UCL Parent & Family Day

Register for this event on Eventbrite

HOW TO BOOK   (Please note booking closes at midnight on Sunday 8th March)
Please choose the number of adults attending the event and then click on the "Order Now&quotrunning through corn mazes lost and scared on halloween; button above to register for the UCL Parent & Family Day (Due to popular demand we can only offer TWO tickets per family - plus your student studying at UCL).
Please choose which Provost's Welcome and which lectures you would like to attend.  We will send your tickets and further information approximately 2 weeks before the event.
We look forward to welcoming you to UCL on Saturday 14 March 2009.
WHAT'S ON OFFER
0930             Registration opens
1030-1130     Provost’s Welcome (morning session)  
1200-1300     Taster lectures (morning session)                    Lecture 1 - Advice giving in the media – is there a place in the 21st                      Century for the Agony Aunt?  Dr Petra Boynton, Dept of Primary Care                     and Popular Science (Consultant to the Dept. of Health and featured on                    Radio 5 Live, Men’s Health, Grazia Magazine)                     Lecture 2 - The London Project to Cure Blindness: Stemming visual loss                     with stem cells.  Prof Pete Coffey, Director to the London Project to Cure                     Blindness and Institute of Ophthalmology                    Lecture 3 - Victorian illustrated magazines and the limits of Art History.                    Dr Tom Gretton, UCL History of Art.                                        Lecture 4 - Seven years to save the planet.  Prof Bill McGuire, UCL Dept                     of Earth Sciences                                        Careers lecture - Demystifying the graduate labour market.  UCL                     Careers Service                    History of UCL lecture - Prof John North (Dept of History)1200-1500     Student Showcase - a selection of entertainment from our Student                     Union societies   
1430-1530     Provost’s Welcome (afternoon session)
1600-1700     Taster lectures (afternoon session - as above)
ALSO ON OFFER ALL DAY
Self-guided tours - Petrie Museum (Egyptian Archaeology), Grant Museum (zoology), Strang Print Room (Arts Collections)Guided Library tours - Main Library (Arts and Humanities and Flaxman Gallery), Cruciform Library (Medical library), Science LibraryFree Tea & CoffeeFaculty FairStudent Advice CentreCareers Advice                        UCL Cafés - Bloomsbury Theatre Café, Print Room Café , Engineering Building Café, Cruciform Building Café

Please note: getting married on halloween and to annual north halsted halloween parade in chicagobe another corpse coupleIn the instance of your first choices not being available, we will contact you to offer an alternative.
 




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When: Mar 14, 2009 9:30:00 AM to Mar 14, 2009 5:30:00 PM
Where: UCL
Cost:


TICKET TYPE: Parent/Guardian
PRICE: £ 10.50







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Helping others help themselves

My Uncle Chuck has spent most of his life so far working for the steel companies in Detroit. When they started to fall on hard times 5 or so years ago, hechose to retire and begin working for PIME Missionary in Detroit. He has gone to India a couple of times, visiting the poor the tradition of wearing costumes on halloweenand the sick through mission activities.He has also helped to set up the Mission Store. Following is an article he wrote to help share the story of the Mission Store and the people behrunning through corn mazes lost and scared on halloweenind it.
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The Mission Store continues to explore opportunities for our sponsors to help the people help themselves. Fr. Franco Cagnasso tells us of an ambitious group of young ladies from one of our missions in Bangladesh who have handcrafted some of the beautiful jewelry that has been marketed and sold through the Mission Store.


And the leader of this enterprise? Martha...a young woman of about 30 with two beautiful children - an 8 year old girl and 5 year old boy. And a cruel drunkard husband who is in jail.

Fr. Franco shares this story about Martha...

Some time back, Martha appeared at one of the PIME houses in Dhaka. Weak and pale with a high fever, and bleeding from a kidney operation that she had the previous day. The Sisters of Mother Teresa were contacted to address her needs. Having received the care that she needed, she left the Sisters only to return a few weeks later to say "thank you" and to offer some of her handicrafts in gratitude.

Born in the south of Bangladesh to a poor landless family, she came to Dhaka as a child with her parents and three sisters looking for a better life. Her father used to pull a rickshaw, work that killed him in a few years. Her mother collected wastepaper from door to door in an effort to make some kind of living, and the children helped by rummaging here and there along the streets. Martha and her sisters were fortunate to have learned a little bit of reading and writing that would help them along the way.

When her mother died, Martha took the lead, struggling like a tiger for her life and for her sisters, by doing any kind of work. One such job included housekeeping for a British family, where she picked up sufficient English to make herself understood. She read old fashion magazines, providing her with design ideas for handicrafts.

Martha lives with her two children, her younger sister Purnima (meaning 'full moon') and a colorful little group of girls whom she accepts in her small house when they get into trouble for any reason. She teaches them how to use a sewing machine, how to create Christmas decorations, to clean a modern house, to make rosaries and necklaces, and to print cloth for saris.

