New Friends

On Monday night, Jason and I got to meet some new friends, and they were so cool!  The family consists of a mom and her 3 sons.  The boys were adopted from Guatemala, one as a baby, and the other 2 about a decade later as adolescents.  They were so gracious in telling us all about their stories, and we had a great time listening to them and asking about a million questions!  The brothers are all highschool-aged now, and it was really great for us to get to talk with them and hear about their experiences.

Like I said, we asked so many questions...here's a sampling

Q:  Did it feel weird when you were all first together, and you were a family, yet you were complete strangers?  What did you do to help it?
A:  Yes!  We played "Go Fish"  over and over and over and got to know each other. 

Q:  What did you think about America before you came here?
A:  We thought that you ate everything out of a can. 

Q:  What did you think about snow?
A:  We LOVED it...it was awesome!

Q:  What can we do to help our boys to not be afraid when they first meet us?
A:  Bring them presents.  Candy is good too.

We got to ask about being a minority in the community and at school, questions about birth families, questions about "culture camp", questions about foods, questions about language challenges...the list goes on and on. 

The guys are all in sports, and we hope to bring the kids to see them play once we are back home and settled in.  The oldest brother offered to help act as a translator for us if we need help understanding our little ones - Thank you!  And Mom offered to help teach me to make home-made tortillas...so cool!!! 

I can hardly say how great and helpful this was for us as we near our travel date.  We want to thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us!  We can't wait for our kids to meet your family!