A New Trophy

Charlie competed in the local (state) karate tournament Saturday. Big surprise--he took home the third-place trophy in kata (forms). They don't give out beyond third place these days, but he placed fourth in jujitsu. He was eliminated in the first round on fighting, but this is still a very new part of martial arts for him--he just put on gloves for the first time last Wednesday.

He was quite happy to be going home with a trophy for his forms, so we went out to dinner to celebrate.

Now he starts getting ready for the Eastern Regional Karate Championships at the end of April. That will be competing against other martial artists all over the East Coast. Keep your fingers crossed and wish him luck!

Green With Envy

As you can see from the picture, Charlie got his green belt.

They had me worried there for a little while. They always call up the kids in a group by the color of the belt they get promoted to, and then announce what color belt they got, and they go in order of the rank, so everyone knows what color is coming next. After they called all the yellow belts, red would be next, and indeed the teachers at the end of the hand-shaking line laid out a bunch of red belts as the kids' names were being called. Charlie's name was called.

He had had a nice, strong performance, no flubs of any kind, so I was certain he would get green, and when his name was called with this group, what ran through my mind was, "Hey, what did he do wrong???" Then, after they called out the last kid's name, they promoted them all to green. There were no red belts this time! So the teachers on the end who were responsible for actually handing out the belts had to scramble very quickly and get out a bunch of the green belts and size them to the kids coming through the line.

He's done a great job so far, but he is about to start the part of karate where you have to start taking people down to the mat and throwing them around. That requires slowing down and doing things very deliberately so you don't hurt anyone. I'm a little worried about this part, since Charlie likes to listen just long enough to think he understands, and then charge in.

Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), I have decided to get involved again. Yup, I put on my gi and a brown belt for the first time in several years last week and joined the party. So I will now have the authority to slow him down if I can tell he wasn't really paying attention. Sure, I have that authority as his mother, but somehow there's just an ounce more respect there when you wear a brown belt with a black stripe on it and they know you're only one step removed from being a black belt. (Although, to be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no intention of going for the black, I'm what's known as a "career brown belt," in it just for the exercise and to help teach.)

Yeah, maybe it's Polyanna-ish to think they respect the belt, but hey, it worked with the other one--Rick is STILL a little bit afraid of me, even though he's bigger than I am. Either that, or he's being nice and letting me pretend I'm tougher than he is, since he stopped at blue.

So, how humiliating is it that I ended up with a three-day concussion my first night back? Let the bruises begin...

Black Water and Static

Well, we're finding a few more things that Charlie will eat. Just not at school. He's not real happy about school lunches. (Then again, if I remember correctly, I never raved about school lunch, either!) I keep a well-stocked fruit bowl and individual-sized cans of tuna at home so he can have a snack when he gets home if he didn't eat lunch. He's happy.

I'm cooking Chinese dinners about half the time, and the rest of the time I cook other stuff just to see what he'll end up liking. He tries pretty much anything. Doesn't necessarily eat it after trying it, but at least he tries.

Ever seen anyone put a spoonful of peanut butter in his mouth and then try and get every last smidgen back out while gagging over the trash can?

We went shopping together at the local Asian market one night a couple of weeks ago, and got a ton of stuff he liked. The first night I made stir-fry, he was bossing me around the kitchen like he knows how to cook it. I had bought oyster sauce and hoisin sauce for the spices. He couldn't read the label but smelled it. Then he shook his head no, and said what we needed was black water.

Huh????

Black water. He then proceeded to go through my kitchen, opening every liquid bottle in the cabinets looking for black water. He finally found what he wanted.

It was a bottle of Gravy Master.

No, no, no....I'm puttin' my foot down here. No Gravy Master in the stir-fry. He was quite insistent that this is what they used in China. I flat-out refused and sent him out of the kitchen. I finished the stir-fry with the oyster sauce and hoisin sauce, and doggoned if he didn't love it and eat 2 heaping plates of it.

I have since realized that black water is probably soy sauce. That I could have dealt with. But not Gravy Master.

