The Latest "not so good" news...

CCAA has updated their site again and referrals in fact only covered May 26-30th...which is disappointing. Not sure what's going on but here's an excerpt from an email we received from our faciliator...

I am disappointed to report to you that the China Center of Adoption Affairs has recently released referrals for families whose files were registered with their office between May 26 and May 30, 2005. Therefore, referrals of children coming out of the China Center of Adoption Affairs are continuing to slow down. It is difficult to predict right now how long referrals will take in the future. CCAA is being very tight-lipped about how slow the process may get, but there are indications that we can expect the process to continue to slow down for a period of time.

When I have any definite information about future timeframes of referrals, I will be in touch.

Regards
Linda

For all of you International Women!!!

I thought this was pretty cool...in a country where women are deemed "less valuable" than men, I was really happy to see that International Women's Day was celebrated there as well, bet there were no Hell's Belles or Red Hats there though!!!

Here's a blurb from CCAA's website.

In celebrating of International Women’s Day, a group of female officials from the CCAA and Consulate Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid a visit to Tianjin City Children Welfare Institute on March 7, 2006. ?They had a party to celebrate with the staff and children of the Institute. A top official from Tianjin Civil Affairs Bureau and the Director of the orphanage welcomed the visiting officials. Counselor Tan Yun Tian from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Director Chu Xiao Ying from CCAA gave speeches expressing their respect for the staff, especially female staff members in the orphanage for their dedication and hard work when caring for the children in their orphanage. On behalf of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Civil Affairs, the Mrs. Tan and Chu donated some daily necessities and 10,000RMB to the children and orphanage. Children from the orphanage and some of the visiting officials performed at the party. The visiting officials met with and talked to the female staff members and some of the children.

Update at CCAA

Well, our file is finally finished in the "review room" the CCAA has updated their website and now we are officially in the "matching room" woohoo!!! Rumor has it that they are only send out referrals that cover May 26-30 this month, which is discouraging but hey...either way she's coming home soon and that's all that matters. After talking with Daisy at our last meeting we feel more confident that the children are being well taken care of at the orphanage so that puts us at ease.

Here's the update:

The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before August 31, 2005.

The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before May 25, 2005.

Final Meeting before Referrals

We had our last meeting yesterday with the group we travel to China with. Our facilitor brought in a young woman who was adopted at the age of 11 and is now 20 years old. I have to say that this was the most inspiring meeting we've been to yet! It was fascinating to hear her stories of the orphanage she lived in, what life was like for her growing up there and what a transition it was moving to Canada. She said that her first family is her orphanage family and that the children in her orphanage were told that "you were abandoned, but that is the past, don't look back", she doesn't know how she'll feel later in life but right now she is extremely content with the way her life is and loves her Mom and Dad more than she thought possible. She even thanked us for choosing to adopt a child from China, can you imagine! All this time we think about what our child will bring to our life and our families lives not what we'd bring to her life, so it was really interesting to hear her point of view.
So that was our final meeting with the group until we get our referral, which I hope is soon! There are some rumors going around that more referrals will be out in the next week or two, I hope so much they include all of the files from June and maybe even some from July, though I know that's wishful thinking...just hurry it up and get to August 25th pretty please!!!!

What's in a Name???

I never thought growing up that I'd have a tough time finding a name for my daughter. John and I struggled a bit on this, took lots of suggestions (some pretty odd ones but we tried to keep an open mind), read lots of name books and even had a couple names we thought were "keepers", but something wasn't quite right about them...then one day we were sitting in the living room, John was playing his guitar and it hit me, what about Aislin??? John's eyes brightened and said that's it, that's her name, I love it. Aislin is Gaelic meaning "dream". so it even seems more fitting knowing that, Cape Breton where I'm from has such strong
Gaelic influences and this little girl really is a dream come true. We were originally going to call her Olivia, but found that it had suddenly become #3 on the most popular girls name list and that two other little gems adopted from China right here in our tiny town had been named Olivia, so we've decided that'll be her second name. We are most likely also going to keep her name she was given in China. Usually the orphanage will name the child when they receive her and well since that's the name she has had for the first part of her life it doesn't seem like it's our decision. So her Chinese name will be her third name and she can decide when she is old enough what she chooses to do. So there you have it...Aislin Olivia (blank) Camilleri...quite a nice ring to it we think!!!

March 16, 2006

We've created this page to capture our journey to Aislin. We hope to be able to share with Aislin when she is older a bit of what it was like while we were waiting to bring her home. This is a picture taken just before we left to go to our final homestudy meeting....this was a big day, we would find out if we were being recommended for adoption.....YAY we were!!!!
We started this process one year ago this month, after some soul searching and alot of paperwork our dossier was finally logged in at CCAA (China Centre of Adoption Affairs) on August 25th, 2005, it's what's know as your LID (logged in date). Things have been a little slower at CCAA these past few months so it's been tough. We know though that we are a matter of months away from bringing our daughter home. It's a very organized process that happens, once our file was logged in China, it then sits there for a while until they get through all the other files before ours and it's then in what they call the "review room", which is where we are right now. Someone is looking at our file as I write this and making sure all the t's are crossed and i's are dotted...then it's on to the "matching room" where they look at our file and match us with the perfect little girl. There are alot of theories on how that is figured out, some being our age and interests and her personality. I don't really know for sure though. So we are anxious to get to the "matching room" and then once CCAA does their catch up with all the files before ours we will get our referral (which is when they send you pictures and information about the child they are proposing to us). We figure with the way things are going now that we might get that in June (keeping our fingers crossed that it will speed up!). Approximately 6-8 weeks after that, we head off to China!!!! Boy are we anxious!