I've never celebrated Mardi Gras. I have eaten pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, but that doesn't seem quite the same.
As I drove around town today and looked at the gray, dead landscape of the tail end of winter, I thought that if ever there was a time in need of a party this is it. One last big blowout before we begin the final countdown to spring. I mentioned our little Chinese New Year celebration this last weekend, but I didn't mention our other big reason for celebrating. On Friday we received our I-171. This is the document that says our petition to bring Shen home has been processed by the USCIS. This was the last piece we needed to complete our dossier. Now we are waiting for China to grant us Prior Approval (PA) before we can send our dossier to Beijing. Then we will wait for China to send us a Letter of Acceptance. Then we will wait for Travel Approval and a consulate appointment.

We have finished all the preliminary steps required and now begins our very own season of Lent. I wish that like Lent we knew how long this wait will be. I think it's safe to assume we have more than 40 days until our Easter comes. But each day we mark off brings us closer to Shen. The days are still cold, but the sun is coming closer. Soon this worn and weary landscape will surrender to the quickening forces of spring. We have begun our wait.

We had fun this weekend with a little CNY celebration of our own. We're still getting the hang of this holiday. Some of the more traditional ways of observing it are a bit beyond us, such as having the house perfectly clean before New Years day. We did go out and get a new outfit for Kai, and for fun we made it all red, which is traditionally worn as a way to ensure good luck for the coming year. It took us quite a few stops to put it all together, but we did it. Kai wasn't feeling like cooperating for the camera, but here are a few pix of his New Year's outfit...

You can see we also got Kai a stuffed pig because this is the year of the pig. If you look closely you'll notice that Mouse got an overhaul for CNY as well. This is now Mouse #4. Kai doesn't mind having mouse replaced as long as it's with the same model Mouse. He'll play with other stuffed animals, but will only cuddle up with the Mouse.

For dinner we picked up Chinese takeout and took it over to Kai's friend Mimi's house. We had fun visiting and eating together, After dinner there were red envelopes with Lucky Money inside, we played with Chinese Fortune Telling Sticks, and then we went outside and lit sparklers. Kai really loved the little fireworks and was still talking about them the next day.

What could possibly be more exciting than preschoolers wielding fire?!

There was no Chinese Language School today so we could attend the Northwest Chinese Cultural Association's Chinese New Year Celebration. It was a great afternoon, with lots of food, a lion dance, classical Chinese music, and a "Lucky Draw". There was an article in the local paper about the event which drew in a lot of people so it was really packed. They even had the mayor and the county executive there.

The lion dance was a bit too much for many of the little ones, but Kai enjoyed it, though was glad we were sitting toward the rear of the hall.



We moved up to the front for the classical music portion which was really awesome. An outstanding pair of performers came down from Richmond B.C. Chai-Man Cheng played the dizi and Chuen Ying played the guzheng. They had students of theirs who played with them as well.
They are both truly world class musicians and it was a real treat to have them here in Bellingham. While Kai really enjoyed the music he did get distracted by a bout of attempted shoe-tying with his girlfriend Mimi...

To top off the day Kai even won one of the "Lucky Draws". They had some great prizes, and tried to give us a little tool set, but we asked for one of these great plastic piggy banks from Ikea. We got a green one!

It is the year of the pig after all!

We have now attended four class sessions with Kai at our local Chinese language school. We feel extremely lucky to have this resource here in our community. Children are supposed to be four before enrolling, so we waited until January to start in the preschool class. This is making things a bit more difficult for us, as we are having to play catch-up, but we are doing this for more than just immediate language results. It is important to us to help Kai make connections within the Chinese-American community here, and to expose him to Chinese culture. Actually, we made a promise to the People's Republic of China that we would do the latter. So again, we feel very lucky to have a Chinese language school here in town.

Not only are we new to the class this semester, so is the teacher. She is a very nice woman with two young children of her own, ages 6 and 8. She is a native Chinese speaker who emigrated from mainland China about 10 years ago. She told us she has an aunt who used to live in Baoding, where Kai is from. She hasn't taught a preschool class before so she has had a bit of a rough start trying to find an appropriate level to work with them. I noticed her email address was through an out of state university so I asked her about her affiliation. She told me she is currently enrolled in a PhD program there studying textiles and renewable resources, though she may drop out, as she has a degree in statistics and wants to find work in that field. I think this background explains the way she initially approached this class. She writes on the white board a lot and started with the children seated at desks. We meet at the local Catholic school and are using the sixth grade classroom so these are big desks! Things have gotten better though, and she now has the kids join her on the floor at the front of the class, she also is trying some art projects, and another teacher has helped with dance instruction. Though teaching choreographic routines to four year olds is a pretty challenging task as well. I'm not sure how much of this is a cultural difference, or if the teachers simply don't know what to do with pre-schoolers.

Even though Kai's not really getting a lot out of it yet, he does really likes it. He likes the snack time, even though he won't eat most of the snacks that are served. The teacher gives little rewards like stickers and pencils and Kai especially likes this. He also really loves the dancing. So we have begun Chinese school with him and while we aren't too worried about big gains right away, we do hope that all three of us are able to learn a few andy phrases before we travel for Shen.

note: Tina thought this post sounded a bit too negative, so I wanted to say that wasn't my point. I am really glad to be in Chinese school, it's just been kind of hard getting started.

This is the most recent photo we have of Kai's new little brother (Note: he's Cam & Ben's little brother too!). This picture was taken in October by a parent who was at the orphanage in Xi'an to adopt their daughter. They posted it online in an album of photos. They didn't know us or that we were adopting this little boy when they took the picture, or when they posted it, but we are very grateful to them. We have 5 pictures of him that we received from our adoption agency as part of his file. In all of those pictures he has a pretty sad little face, so it was really nice to get one of him with a happy face!

And now, I'm tired of only using pronouns when talking about him, so I'm going to tell you the name we have finally decided on. His new name is Shen.

We will keep Yu-Heng as his middle name, just as we kept Hui as Kai's middle name.
We had a harder time deciding on this name than we did with Kai's name. My preference is for short names. Cameron and Benjamin are longer names but they have good short versions: Cam and Ben that they use more regularly. We want to give him a Chinese name that is not difficult or awkward sounding to westerners. The Chinese character we chose for Shen is 深. It means "deep" or "profound".