"With me," she says, "they often starve, but we starve together. I do not exploit them. They learn how to make a living...and they fegetting married on halloween and to be another corpse coupleel accepted."

Martha has a strong. simple faith. "I am a sinner," she says. "I tell lies... But only to survive."

She says that Pope John Paul II smiled at her in a dream. She keeps a photo of him in her house and feels protected by his prayer.

Martha and the girls continue their struggle. They put on the only sari they have or their best "punjabi" and go to sell their products in the rich areas of town, knocking at the doors of clubs, schools, fairs and exhibitions, convents and parishes. They keep cleaning houses, washing clothes, and occasionally being babysitters and cooks. From time to time, Martha is called to teach school children how to decorate their classroom or to prepare gifts for their parents. They starve when there is no money; they feast when they earn some.

PIME World magazine has supported the efforts of these ladies by offering some of their handicrafts in the October 2006 issue and again in this issue. Life is still difficult, but Martha and the girls are more confident and they boast: "We sell our jewels even in America!"

Help us help these hard working ladies help themselves through your support.
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You can help Martha and other women like her by purchasing handcrafted, fair-trade gifts through the PIME Mission Store Online. They have a nice selection of handmade jewelry, as well as handpainted Christmas cards. All of the proceeds benefit the crafters and PIME Missionaries.

Reversing the gaze

Despite the stacks of "regular" books on my nightstand, it is rare that I make time to read a book that is not a required text for one of my courses. I made an exception, however, with Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption and the Negotiation of Family Difference by Heather Jacobson.

I was contacted by the publisher and asked if I would read and review the book. I'm so glad I made the time. In light of a lot of the discussions I've been part of (as subject, link, or participant) lately in the blog-o'sphere, especially with the young teen starlet who likes to make "goofy faces," this book is all the more relevant in the whole context of international and transracial adoption discourse.

Although I'm not personally mentioned (she mentions adult adoptee blogs and forums), Jacobson does mention the huge influence that adult Korean adoptees have made on the way in which adoption agencies now think of "culture keeping" and the encouragement they give adoptive parents to engage in incorporating their internationally adopted child's ethnic culture into the family. Jacobson writes,

"These cautionary tales from the past have had a profound effect on how the adoption community (and industry) approaches the ethnic socialization of internationally adopted children. Contemporary adoption practices, policy, and international adoption discourse now emphasize the importance of culture keeping."

I thought it was homemade cow halloween costumesinteresting that in this study Jacobson compares the culture-keeping of White adoptive parents who adopt from Russia with those who adopted children from China. The practices and extent of culture keeping vary quite a lot between these two families. A big part of why this is has to do with race; the visible differences for the Chinese adoptive families compared to the Russian adoptive families, who can choose whether or not to disclose the adoption, means that for the Russian adoptive families the lack of racial differences (although the cultural differences are huge) could be a reason to not engage in culture keeping.

I liked that Jacobson ties in the responsibilites of culture keeping as an expectation placed on the mother, and that definitely is what I've seen in my own practice experiences. Whether it is in the contexts of adoption or in parenting in general, there exists a noticeable silence about fatherhood and fathering. Jacobson writes that she did not specify in her call for participants that she was looking only for mothers and in fact, shares that often times adoptive fathers who were contacted "handed over" the project to their wives almost as if there was an acknowledgment that it was their wive's job to do the culture keeping (Jacobson's sample had 46 participants - six were fathers. Single parents and GLBT parents were also in her sample).

One of the findings from this study (and although it is no real surprise to me, it is still somewhat shocking) is how much the adoptive parents of Chinese children did not consider having a racially and ethnically Asian child to be problematic in the same ways as if they had adopted a Black or African child.  Those who chose not to adopt a Black child often did so because of racist family members who would not accept a Black child but didn't object to an Asian child; often the "model minority" stereotype was a factor, and some seemed to encourage that stereotype. To me, this reinforced the perception that there is little or no racism towards Asians, which is false. This is also worrisome to me because it seems to suggest that adoptive parents actively encourage stereotyping and promotes a racial hierarchy.

I was also interested to read Jacobson's critique that although parents of Chinese children often participated in culture and language schools and camps, FCC, and participated in what I call the "tourist" version of cultures (that which can be purchased), that

"the China-adoptive mothers I interviewed did not look to Chinese or Asian American mothers as role models for how to raise their children, nor did they see themselves as connected to earlier international-adoptive mothers (with children from Korea, for example) or interracial (biological) families. Rather, they...considered themselves "pioneers" when it came to raising their daughters."

Jacobson also finds in her study is that despite the heartfelt attempts to recognize the importance of keeping their child connected in some way to their ethnic cultures, many of these adoptive parents struggled with how much and in what ways to do so. Some, it seems, felt pressured by other FCC families they know who seemed to be doing "more" in terms of culture keeping. However, as Jacobson recognizes, these attempts towards "authentic" Chinese culture that many of the adoptive parents wanted reflected only a certain kind of "Chinese" culture - that is China as in the country of China (far away) or Chinese immigrant communities. Jacobson found that China-adoptive parents determined that Chinese immigrants practiced a "more genuine Chinese culture" and not a "watered-down version of Chinese-ness" and furthermore, these adoptive parents were disinterested in current modern, Chinese American history or politics.