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Last night we were playing Monopoly (Rick, Charlie, 'n' me). Charlie LOVES Monopoly. And he only got burned in a trade once. Rick got one of the cheap-o properties from him in exchange for two very nice, expensive properties, and then proceeded to put hotels on the cheap-o place. You should have seen Charlie's face when he landed on something that previously had cost him only $4 in rent, and found he had to pay something like $450. That has never happened again.

But I digress. We were playing Monopoly, and Charlie suddenly gets this idea. He picks up a metal ruler that was laying on the table near him, and he starts rubbing it through his hair vigorously.

What on earth are you doing, child?

Need paper.

So I handed him a piece of paper from his homework we had been working on earlier.

No, paper to tear up.

He jumps up and heads out of the room, comes back with a blank piece of paper, and promptly tears it into little shreds.

Then he picks up the ruler and starts rubbing it in his hair again.

???? Rick and I are giving each other rather puzzled glances.

Then Charlie takes the ruler and holds it over top of the paper shreds.

Okay, we get it now. He is obviously trying to use static electricity to get the paper to "jump" up to the ruler.

The problem is, this ruler had a strip of cork along the back of it. No static charge.

Charlie gets closer and closer to the paper, and just doesn't understand why the paper won't behave for him. He finally gives it an irritated look, smacks the pile of paper with the ruler, and little shreds of paper go flying all over the place. Then he looks at us with frustration and says, "But it worked in China."

Long, pregnant pause before Rick and I simply fell out laughing.

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By the way, for those of you who are Sherpa fans, I have an update. Remember back when I blogged about our trip to the orphanage, and there was a young deaf boy there who made eye contact with Jen and wouldn't let go? He wrapped his little fist right around that huge heart of hers, and hasn't let go of that, either. His other little fist reached across the ocean and grabbed her husband's heart and held on tight there, too.

It is now official. Jen and her husband are in the paperchase, and we are hoping their new son (who shall be called Eli) will come home around end of summer. Since we now have the e-mail address and are in regular contact with the directress of the orphanage, she already knows about it and has already informed the child, and she says he is very happy about it.

Praise God--another deaf child that China considers "unadoptable" has found a family full of loving arms and hearts. And he was never even on the registry! Is this a fairy-tale ending, or what?

Congratulations, Eli. And congratulations Jen and Joel.

Brace Yourself

Well, the braces are on. Charlie was really good about the whole thing, paid attention to all the instructions, and actually seems to be following them. He was sore the first few days, but that passed quickly and he was soon back to his usual happy self.

Happy Beginnings (AKA Emptying out the Orphanage)

Just wanted to give everyone an update on some of the characters mentioned in the earlier part of my blog, because we are doing a good job of getting the orphanage emptied out.

If you remember from our trip to the orphanage when Charlie went to say good-bye and pass out presents, we met a boy with albinism who really touched us because his adoption had disrupted the week before we got there to get Charlie. It was so distressing to know that he would probably never get another chance at adoption, since they were unlikely to re-list him after a "failure" like that. (Like it's the kid's fault, right???) Amazingly, a conversation thread started about him on the Yahoo group set up for parents from that orphanage. They were following my journey on the blog and were outraged at his circumstance. Then one of the members said she thought a friend of hers was paperchasing him and she'd invite her to join the group. His name is now Brian. His family loves him to death, and I recently saw him singing "Baa-Baa Black Sheep." He looks very cool in his sunglasses (which he needs to protect his eyes, since his albinism affects how he tolerates light).

The little boy that we got measurements for and pictures of because his adoptive parents already had their referral and wanted to know if we saw him? His name is now Emmett, and he came home a few months after Charlie. He has an interesting story, because his parents originally adopted a girl from that orphanage, and when they went to get her, they saw what close friends she was with this boy. They ended up going back for him so that her best friend could be her brother. You should see their pictures of the two of them together as sibs--they're adorable and so obviously happy to be together again.

