March 6, 2009

Lots of things this week... Nothing incredibly huge, just lots of things.
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I blanketed the cyber-world with my plea to find any other Panjin SWI children. I sent an e-mail to every adoption agency in the United States that works with China to process adoptions. 99% of my responses were negative. None of them had children who had come from Panjin. There isn't even a Yahoo group for Panjin's SWI - and there is a Yahoo group for EVERYTHING. I took it upon myself to create one - maybe someday there will be many members. :-)
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I did learn, however that there are least two other children who have been adopted internationally from ElleAnna's orphanage. The most shocking part about that is both of these children were matched through the same adoption agency as the one we used for ElleAnna. One was the little boy that I had suspected (7-8 years old, brought home about two weeks before we traveled to China to bring Elle home). The other was a little girl adopted last summer. I have asked our agency to get in touch with those two families and see if they'd be interested in having a connection with us. It would be neat for our three children to have photos of each other - maybe they even know one another?
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I am working on getting a camera sent to Elle's orphanage and asking the staff there to take photos of sites and hopefully faces, that Elle may find familiar. Even if she doesn't recall it, I am hopeful that we can have some information to give her about her past. In addition, I have a Facebook "friend" who is currently in China. She is going to see if she can also get photos (at least of the outside) of Elle's former home.
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I am hopeful that some of these connections will prove to be positive and fruitful. Keep your fingers crossed!!
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