It was a wonderful class and the time really went by fast. I wondered before we attended whether or not the 3 hours would be long and drawn out. It was not! Time went by really fast and the introductions and sharing was wonderful. Even our SW commenting on liking the dynamics of the class and our personalities. They commented on how we will connect and some of us will need to stay connected so that we can use one another for respite services if we need to.
I was not for sure how large or small the group would be since we were told before that they did not offer the classes monthly because they did not have enough adoptive parents to hold it monthly. Which seemed a little odd to me consider this a major metropolitan city.
However, we have 9 different families in our group and its a pretty large group. Our common denominator for the group was God and we all were very much active and involved with our churches, our faith, and the majority of us have dogs that we adore!
How did this come up? They had us to do an activity where we had to draw our family maps and draw out what was important to us and things we were willing to give up and not, kind of. It basically spelled out who was in our family, who we spent our time with and where we spent our time and the things things that were important to us such as our hobbies. I will take a picture of ours and post it when we get it back. We weren't artistic or anything with this activity because we had a minimal amount of time to draw it with the markers.
However, we had to go up and present our maps to the group and thats how we found out who one another were, shared common interests and personal information that we wanted to share on the map.
The majority of our group are all working professionals in different areas of professions and I would say the age ranges were closer as well with a one or two a little older. Great mix of professionals from divinity, medical, education, corporate, music industry/entertainment and much more. Higher education and volunteering was also a common denominator for this group and way of life from how it come up during the presentations. Everyone was down to earth and very jovial.
It was a very neat activity and we do have a very interesting group that hopefully I will be able to share a little bit later when we are finished.
All of us were interested in adoption and we pretty much all had similar concerns with adoption and risks for the placements in our homes if we chose to go that route instead of just adoption parents, for the ones who were not adopting family members. We also did a role playing activity as well which was hilarious!
The group immediately clicked and we definitely do not have a dry group at all! We voted on completing the class on next week versus making that Saturday our last day. My SW and another SW held the class and their supervisor also stayed for about 2 hours.
They asked the class to figure out how to bring dinner/snacks for one another so that we could eat since many were coming straight from work and it makes for a long evening with no food. We passed around a sign up sheet and it was done within minutes.
I volunteered to go ahead and bring a party platter from Subway with sandwiches since I am home/off this week and it is easy for me to order a tray and bring in a few items to set the table up. We will alternate next week with bringing in different dishes/drinks/foods etc. I wanted to get the big item out of the way first since I am not really busy this week. Someone else will be bringing in the larger food items next week and we will probably bring in a dessert one day and veggie/fruit tray another day.
I will try to take pictures of our food table when we have our second class on tomorrow. I forgot to take my camera yesterday to journal our class.
After my husband and I presented and sat down, the other SW came over to us during the break and we started talking. Long story short, she grew up in NYC near my husband and they know a lot of the same people and she went to college with my older brother in law. She remembered my brother in law, but he did not remember her after my husband texted him and gave the name. He may need to see a picture. He was an athlete as well, so go figure.
Long story short, her ex husband and my husband grew up in the same neighborhood, played sports together and went to one college together. She said she thought that she recognized his face but couldn't put it together. So, she sent a message to her ex husband to let him know that she met one of his old friends. She has only been living in our city for a year. Small world!
I am looking forward to our next class and being with our newly prospective adoptive friends and going through the next module!
I will update later...
2 comments:
Sounds like a great class!!! So glad they won't be boring!!
Thanks Kelly!
No, our group is not boring at all and we really went through the 3 hours quickly. I thought that I was going to start losing interest before we attended, however, we were all very engaged and before we knew it, it was past time to go! It was fun to make new friends who also have the same desire to adopt and have similar fears.
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