The Sky is Falling!

The most active of the waiting parent discussion group is DTCApril2005. 450 families spread across the US all knowing that they've got next.

The funny thing about these rumors is - where do they come from? CCAA the central adoption beuracracy in Beijing doesn't release very much information outside of sending out packages of referrals every 4-6 weeks. And they certainly don't take calls from any prospective parents. They do have an English language website, but the download speed is vaguely AOL-like. And the translation? Well let's just say some honor roll student enrolled in English III at Fuling High probably got partial credit.

It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what happens when you have 450 neurotice parents, 24x7 near real-time web access and an almost complete lack of information. Rumors fly fast and furious.

• "JeanOK" in Oklahoma City warned us against attending the daily bird show at the White Swan Hotel as tourists were dying in droves after being attached by the parrot that does the bike on the tightrope routine.
• "katieandmaggiesmom" reports a new quota on adoptions being put in place immediately - a quota so stringent that they are recalling the last batch of babies sent to the States.
• And "sewingjen" checks in every 45 minutes to see if anyone has gotten a referral yet. Sewing Jen only sent her documents to China last week so I am not really sure what she is doing on the APRIL group, but maybe she has connections.

Sewing is clearly the compulsize nervous engergy activity I should have taken up instead of scanning these boards. To give you a sense of the insanity and scope...since the beginning of November the clearly under-occupied members of AprilDTC2005 have managed to post 662 messages in under 45 hours and over 1500 messages in the past 7 days.

Skimming a little bit longer it becomes readily apparent that the best and juicist source of information for the parents of tomorrow comes from Spain. Of course. This should have been obvious. The longstanding partnership beween Madrid and Beijing entitles them to batphone caliber updates direct from the matching room. (Do you think there are even direct flights between Spain and China).

The best way to summarize the situation is "lost in translation". Whatever false conculsions neurotic parents can derive from snippets of 3rd hand information in their native language pale in comparison to those same conculsions translated into a different language. Whatever the rumors start out to be by the time some i-went-to-alcapulco-on-my honeymoon waiting parent in a flyover state translate them into English the results are so mangled it's surprising World War III hasn't started as a result. The outcome is no better when a Spaniard tries to flaunt their Berlitz for Business english skills in order to repost the rumor on the english boards. Their intentions may be good, but here is a sampling (honestly, i cut and pasted this directly)

"
2 of November 2005
As a result of the hard received critics the month last through the publication of the news that ibamos receiving on the allocations, the people in charge of the information that is published in this page have decided not to publish no information that is not the unique one that can be certain, is to say the arrival of the allocations to the families. This decision is not definitive, but the intolerancia and lack of understanding demonstrated by numerous people the last month pushes us this position who, we repeated, does not like, nor we wished is lasting. The Chinese Center of Adoptions makes every month its work according to the necessities and contingencies of the moment and their same forecasts can be seen altered for many reasons. There are some people, too many, that are not arranged to accept the reality of this situation and instead of using a very simple system, is to say not to read the information of a source that considers trustworthy little make us arrive all type from disqualifications and insults. The attitude of these people causes negative consequences for all. Our sources of intelligence consider intolerable to receive in exchange for a collaborating attitude the insults that have been received, reason why this month we will not receive more data of which we have indicated in the beginning."

I really hope this is NOT how the UN works.

It should suffice to say that after three days of skimming these boards looking for even a tidbit of early news indicating that "we've got next" I am done. My mom reminded me the other day that I do know where Anna is. She's connected to the end of my red thread. The same place's she's been all along. So I'll just turn off the newsgroups and continue to be patient until my phone rings.


-- Anna's mom