jennifer patel

Sorry in advanced...there is a lot of linking in this post instead of a lot of pictures... Are you familiar with music by Jim Brickman ? (If you know me well...you are!) Sometime during the middle school years, my family was packed in the Previa (it actually looked exactly like this )  and this very catchy piano song was aired on 103.7 light FM.  I thought it was beautiful and that night, they didn't announce who played it or what it was called (Shazam, where have you been all my life?!).  In fact, I was listening for it for awhile before I finally caught the information.  It was called If You Believe and I can say, by that point, I really, really did.  I played around on the piano until I could play the simple tune (thanks family for dealing with that one...it was like that scene in Role Models where that character is trying to play the guitar and keeps stopping and restarting...) I now own several Jim Brickman CDs that I occasionally torture various ...

very out of focus.  I cannot shoot moving objects.   After the plant explosion in West, we went the next weekend to visit Rosalie in Hillsboro and take her some goodies. We were joined by one of Rosalie's former nurses from the West nursing home, Joanna, and her two-year-old son, CJ. So basically we fit 5 adults and 2 kids in a tiny room.  I'm forgetting her name but we had to apologize profusely to her roommate for the momentary chaos. (She could not hear anyway...) Even though Rosalie and her roommate were 90+ and the boys 2+, there were many similarities between all of them: 1. They all require a lot of supervision during meal times.  Rosalie has complained about how terrible the food is at her current residence.  She has had several discussions with the staff on how they can improve.  She says, "Because I am the queen, they do what I say."  While it is true Rosalie is the current reigning queen of West (Queen of Westfest) I...

After the disenchantment of learning I was quite physically different from my family (and everyone else I knew), if you would have asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said, "white."  Secretly that is.  I told people "Ornithologist" mostly because I could say it and knew what it was from a report I did for school.  (The study of birds). Judging now from the books I've read about adoption, I fell into the category of children who want to reject their culture and fully assimilate to their family.  I was textbook, actually. My parents took me to a few Korean heritage events when we lived in Bartlesville (yes, Oklahoma...) but I really did not enjoy going.  I really didn't care to learn anything about where I came from.  I mostly hung out with my Dad the whole time instead of meeting the other adoptees. Bless him; he tried so hard to help me make friends and would sit by me during all the activities just so I'd sit there and try.  ...