The adoption travel experience

by Brenda Yun on

Several of my close friends and family members were adopted, adopted a child, or are in the process of adopting a child from Asia. In fact, my sister is months away from traveling to China to pick up her daughter, and our very own Gadling writer, Jamie Rhein has a daughter adopted from Vietnam. While China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and India are just a few of the popular adoption locales these days, there are several others popping up all over the globe.

The adoption travel trip is like no other you will ever experience in your life. It’s is the first step in documenting your adoptive child’s journey with you. It’s something s/he will not likely remember, so taking photos, and recording the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of his/her birthplace is a most important step in the process.
Certainly, a lot of preparation has to take place before you even step foot on foreign soil. (Sometimes the adoption application process can take up to two years!). However, so much goes on during and after the trip, that it’s important to consider your adoption travel experience in three distinctive parts:

BEFORE

  • Consider your health: Just as you would prepare for an ordinary trip abroad, you will need to understand the health risks involved in traveling abroad. Odds are you are traveling to a third world country where diseases like malaria and dengue fever can be contracted. Be sure to take the necessary precautions (i.e. take those preventative shots) and stock up on the necessary medications.
  • Get travel insurance: This is an important trip, and you don’t want it to be bogged down by lost baggage or flight cancellations. Nowadays, travel insurance can cost as little as $100 a month, so it’s worth the peace of mind.
  • Pack light: Don’t burden yourself with excess baggage. Necessities like diapers and clothes are attainable and often cheaper upon arrival in your destination.

DURING

  • Document and record every moment: Take photos, keep a journal, and pay attention to even the smallest details of your experience. This is really the symbolic birthplace of your new child, so capturing as many memories as you can is crucial.
  • Allow time for adaptation: You will not be jetting over to this country just to jet back. It’s important to take the time that is necessary to allow your new child to adapt to his/her parents and surroundings. Sightseeing is a great experience for both you and the child, as well as simple human interaction.

AFTER

  • Take your time: Patience is a virtue most necessary for adoptive parents. Your new child will need even more time to get used to his/her new national soil and the different faces that make up his/her new family. Go slow in immersing him/her into the new pace and style of life.
  • Visit the pediatrician: This is a necessary step in identifying just how healthy your new child is. Measures may need to be taken to ensure his/her stability and health upon arrival home, so make sure this initial trip to the doctor is thorough and extensive, yet comfortable and informative.
  • Return to the birth country when the time is right: At some point, your fully adapted child will need to understand where s/he came from. If possible, make the trip with your child when s/he is able to document the experience for him/herself.

Adoption regulations change depending upon diplomatic relationships between countries. Be sure to find out the newest regulations before you embark on this journey, and be prepared that things might change. Sometimes adoptions are halted between the U.S. and another country.

Also, be advised that some countries suggest or require multiple trips before the real adoption takes place. If this is the case, the initial trip is a unique opportunity to explore the country, document, and record before you become a parent. Enjoy this special journey!

The following are some helpful sites with useful adoption travel tips and stories:

Undiscovered New York: Famous city cemeteries

by Jeremy Kressmann on

This week Undiscovered New York is “digging up” a rather morbid topic: the cemeteries. The New York City metropolitan area has a population of around 18 million residents. However this number only reflects those that still have a pulse. When you’re talking about an urban area with history dating back to the 16th Century, we’re talking about millions and millions of lives that came and went within the confines of the city’s boundaries. And they all had to be buried somewhere.

When one thinks of a cemetery, it’s a place that’s frequently associated with stagnation and death. Yet the constant dynamism and momentum of New York does not allow any site to remain at rest. New York’s many cemeteries remain an important part in the city’s constantly changing patchwork and are filled with not only the stories of the past but also of the city’s future and continued vitality.

