Thursday, June 28, 2007
Monday, June 4, 2007
rupa and nate at the english country side
Rupa and Nate took a trip to the english countryside near the coast for a short holiday. Rupa will have a baby in about 5 weeks and she sent the following pictures
Monday, January 29, 2007
See our family photos
Hi Everyone, Click on the picture above and see various photos of our clan taken in Carmel during thanksgiving (2004) , Norwalk during Chirstmas( 2006) and San Jose( 2005).
Friday, January 19, 2007
First Steps Toward Building the "Viswanath Expansion Team" in Norwalk...
This week I have been incredibly busy trying to identify an international adoption agency that Sri and I can work with to adopt our child. Sri and I have been married for 12 years and have only recently decided to act on our desire to adopt. This step forward was motivated by quite a bit of reflection over the happy news that Sri's sister was expecting. Somehow, the idea of having our own family seemed like a far off ideal...something that we would put off until we felt fully grown up and adult. I'm not at all certain about sobering feelings of being an adult...but I am actually thrilled with the notion of having our own Viswanath Expansion TEAM comprised of really incredible children that need us as much as we need them.
Once having firmly made up our minds that we would feel the most fulfilled by adoption (the easy part)...I began in earnest to look for an adoption agency. After much family dialogue amongst all of our parents and Sri's sister and brother-in-law, we decided that we could cultural offer the most to a child from India. I am also harboring the idea of adopting a child from Ethiopia after reading a number of stories about the strong need for international adoption families...but first steps first.
Through Sri's sister, we learned of Indian government agency that handles adoptions (CARA). We found the listings of U.S. agencies that are licensed through CARA. Through an exhaustive web search and too many phone calls, we came up with just a limited number of agencies that are still active in assisting with India placement.
In attempting to qualify the agency that we would work with, we tried to use objective measures such as identifying which agencies had been successful with placing the largest number of children per year. Most of the social workers who work with adoption agencies seem to be incredibly talented and caring people (beware! it is nearly impossible to narrow a search based on qualitative factors such as "are they nice people"...what was I thinking?!).
As only 300 adoptions are made each year from India, we found that a number of agencies had only handled a few adoptions each year (my narrowing scheme is working!). Further, a number of these agencies appeared to be not up to date on the CARA requirements (wow, didn't expect to be able to narrow the group so quickly)....After a week of extensive questions, we believe that we have narrowed down the agencies to a list of four from the almost 70 listed off the CARA website.
The agency that we are most interested placed 50 children last year in the U.S. The only problem is that this agency does not complete the home studies in the U.S. (more groaning and more work!).
Stay tuned!
Teri
Once having firmly made up our minds that we would feel the most fulfilled by adoption (the easy part)...I began in earnest to look for an adoption agency. After much family dialogue amongst all of our parents and Sri's sister and brother-in-law, we decided that we could cultural offer the most to a child from India. I am also harboring the idea of adopting a child from Ethiopia after reading a number of stories about the strong need for international adoption families...but first steps first.
Through Sri's sister, we learned of Indian government agency that handles adoptions (CARA). We found the listings of U.S. agencies that are licensed through CARA. Through an exhaustive web search and too many phone calls, we came up with just a limited number of agencies that are still active in assisting with India placement.
In attempting to qualify the agency that we would work with, we tried to use objective measures such as identifying which agencies had been successful with placing the largest number of children per year. Most of the social workers who work with adoption agencies seem to be incredibly talented and caring people (beware! it is nearly impossible to narrow a search based on qualitative factors such as "are they nice people"...what was I thinking?!).
As only 300 adoptions are made each year from India, we found that a number of agencies had only handled a few adoptions each year (my narrowing scheme is working!). Further, a number of these agencies appeared to be not up to date on the CARA requirements (wow, didn't expect to be able to narrow the group so quickly)....After a week of extensive questions, we believe that we have narrowed down the agencies to a list of four from the almost 70 listed off the CARA website.
The agency that we are most interested placed 50 children last year in the U.S. The only problem is that this agency does not complete the home studies in the U.S. (more groaning and more work!).
Stay tuned!
Teri
Colby Buzzell
Im reading colby buzzell's book about his time in Iraq. A surf dude who became a Marine and saw war close up in Iraq, and questioned being there. A great read. I wonder how Bush can try to save face and tell all the colby's that came home in body bags how their deaths were in the name of terrorism or, even better, the 'freedom of Iraqi people. When I see Iraqi's on tv they look cold and poor and hungry and scared. that sucks.
a family- Jan 20, 2007
We are an american family. We are immigrants who are natives. we are born overseas and born domestically, we sweat, bleed, work, laugh and cry here... so we are definately American. We have dark skin and light skin and we are trying to adopt a child, so we can expand our home team. this is a page of our life journey.
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