I just went to visit, I ended up Adopting from China

Trip to China alters lives
Hoosier 'just visiting' brings home a daughter (and later another)

By Abe Aamidor
abe.aamidor@indystar.com

Beth Nonte Russell went to China in 1999, accompanying a friend who intended to adopt a baby girl. Through a totally unexpected chain of events detailed in Russell's book, "Forever Lily," she ended up adopting the girl herself.



The Jasper native's story was published earlier this year by Simon & Schuster. Russell, 44, an Indiana University graduate, lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband, Randy, and their daughters, Lily, 8, and Jaden, 3, both adopted from China.

Question: Why are Chinese adoptions seemingly so popular in America?
Answer: People who have adopted Chinese babies generally find that the Chinese babies are relatively healthy compared to the Russian babies or Romanian babies. Plus, it's pretty well-run. You don't have to go over there and wait around for a long time while the adoption takes place. . . . If you go to South America, you may have to wait for weeks and weeks, and you don't really know how much it's going to cost you.

Q: You wrote a column on adoption in The New York Times in January. Do you speak much on adoption?
A: I really have not. I've done interviews, but not speaking engagements as such. I don't consider myself an adoption expert, though I've had these experiences. I do like to promote the cause, especially international adoptions. It speaks to the best of us, what we're capable of.

Q: Some people have questioned your book, especially a lot of the dream sequences. What do you say to them?
A: I don't like the criticism, yet I do understand it. What I've come to understand is that in my whole life I've had a very active dream life. It was only after I started seeing this reaction to the book that I thought, "Oh, doesn't everyone have a rich dream life?" I kind of laugh because since then there have been recent cases of memoirs being palmed off as actual truth, and then they turn out as not being absolutely truthful. Yet everything I wrote was absolutely true.

Q: The book does in some ways seem to be more about you than about adoption. Was that intentional?
A: I consider the book to be not about adoption, not about travel, not about someone having an unusual experience. It's about a transformation.

Q: Do you still see your travel companion, identified as Alex in the book, who originally intended to adopt Lily?
A: No, we don't. The four of us -- she and her husband and my husband and myself -- made a decision that we wouldn't stay in touch after the custody hearing. . . . I did send her a copy so she would know the book is being published, but I did not hear from her.

Q: How is Lily doing?
A: She is a very vivacious, active third-grader. She is very social. She has a lot of friends. She loves to do a lot of activities with them. She is very sensitive. She is very aware when other children are in danger. She empathizes deeply with other kids. It could be her experience or it could be her personality. She is a very beautiful soul, and we are just blessed to have her.


Call Star reporter Abe Aamidor at (317) 444-6472.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071105/LIVING/711050310/-1/LOCAL17





China-Babies Research