After the jump Undiscovered New York will take you inside some of the city’s most famous cemeteries. Interested in learning about New York’s role in the invention of baseball? Want to visit the habitat of a flock of tropical birds living in New York City? Would you be curious to know there’s a cemetery smack-dab in the middle of the East Village? Click below to get the whole story…
Green-Wood Cemetery
Arguably one of New York City’s most famous grave sites, Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 in an area just southwest of the Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Among those interred at Green-Wood include 1980’s downtown auteur Jean-Michel Basquiat, infamous 1800’s gang leader William “Bill the Butcher” Poole (portrayed by Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York), as well as hundreds of early pioneers of a new 1800’s sport called baseball.

Visitors to Green-Wood will most certainly want to check out the Gothic Revival entrance gate at the cemetery’s entrance on 5th Avenue and 25th Street. In addition to the beautiful design, it’s also the nesting grounds for a flock of monk parakeets from South America that now call the cemetery home. The birds escaped from a container at JFK Airport in the 1960’s and have populated the area ever since.

New York Marble Cemetery
Hidden in the heart of New York’s happening East Village neighborhood, the New York Marble Cemetery and is the oldest non-sectarian cemetery in the city of New York. First established in 1830, the cemetery was founded to deal with recent outbreaks of Yellow Fever. Though the Marble Cemetery houses a few notable New Yorkers, it’s more impressive for its location. Hidden behind a narrow metal gate on Second Avenue, visitors enter a quiet walled sanctuary surrounded on all sides by the bustling urban life of Manhattan. The cemetery is typically open the fourth Sunday of each month, March through November, for those interested in checking it out.

Trinity Church Cemetery
Directly across from Ground Zero lies one of Manhattan’s most famous cemeteries, and the only active grave site within the borough, at Trinity Church. The church’s graveyard at 74 Trinity Place is the final resting place for some of America’s most famous figures, including Alexander Hamilton and New York fur baron John Jacob Astor and steamboat inventor Robert Fulton.

Travel Read: 100 Places Every Woman Should Go

by Brenda Yun on

I never knew there could be a book so thoughtful and inspiring for women as this one. Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s second travel book, which lists far more than just 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, is truly an encyclopedia for women travelers. It’s the kind of book that could never have existed fifty years ago, but is so refreshing that free-spirited, female travelers should feel grateful that it exists now, and fully prepared for that next trip into the wide, wonderful world.

Griest’s great book is packed with helpful historical information, inspiring stories, and travel tips. It’s broken up into nine sections — my favorite being the first: “Powerful Women and Their Places in History.” There’s so much worth digesting in each locale described. For instance, I had no idea that the word “lesbian” came from the birthplace of Sappho (Lesbos, Greece). Griest fills each description with great travel tips that often include specific street addresses for particularly noteworthy sights.What I like most about the 100 places she chooses is that she shies away from identifying places that every woman obviously dreams of traveling to, like Venice, Rome, and Paris. Instead, she paves a new path for women, encouraging us to visit Japan’s 88 sacred temples or stroll through the public squares of Samarkand, one of the world’s oldest cities in Uzbekistan.

Griest does not limit her list to concrete or singular places. Sometimes, she finds a way to take us to virtual spots like the Museum of Menstruation or creates lists like “Best Bungee Jumping Locales,” “Sexiest Lingerie Shops,” or “Places to Pet Fuzzy Animals.” These 100 “places” are really all-encompassing, and Griest manages to take us on an imaginative journey around the world, packing all her feminine know-how into each description.

I did find, occasionally, that there were some places missing from some of the identified places in her list. For instance, I was baffled as to why two Russian writers were on Griest’s list of “Famous Women Writers and Their Creative Nooks,” but Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen were absent. I was additionally confused that cooking classes in India and Thailand were not on the list of “Culinary Class Destinations.”

Griest’s opinions of places are somewhat biased, too. While she does a fairly good job covering the globe, a single locale in French Polynesia or the South Pacific is missing, and some places like Oaxaca, Angkor Wat, and New York are mentioned several times. Her college town of Austin landed on the list, but places like Budapest and Cairo are never acknowledged.