Another couple from Canada contacted me for the orphanage director's address shortly after Charlie and I got back. The orphanage director sent me some photos of the child they were adopting to pass on, and Charlie knew the child in those photos, so he was happy to see that this child was also being adopted. Their son's name is now Aidan, and they got back in the late summer/early fall timeframe.

And last but certainly not least....Does everyone remember Jen, my sherpa, and the child she "accidentally" (yeah, right!) made eye contact with while we were in Charlie's classroom? They were a love story waiting to happen. Jen and her husband went through a long period of prayer and contemplation, and then started learning ASL and filling out the paperwork to bring him into their family. God knew exactly what they needed when they needed it, because a part-time job turned up for her husband just at the point where it looked like they would have to send Jen over alone for the adoption. Thankfully, they were able to both go. They got home four months ago, and their new son Eli has settled in beautifully as a member of their family and is much loved by his brother and sisters. He is attending their local deaf school and signing up a storm. (Unlike Charlie, the orphanage had not sent him to the deaf school in China, so he did not know Chinese sign language and grew up without any real language to speak of, making his wants and needs known with gestures.) I am so thrilled that Eli has a home with loving arms and signing hands.

According to Charlie, there was only one other deaf child at the orphanage besides him and Eli, a girl much younger that he didn't know very much about. I don't have any info on her, but I could certainly e-mail the orphanage director to find out if she is still there, if someone is interested in starting a paperchase!

There have been other people join our orphanage's Yahoo group once they get their referrals for children from this orphanage and discover this group exists, and we've seen three newbies over the past two weeks, so the orphanage is still getting kids out there. Unfortunately, I suspect they take in new children just as fast, since the one-child-rule politics in China that cause this situation still haven't changed. But we'll keep growing our group to support each other and cheer on those who are bringing their children home.

Pow

Next belt test: Green belt, March 12!
Stay tuned....

Money Matters

Last weekend, Charlie and I are sitting at the dining room table, just chatting, and he happened to mention that he had some checks he needed to deposit. He has been tutoring someone in ASL off and on via videophone, and after every few sessions, he gets a check to cover a few sessions at a time. We had opened a savings account for him back in September with his first couple of checks. Now he's ready to deposit more.

I decided the time was ripe for a teaching moment. I had him get his quarterly statement, which had just recently come in. He brought it over to me, and I showed him the money we had initially deposited. Yup, he remembers that okay. There's $38 in there.

Then I showed him the entries for the next 3 months that each had 6 cents. He gets a perplexed look on his face and signs, "But I didn't put that in there!"

So I explained how interest works.

He gets a wise, understanding look on his face and says, "So I guess I should put that other $200 in there, huh?"

Now you must understand that we recently had a very serious misunderstanding, and I am no longer willing to trust that I have completely understood him perfectly. I'm quite willing to believe I did not really see him say $200. So I said, "You mean $20, right?"

"No, $200."

"You do not have $200."

"Yes, I do."

"Where?"

"Up in my room."

"Nuh-uh.....Show me!"

Off he goes to his room. He's up there a few minutes, and then he comes back with this HUGE wad of cash. It's about 3 inches thick. Mostly fives and ones.

Now, I knew the kids work for an hour each day at school. Some help out in the office, some work at cleaning, and Charlie works in the cafeteria during the little kids' lunch. For this, they get paid. I thought it was $5 per month. Occasionally I will see a candy wrapper in the kitchen trash can of a type of candy that I have never bought before, so I figured Charlie uses his $5 per month to get himself a special treat. And that's fine.

But no, it turns out they get paid WEEKLY, not monthly. And Mr. Charlie will occasionally buy himself a treat, but for the most part, he brings the money home and stuffs it in a drawer in his desk.

By the time we finished counting all the cash and the $15 in checks, the kid had $250 sitting there.

I told him it can't gain interest sitting in the desk drawer. And if someone steals it, it's gone. Safer in the bank. His answer? "Well, I didn't KNOW I should put it in the bank."

Yeah, well, I didn't know you had anything WORTH putting in the bank!

Next field trip: Drive-through teller, learn how to make a deposit and read the receipt.

I think he has more money in the bank than I do now.