China Care Gala

China Care is largely a student run organization that is active at several Universities across the US (not sure about other countries). This organization works to address medical needs of  children living in China’s Orphanages. The completely student run organization works by raising funds and awareness for the China Care Foundation to help improve the lives of orphaned children still in China by providing funds for medical care they might otherwise not receive. In addition, China Care has a strong home component that connects University students (primarily Chinese University students) with Chinese adoptees in the surrounding University Area. This year, China Cares has joined/become part of the larger Half the Sky organization, which is a nonprofit organization working in China (with the support of the Chinese government) to set standards for the care of children living in the Orphanages. 

Josie and Clara Rose (as well as several of their friends) enjoy the activities and comapionship provided through the China Cares program.  This past month we supported China Cares in thier annual gala-- the girls were more than thrilled to be performing "on the stage" again!

Stage Make-Up-- these two cannot get enough of it!

Rehearsing for their performance with Mei Mei. 

Eating some yummy dinner before the show. 

Talking with some of their College girl-friends. 

Singing on stage with some of their fellow Care Bear Playmates. 

Other performers who have donated their time and talent to help raise funds. 

Waiting to go on stage for her next performance. 

On stage performing. 

The girls were a huge hit (needless to say!)

There were many other performances- solos, piano recitals, lion dance, martial arts, silent auction--

A big night for two little girls.

Josie enjoying a piece of cake after her performance. 

The show ended with a "Fashion Show"

All the girls were given a flower and walked down the main asile. 

A good portion of the younger crowd

enjoyed running around on the stage as the night ended. 

Lastly, as the school year comes to a close-- so to does this

years China Care events.

We enjoyed a fun afternoon playing in one of the University's

field areas and saying good-bye until the Fall. 

Marine Life

We've made a few trips to aquariums or aquarium-like places to expereince marine animals. It wasn't really my intent to focus on marine animals-- it just worked out this way.  The first trip was on a whim-- rainy day what to do type of decision. 

A trip to a nearby place that houses various kinds of marine animals for research (I think). It is kind of like a big aqaurium store- excpet the animals are not for sale and there are a few areas where you can hold/pet some of the animals-- including . . .         

SHARKS!

The girls tentatively checking out the baby shark tank. 

OK.

Clara Rose-- not so tentatively reaching in to pet a shark like the other kids.

After which Josie yells at me across the tank, "MOMMY! Come HERE!"

Of course, I'm trying to get a picture with my oh soooo wonderful photo skills-- not to be compared to my mommy skills . . ..

Josie says to me-- "I want you to put your hand in first."

She's no dummy that's for sure!

Josie and I petted the baby sharks together.

No pictures of course. 

A tortoise. 

Josie was in the spirit-- lots of fishy faces . . . 

A blow fish face. 

It was a fun excursion for a very rainy day! 

Different Aquarium-- much bigger- between the size of the place pictured about and Sea World.

Ha ha.

We planed this trip about a month ago-- to play hooky and enjoy the place without a big weekend crowd.

It has a Ray petting pool. 

We were the only ones there for about 15-20 minutes. 

A Beluga Whale is being fed way off in the far left. 

Josie is all about Jellyfish these days.

There is a jellyfish room at this aquarium and we hit it twice.

They even have pink moon jellyfish! 

In front of the shark tank.

Clara Rose asked if she could pet them.

Uuuuuh, NO! 

A sea turtle came down and said hi. 

Saying hi to the Beluga Whale again. 

Josie was thrilled when she said "hi" back! 

After lunch, I bribed the girls with promises that they could pick out a stuffed animal from the gift store

if they were good walking through a Titanic diplay. 

"Would you like a picture here Mommy?"

"Ooooo, this looks like a good place for a picture."

What a bathtub might look like today that was on the titantic. 

Clara Rose found where she could press all the alarms and flashing lights.

I'm not sure how true this part is to the actual Titanic (I could only read so much going through the exhibit)--

But it sure was a hit with the girls! 

Favorite Playground

Our favorite playground opened a few weekends ago-- one of many reasons I have not been updating the blog with fun family pictures as of late. We've been so busy I hadn't even't uploaded most of my picts to the camera.  Believe or not-- I am still technologically old school in that I do NOT have a cell phone capable of uplaoding pictures to a blog or even FB-- the crowd gasps.

