Meet and Greet

Last night we got to meet the Vietnam Families Group. I have been waiting so long to meet other families; it really was just a wonderful evening. We were supposed to meet at Stanley Park but true to Vancouver weather, it poured! So we ended up gathering at a Chinese restaurant instead. It was absolutely fabulous to meet so many families who have adopted from Vietnam in the Vancouver area. There were 21 families with a total of 25 children in all! And that was not the whole group by a long shot!

I have to say first though - kudos to Erwin. Anyone who knows Erwin knows that he is usually VERY shy with new people and it takes him awhile to open up. I brought it up with him before hand and said that he really needed to make an effort to talk to people and get to know them. I told him to think of the other families as life-long friends rather than strangers. Anyways, I don’t know if it was my motivating speech (wink, wink) or what but he was the most outgoing I have ever seen him in a situation like that. He even took the mic to introduce us and when a group of us were standing around talking and a few questions came up he was the one to go find the program director and bring her back to our group to talk – unprompted I might add!

We met lots of families that were already back with their children. But the most exciting for me was meeting the other families in group 8 who we will most likely be travelling with. Two of the families have previously adopted from Vietnam so we will have experienced parents / travellers along with us to show us the ropes. There were four of the six group 8 families there. We are still trying to hook up with the other two families. Perhaps they live out of town or simply could not make it last night. Anyways, we all exchanged contact info and everyone has already e-mailed saying that we want to get together again before the end of the month. So exciting! The best part is they were all really nice couples who I can totally see getting together with and celebrating birthdays and all the important milestones.

The Group 7 families are waiting to receive their proposals any day now (they were very hopeful for the end of the week) and another group just arrived home over the weekend with their babies! So all seems to be moving along! I am hoping that this will not take as long as I have been fearing (see previous post) but at the same time I do not want to get overly optimistic. But I have to say it is hard not to be optimistic when you meet so many wonderful, happy children.