With every list, however, there is bound to be some bias and some personal flair and choice involved, and Griest’s original and creative sensibilities are still well-worth reading about. The great thing about this book is that you can flip to a place description, be perfectly entertained and inspired, and then tuck the book away until the next time you feel compelled to read about the places you can go. Or, you can read it in one sitting like I did and be completely blown away by the amazing places in this one world that it’s hard to imagine why we live in one city for so long and not just pack our bags and get out there and see some if not all of it.

Click here to read my review of Griest’s first travel book, “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana.” My review of Griest’s third travel book, “Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines” is forthcoming, along with my interview with the author in early January. Feel free to jot me an email (Brenda DOT Yun AT weblogsinc DOT com) if you have a question for Stephanie.

Click the images to learn about the most unusual museums in the world — featuring everything from funeral customs, to penises, to velvet paintings, to stripping.


Borobudur in Indonesia–a memory maker and other people’s photographs

by Jamie Rhein on

This essay by Lisa Reed in the New York Times about her return to Borobudur with her nine-year old son reminded me of a couple of points. Mainly, I am reminded about how utterly spectacular this Buddhist temple complex is, and how fortunate I was to have lived in Singapore for three years so that places like this in Indonesia could be seen on a long weekend trip. I’m also reminded of picture-taking.

When I went to Borabudur, Yogyakarta, the city closest to it, was also part of the attraction. Friends recommended this city on the island of Java in Indonesia as a worthy jaunt for the history, the scenery, the food and the shopping. On all counts, my husband and I were pleased with our good fortune. I have great memories of buying an elaborate leather shadow puppet from the man who made it after visiting with him in his shop.

Borabudur was the centerpiece of a wonderful time and we were lucky enough to climb up its stairs early in the morning before the crowds came. We did not, however, get up before dawn to see the sun rise like Reed did.

However, like Reed, we did have the experience of people in Indonesia wanting us to be in their photographs. In Reed’s case, her son attracted attention. In our case, it was my husband.

In Asia he often looked like a toned down Gulliver in the land of Lilliputians, thus, he was the topic of many a conversation and a prized catch for a photo op. Maybe people thought he would bring them good luck, but whatever the reason, there he was on most vacation days in the middle of a group of Asians, smiling broadly, while they captured their image with him for their photo albums back home.

Borabudur, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, was built in the 8th and 9th centuries and is one of those places that is perfect for picture-taking with or without people. With its 72 rounded stone stupas and Buddha statues that mediate like calm sentries overlooking the valley that is edged by mountains, there is no end of an interesting angle.

Unfortunately, when I went to Borabudur, I was taking slides which are now stored in a box in one of our closets. One day I will go through them, but by reading Reed’s essay, I can see their angles. I seem to remember one with my husband in the middle of a group of Asians.

I’m wondering if the same people are looking at their albums from time to time asking themselves, “Who is this guy?”

Going to see Obama? No photos, please

by Tom Johansmeyer on

You just can’t wait for the inauguration to happen. You need your dose of hope, change and belief now. So, you get on a plane for Chicago and navigate your way to Hyde Park. According to the NY Times, you won’t be able to take any pictures of our next president’s Greenwood Avenue home. Fortunately, there’s a bit more to do in Chicago than try to catch a glimpse of the man who will be our 44th president. Skip his place and check out the Robie House, for which Frank Lloyd Wright is responsible. Trek around 10 blocks north, and you can visit another home … belonging to Louis Farrakhan.

While in town, you can live like a future president, spending $21 on a haircut at Hyde Park Hair Salon and picking up breakfast at the Valois Cafeteria (get the scrambled eggs, hash browns and sausage and be just like the future #44!). In fact, drop in on any of these spots starting in February, and you can do what the president can’t: get what you want without crowds creating a scene.

[Via NY Times]