is more than 1,000 characters long.

OK, I'm a language... more

Here's something productive to do with your time while you wait for your agency's re-accreditation: Lobby your legislator to extend the I-171H.

For newcomers to the adoption process, the I-171H is one of those big "green light" documents that move you ahead in your adoption journey. Known formally as the Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition (leave it to bureaucrats to invent a mouthful like that), it is what U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sends you to let you know that your adoption... more

There's a busy thread on the Russian Adoption forum now started by a member looking for the best region for her adoption plans. She's getting a lot of interesting feedback, and since Russia has 86 governing subdivisions that are potential locations for an adoption, it's an interesting question to ask.

Back in 1999, at the time of my first adoption, I don't recall ever worrying about--or even selecting--a region. I ended up in Vladivostok,... more

I have an extremely organized engineer friend who is father to two girls adopted from China. Eight years ago, Brian developed a packing list for the big trip home that I have e-mailed to many, many people. I'm sharing it with you today. Please note that, although Brian's list was written with brand names, you can find generic equivalents for many of these items.

The key to success with this list is to pack Cheerios into as many things as you can. Though they are available in many Russian grocery stores now, you can never have enough Cheerios... more

The early stages of your adoption journey are going to be filled with lots of paperwork--for your agency, for a social worker, for the U.S. government, for the Russian government. It's all leading up to the first big milestone: Getting your referral.

The referral is, in basic terms, adoption matchmaking: An agency looks at all the information about prospective parents and all the information about adoptable children, and puts two and two together. Some agencies start with the parents--they look at the parents and see which child meets their desires.... more

I was running a Web site when I did my first adoption, but Web software was so clunky at that time that I never would have used it for anything but work. By the time of my second adoption, I was seeing a few people using the Internet as a personal journal. But last week, when I sat down to compile a list of all the people writing about their adoptions from Russia on the Internet, I was simply astounded by the number of personal Web sites out there.

A blog--as these online journals have come to be known--can be a great way of keeping... more

There's a long thread on the forums now about whether you should take other children in your family along with you when you go to Russia to adopt. I'm going to answer this one in two parts, the first on why I decided not to, and the second on what I did to make my decision work for everybody.

If you've been reading this blog for a while,... more

OK, now that I've told you why I decided to not take my older son along on either of my trips to Sakhalin, I'll get into what I did to reassure one child at home while reaching out to another one on the other side of the globe.

I decided my parents would look after my older son while I was away, but they would stay at my house, not theirs. Our goofy dog would stay at home, too, and not go to the kennel: If my son needed something to hug,... more

I did not want to make two trips to Russia for my second adoption. I'm a single mom, with an older child I didn't want to leave alone, even if it was with relatives, for two weeks or more. And I couldn't imagine what my new child would think when I showed up at his orphanage, gave him my full attention and then disappeared, leaving only the promise of "Mommy will be back soon."

So when I started my second adoption in December 2004, I focused on a region that was still requiring only one trip: Sakhalin Island, way out in the Pacific Ocean north of Japan. Eighteen... more

You are tired and disoriented. You have seen unbelievable riches in Moscow and unspeakable poverty in the hinterlands. You are about to see an orphanage, something that has absolutely nothing to do with the pastel fairylands of American baby magazines.

But most importantly, you are about to meet your child. I have been through this twice, and experience did little to soothe the anxiety I felt meeting my second son for the first time. With almost two years since that first trip, I have had time to sort out the most important things to know about that day.

1)... more