Overall, I thought this book was definitely thought-provoking and highly recommend it. One thing I was thinking about as I read this, was the idea of "reversing the gaze."* Reversing the gaze here in this context is about how the adoptive parents construct ideas and activities around culture and race rather than looking at how the adopted children construct their identiies in terms of culture and race. Frankly, I'm getting kind of tired reading about how we adoptees are doing; I'm interested in how adoptive parents are doing too.

*thanks to Indi for the information on "reversing the gaze."

* ETA 3/2 - Although this book10 halloween costumes in 2008 is based on a research study, I wantchoose halloween mask to make the perfect halloween costumeed to let people know it's a very accessible and easy to read book!

Kacy’s 11th Birthday… one month ago!

Yes, yes. I am a horrible blogger. Honestly, I think about blogging often… but then life keeps going and I get sidetracked… and then it turns into weeks between blog posts. I just went out and looked at the blog itself and realized that, as bad as the basketball season has turned for the Hogs, I might want to think about a new banner! So sad… But that is another post on its own.

So what have we been doing? Well, I have managed to become addicted to Facebook! I even got Marcus on there and he has found friends that he hasn't heard from in a long time. So if you are out on Facebook, look us up!

So Kacy turned eleven last month! It is hard to imagine that my baby girl is that old. We informed her that since she is older, her parties would start getting smaller and her presents might get a little larger. Thankfully she was receptive to that idea so I didn't have to plan a big shin-dig. But even with a "smaller party," we still ended up celebrating her birthday the entire week! Ha!

It started on Monday when we celebrated with her class. Her class was scheduled to go to the symphony on her actual birthday, so we celebrated the day before. I brought up brownies and cookies to share with the class. Here's a pichoose halloween mask to make the perfect halloween costumec of Kacy trying to ignore her mom in the back of the room with a camera…

Tuesday was her true birthday… but poor thing ended up with just a normal ole' day… well, except for the fact that she was given an iPod Nano while she worked on her homework! That doesn't happen just any ole' day! We had a deal with her that she had to pay $100 towards the Nano and we would pay the rest as her birthday present. As she received gift cards over the next few days she just handed them over to me until we hit $100. Then she got to keep the rest10 halloween costumes in 2008. Not a bad deal for her, really. Here's a pic of the purple Nano - just the color she wanted…

Wednesday we went out to eat to celebrate her birthday. She chose Carino's. Such a good little girl – and her tastes have truly expanded over the last few months. Thankfully she isn't all about mac'n'cheese or hot dogs (although Abby is). She has added several pasta dishes to her selection, so she was happy to be at Carino's. Of course, I took a pic of her meal – mostly because I was so excited that she didn't order chicken nuggets (although Abby did). Of course, the downside of this is that we have to PAY for her to not eat off of the kiddy menu!

I think Thursday was the only day that we didn't do something specific to celebrating the birthday – outside of preparing the house for the party. Abby had basketball practice, so that had us on the go for the evening.

Friday was the big day of the party. She had asked for a slumber party, and I had asked that we keep it small. We invited just four girls to spend the night, so I had five 11-12 year old girls for the evening. They were a BREEZE! Of course, I was wondering what was going on when we had two neighborhood boys sneak in the house for the pizza and cake. Haha – they are good boys that Kacy plays with all of the time, so it was fine. Once they had their cake, I pushed them on out of the door and back to their houses. The girls went upstairs, made up dances, and did all of those things that girls do at slumber parties… we had nail polish, singing, hairstyles… you know. Kacy had a lot of fun… although she didn't agree to me taking pictures… UGH. Here is one photo I managed to snap when they weren't paying too much attention to me…

Now – do you see that purple thing there on the front of the table? "What could that be," you are wondering… well, it was the CAKE! My dear friend, Erica, made this iPod cake for Kacy! It was AWESOME! I had asked her to make it and she SOOOO exceeded my expectations! Here are some close-ups (which I did get pictures of because the cake can't roll its eyes and hold its hand up in front of my lens!)…

Seriously – look at the detail! See the charge bar on the bottom? And HEAVENS – LOOK at those ear buds! I couldn't BELIEVE it when I saw this! She even made it purple – just like Kacy's new iPod!

So THANK YOU, Erica! You are fabulous and you totally made Kacy's party! The girls absolutely LOVED the cake! And I can attest to you that this cake was DELICIOUS!

That was Kacy's birthday-week. She had fun and she is so happy to be 11. We have been busy doing all kinds of things with her to prepare for the transition to middle school next year. We are so happy with our school and everything they are doing to help us prepare. We have had THREE different events at either the elementary school or the middle school to prepare for the move next year. I feel so good with this move.

Alright – I'm going to update my calendar so that I get REMINDERS to update the blog! Maybe that will keep mindiana jones back againe focused a bit better…

Until next time! Hugs!!