Changing our minds again?

My letter to our social worker - when she brought up idea of adopting from Colombia - and I have to decide in less than a month - since I am 39 next month...

(XXXXX) -

Thanks for coming to see us and being our partner in this adoption process.

I want to let you know we have this message and I was talking with Charlie last night.

We both have had some "grieving" about now changing our plan from Ethiopia as we have been so excited about adopting from there... me grabbing onto any magazine - a Smithsonian magazine article of late that related a journalist's experience of culture in Ethiopia- and I felt like I was there. And- I know that Charlie has been the one excited about Ethiopia from the very beginning. So it is a bit tougher decision for him.

Of course the idea that jumped into my mind was that we could still go to Ethiopia - for our second adoption and how happy I was that our wait time could possibly be less. I was also excited that I would be able to "brush up" on my Spanish- speaking and be able to communicate verbally much more effectively with our first child since my Spanish would more likely be better than my beginning Amharic.

We still have a couple of more discussions to have and I have to check out the reality with my principal as our school didn't make academic yearly progress the third year in a row- and I love my new school and don't want to change/make a new job change again when I feel that this environment is one that fits so well. We are doing a restructuring rather than moving teachers to different schools. With the restructuring, teachers must sign a contract that says they agree to work with the new plan for the school and do whatever professional developments that come up with the new plan - We are scheduled for ten days professional development this summer, but there has been no schedule posted - we don't know if it is happening for 10 days in a row or if they are scattered through the summer.

So this is the new news.

I've done part of the professional development already - as most of our restructuring plan has to do with becoming interdisciplinary teams schoolwide and I joined the one interdisciplinary team that the school had already established - so it may be that some of my prof. development from last summer could count for this.

Now that we are a "waiting family" :) I feel like I can share this with my principal and we can come up with a plan- I think he will understand and figure out a way that I can complete prof. development on a flexible time scale.

I will have that conversation with him this coming week and then talk again with Charlie and we'll have an answer for you soon.

Thank you again for thinking about us and how we would best become a happy adoptive family.

Angie (XXXXX)