Finding LanHua: January 2011

Much time has passed since our last blog. A detailed description of the activities, challenges and progress in the 4th quarter of 2010 would simply require too many words and individual posts. So, I’ve summarized the events of the past 3 months and supplemented my brief description with photos. We’ll try harder to keep-up in the New Year.

Foster Family: We continue to keep in regular touch with Lanhua’s foster family in Guangzhou via email. We’ve exchanged photos, stories and advice (them to us). In the New Year, we hope to communicate with them using Skype (thanks to Tandora). This relationship represents a turning point in Lanhua’s journey that I quite frankly can’t describe other than saying "it’s huge.”
English: Lan’s comprehension has reached the point where she understands most of what is being said in just about every environment. Her speech is advancing at a slower pace, but she’s a determined kid and gets her point across one way or another. She’s more comfortable interacting with new people and is slowly but surely learning to extend herself with common courtesies such as “thank you” and “good-bye.” (This has been a significant challenge for her.) Around friends and family, she's quite the chatterbox.
School: Lanhua is thriving at her new school. She loves her teacher and is doing very well in the Montessori learning environment. She’s made friends with the kids in her class and from what her teacher tells us, she’s quite social and eager to participate in just about everything. Right before the winter break, she even participated in a violin recital with her music class.
As I’ve written before, there are no words to describe our experience this past year. Incredible, remarkable, amazing, joyous, challenging, scary, crazy and unbelievably rewarding come to mind. We are the luckiest family on the planet. Happy New Year!