I'm surviving-- quite splendidly without such devices.

Here's your fix . . .

I love these monkey bars because they are low enough to the ground that the girls can

do them independently.

Josie is super excited that she isgetting better and better at the monkey bars.

She can now swing three bars!

The girls discovering how much they have grown in terms of how

much they have to squish to both fit on some of the toys that they fit into easily last year. 

The girls had a super fun day playing! 

No batteries in the car-- little sister is here to lend a hand. 

I had visions of the future taking these shots. 

Different day-- same playground.

The girls love this swing!

Last year they didn't care for it so much.

This year-- it is all they want to do. 

Higher!

HIGHER!

SPIN IT! 

I was a little nervous.

I have a bad history with Jie Jie and Ge Ge and spin rides at this very playground.

Josie and Clara Rose are wired a little differently. 

The beginning of warmer weather--

Yippee!

Somewhere Between

Somewhere Between- A Documentary

From their website http://www.somewherebetweenmovie.com/
What is it about?
There are over 80,000 children adopted from China now growing up in the U.S. – over 90% of them are girls.  Somewhere Between tells the intimate stories of four of these teenaged girls. They have different kinds of families but are united by one thing: all four were adopted from China, because they had birth parents who could not keep them, due to personal circumstances colliding with China's 'One Child Policy'.  These wonderful young women allow us to grasp what it is like to come-of-age in today's America as trans-racial adoptees.  At the same time, we see them as typical American teenagers doing what teenagers everywhere do…struggling to answer the question, ‘Who Am I?’
Through these young women, we ourselves pause to consider who we are—both as individuals and as a nation of immigrants.  And with great honesty and courage, these four girls open their hearts to experience love, compassion, and self-acceptance....and show us the way, too.
***************************************************************************

Last night I was able to watch the movie, "Somewhere Between." 

It was a highly anticipated documentary about young women who were adopted from China, coming of age in the US. I have been waiting well over a year to be able to see the movie and it was more than worth the wait.

Most of you who know me know that I read quite a bit about adoption and issues that involve adoption, racism, as well as watch various types of movies on these subjects. This movie is by far the best I have seen.

Maybe I am biased because it is about Chinese Adoptees, like my daughters. The director of the movie is an adoptive mom to a little girl from China, but I found this movie to provide what felt like a refreshingly honest look at being adopted from China from the perspective of the young women who were adopted.

One thing that isn't clear in the movie or in any of descriptions that I have seen is that each of the girls were provided a camera to keep a video diary-- so not everything that is shown in the movie is footage captured by a film crew.

I strongly encourage everyone to see this movie if you have the opportunity-- most especially if you have adopted a child from China.



Reviews by Folks more eloquent that I--

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN brilliantly combines the experience of Chinese Adoptees growing up in America and the complexities of an adolescent search for identity. Linda Goldstein Knowlton takes us on a journey into the joys, sorrows and compassion of a unique set of families and challenges us to consider who we are and where we belong."

-Iris Chin Ponte
Ph.D. Department of Child Development Tufts University

"SOMEWHERE BETWEEN gives us an intimate, privileged look into the lives of four thoughtful and articulate young women. These are more than coming-of age stories, each girl is an example of how to grow up with courage and dignity. Linda Goldstein Knowlton has made a revelatory film that sensitively explores issues of identity, family, ethnicity and love. And her film is an invaluable contribution to the ongoing story of the American family."

-Kate Amend
Editor of the Academy Award winning films
Into the Arms of Strangers and The Long Way Home

All Girls Allowed: The One-Child Policy stays until 2015...and an Olympic medalist is in hot water.

