a great weekend!

This weekend was great!! We had a fun beach day with our RI ET family group, the beach house is fun, and the little beach nearby was great, sandy, but with fun waves for jumping in, and not too crowded. It was a great day, and the kids had so much fun with all the other kids, both adopted and bio combined. Saturday we had a picnic for our SW agency LSS, it was fun even though we knew noone but our SW. The kids are great for what could be awkward moments, since I can be kind of shy around large groups when not in my comfort zone. Gabe, MB and J are good for this though, they are so charming, and so funny that they attract others to chat with us. Then when I am feeling my most tongue tied and shy one of them does something, or gets into something, and I am saved by the babes again!!!
The picnic was a great time, it is fun to hang out with adoptive parents and kids, they are all so into adoption, there are few awkward questions, and you never wonder why they are asking personal questions. They truly are innocent of nastiness, they are just interested in others experiences, and other country rules and programs. There are no bad questions at functions like this, and even though we stood out as only 1 of 2 families with ET babies everyone was nice and interested. I especially liked being able to be nosy and not get in too much trouble, I am always interested in the back story of others families, and this is the perfect place to chat and nose around in their lives, how they decided to adopt, why the country they chose, how the adjustment is going, etc, it is fun, and noone gets offended, so all good!!! I think that the only thing that bugs me about events like this is the perception I always feel, that as an ET adopter I should be the Bible on all things ET.
This is not just at events like this, this is a pervasive thread among ET adopters, as well as the adoptive community in general. We should know everything about Ethiopia, the culture, people, history, religion, and language. While we do enjoy knowing all we can about ET, we are not Ethiopian, nor will we ever truly understand the culture or customs, to be expected to is ludicrous. It is also somewhat arbitrary, since very few adopter of children from other parts of the world are expected to to have such a vast store of knowledge on the tip of their tongues. Chinese adoptive parents are rarely asked to speak Mandarin, or whip up a five course meal and eat their sticky rice with chop sticks. Last time I checked very few Guatemalan adopters knew the art of weaving baskets with grasses wither, but as ET adopters we are expected to be able to make Doro Wat and Injera, speak our child's native dialect or some Amharic, and corn row with flair. Sadly the ET adoptive community does little to fight against this, they seem to agree and force the rest of us non over achievers to fall in line or risk being seen as a poor adoptive parent or worse not fit to parent and participate in Ethiopian Culture Camps.
Sorry I got off onto a tangent it was a wonderful weekend full of fun, sand and new friends, so all good, Jamie