50 Questions

I was gathering our stuff together to drop off at the Dept last week ('the Dept' is our state government's Department of Child Safety: Intercountry Adoption Unit) and going through the checklist to make sure we had everything, when I realised that we hadn't finished our 50 questions. One of the requirements at this stage is to answer fifty questions that the Dept has set about our chosen country.

You would think we'd have finished this by now, afterall, we got the questions in December. I've googled heaps and found some awesome websites... which often take me off on a tangent and then after an hour I've only found half an answer to one of the questions. I've also asked Evangeline, a Chinese friend, some of the more difficult ones, which was great. Many times I've intended to take them to our Chinese teacher to ask, but always forgot. Anyway, despite our efforts, we still have more unanswered than answered ones right now!

I think it's because some of them are so random that it's not as easy as looking it up. Here are some examples: 'If you were invited to a party, who would you expect to find among the guests?', 'What kinds of television programs are shown? What social purpose do they serve?', 'If, as a customer, you touch or handle merchandise for sale, will the shopkeeper think you are knowledgeable, inconsiderate, within your rights, completely outside your rights, or other?'

I worked on them this afternoon for a while, then we worked on them together a bit, but I kept getting annoyed and quickly bored. Not bored with learning about Chinese culture - heck, I have a mild obsession with that - but bored with frustration at trying to find out things like 'how long a hairdressing appointment should be made for' in China. Aaron said, "if you're gonna whinge, just let me do it". So he is.