Andrea: Hard. Germans, in my encounter, are not overly friendly towards strangers. You're isolated by not knowing the language. Finding groups of other moms was fairly hard. There are certain companies that make this easier by having built in networks. Ford is an excellent example of helping expats adjust. We called them he Ford Nazi's though. They stuck to their own kind. Andrea: We have always been interested in Chinese culture and usually (at least at that time) China had the best program for cost, ease and was safe as far as knowing it was legit. I was only 28 though and China requires you to be 30. So we switched to Taiwan where you only had to be 25. Now the rules are different so China's regulations have changed and there is a 4 year waiting line. Andrea: When my son was born I presented with a condition called placenta acreta, which you don't really want me to describe. Basically it meant if I didn't have an emergency hysterectomy I would bleed to death. It took another 2 years to really decide to adopt and then 2 more to actually make it happen to filing paperwork. Another 15 months before we actually had our daughter. Interesting aside: after we finished, she mentioned that she studied architecture, so I asked her if she'd read The Fountainhead (another work by Ayn Rand). She hadn't, and I strongly urged her to read it (that book changed my life). The next night she emailed me to say that she'd taken it out of the library, had read some and loved it so much she ordered her own copy online so she could read it over and over. The lesson, of course, is that SciFi Dad is always right. Andrea: Hard. Germans, in my encounter, are not overly friendly towards strangers. You're isolated by not knowing the language. Finding groups of other moms was fairly hard. There are certain companies that make this easier by having built in networks. Ford is an excellent example of helping expats adjust. We called them he Ford Nazi's though....
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