Sinsull, a friend of mine is adopted, and he's Guatamalan/ Pakastani/Irish. People give up. He's one of three adopted children, I never knew until I visited his home and met his parents. It was fine - I looked at his sisters, and thought "Three very different children, parents that look nothing like them but obviously love them. He was adopted." A similar thing happened when I (on one of my many 'the world is too small!' discoveries) asked a woman in the Orkneys if she knew the family of a girl I went to high school with - they had a house there. I described the girl, as I had never met the rest of her family, as having African hair but fairly light skin. I'd always figured one of her parents, but not both, were black. The woman said she knew exactly where they lived, and that Amal was adopted. What a surprise!

On a completely different note, Robert Klose's series of articles in the Christian Science Monitor's Home Forum pages are an ongoing and very interesting commentary on the adoption process acceptance, etc... He adopted his son from Russia when Alyosha was still old enough to remember, and writes about the experience, and his son growing up.

-J