The One-Child Policy stays until 2015, Illegal Ultrasound Gangs, and an Olympic Diver's "Violation"  HEADLINES FROM CHINA ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Olympic gold medalist under fire for having second child Officials seek to affirm the One-Child Policy by punishing diver Tian Liang. Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang April 19, 2012 (People's Daily)   Authorities in China are investigating a former Olympic diving gold medalist for violating the One-Child Policy by arranging the birth of his second child in Hong Kong. The commission said it would reveal the result of a probe on whether Tian Liang and his wife were eligible for a second child or whether they had violated the policy. Tian, 32, who won two Olympic gold medals for China in diving, retired from the sport in 2007. The couple's first child was born in 2008; they welcomed their second child this year in Hong Kong and have since faced accusations of violating the One-Child Policy. The government said it was revoking his Party membership and taking action against Tian in order to prevent others from thinking that giving birth in Hong Kong would spare them from adhering to the One-Child Policy.    Read more...   From All Girls Allowed: "Chinese officials are sending a powerful message by taking action against Tian, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and actor. They are using the example of this very public figure to demonstrate their commitment to enforcing the policy on expectant families. No one, not even an Olympian and Communist Party member like Tian, can expect a reprieve."   ___________________________   One Child Policy to stay despite experts' critique The government says the policy will remain in place until at least 2015.   April 11, 2012 (Shanghai Daily) China aims to stabilize its population at about 1.39 billion people by 2015 by sticking to the existing family planning policy, dampening experts' hopes of an unwinding of the tough rules, according to a plan the central government posted on its website yesterday. The central government projected that during the next five years the nation's population will grow more slowly due to a drop in the number of fertile women in their 20s. The number of elderly people will keep rising, and the labor population will reach a peak and then decline slowly. The elderly population will increase quickly at first as people born in the nation's first baby boom in the 1950s enter their old age. China reached a milestone last year when the government announced that, for the first time, the urban population surpassed the rural one.   Read more...   From All Girls Allowed: "This announcement confirms what we have suspected: despite the ongoing gendercide and warnings from experts about an aging population, the One-Child Policy is here to stay. Mothers will continue to face threats and undergo forced abortions. Girls will continue to disappear as parents abort or abandon daughters."   ___________________________   China busts woman for illegal backseat ultrasounds  on moms wanting sons   April 10, 2012 (Associated Press)   Police in China have arrested a woman for performing ultrasound tests in the back seats of cars and illegally telling mothers the gender of their fetus, state media said Tuesday. It is forbidden in China to tell expectant parents which sex their child will be because the practice has encouraged parents with a traditional preference for sons to abort female fetuses, skewing the ratio of boys to girls. Sonograms are allowed but gender identification is forbidden. The official Xinhua News Agency said a woman surnamed Hu was arrested last month in Wuhan and is suspected of being part of a group of three people and a network of middlemen who provided gender testing across the city of 4.5 million. Women usually paid around 700 yuan ($110) for the service, it said.   Read more...   From All Girls Allowed: "Illegal ultrasounds that lead to gendercide are all too common in China. We are thankful that officials busted this particular network, and we hope that this arrest will motivate others to stop enabling the crime of gendercide."   ___________________________   More headlines:      The End of China's One-Child Policy? (April 19, 2012, Dexter Roberts for Businessweek) Last year's publication of China's 2010 census, which revealed a much more pronounced decline in births than previously est imated, galvanized 20 or so of China's top demographers, sociologists, and economists to advocate ending the one-child policy. "It is time to think about removing this policy decided 30 years ago-China's situation has changed so much," says Gu Baochang, a demographer at Renmin University of China in Beijing and one of the informal leaders of the group, which has twice submitted petitions to China's top leaders urging them to reform or end the policy.    123 million Chinese over 65 (April 8, 2012, Shanghai Daily)   Around 123 million Chinese were aged over 65 at the end of 2011 - 9.1 percent of the total population, the Health Aging Symposium announced yesterday. Chinese seniors aged 80 or above are set to account for 30 percent of over-65s by 2050, and the ratio of working-aged Chinese to seniors will drop from 10:1 in 2000 to 2.8:1 by then, the symposium said. World Health Organization statistics show that globally the number of people aged over 60 has doubled since 1980, and by 2050 there will be 395 million aged 80 or above, four times current figures. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that globally in the next five years, over-65s will outnumber under-5s for the first time.   ___________________________   Does reading this move you to help?            Use the links above to spread the word to your friends!   REPRESENT  ....want people to ask you about gendercide in China?   The All Girls Allowed Shop is filled with deals on all the gear you need to spark conversation, expose the problem and stand for girls and mothers in China.   Forward email This email was sent to reena_shaw@yahoo.com by kat@allgirlsallowed.org |   Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. All Girls Allowed | 101 Huntington Avenue | Suite 2205 | Boston | MA | 02199