The Boys From Baoding

The internet is such an amazing tool for connecting people. Our first glimpse of Hui-Hui was through our adoption agency's website, and now he is our son! Because we knew the Wickstrom family through the internet we were able to recognize their son when we were in China and bring back video and pictures for them. And now because we shared our story with Jackie Chan we have met another family who have adopted a son from the Baoding S.W.I.

Katharine, the webmaster for the Jackie Chan site, sent the following email to Hui-Hui:

Dear Hui-Hui,
I am forwarding a message and photo to you from a family in Tennessee. They read your story on the Jackie Chan website and would like to correspond with you.  Here it is: 

----- Original Message -----

From:

hilary & Kurt hales

To:

webmaster

Sent:

Sunday, January 01, 2006 12:50 AM

Subject:

Re: contact e-mail

As we were browsing through the Jackie Chan website, we came across the story about Hui-Hui being adopted from the Boading City Social Welfare Institiute.
We were very interested, because we got our son about 6 weeks ago from the very same place. We were also very impressed with Jackie's generosity and caring.
We were able to tour the new building that he had donated and saw the blessing it will be to all the children. We showed Hui-Hui (Andrew's) photo to Yang-Yang (Nathaniel),
and he was very excited to see him and it appeared he recongnized him. We wondered where you all lived and if we could contact you.
Please let us know if you are interested in getting together/corresponding. Attached is a picture of Nathaniel to show Andrew.
Kurt and Hilary Hales

----- -----

This was really exciting for us because we instantly recognized Nathanial from the pictures we received from the S.W.I. last summer. You can see those pictures by clicking HERE. Nate is with Kai in a number of them. In the pictures of them eating the two of them are sitting next to one another. Nate is about 6 weeks younger than Hui-Hui so I would guess they would have been together pretty much all the time at the S.W.I.
This is especially exciting to us because most of the children adopted from China are girls. I think it will be really nice for Hui-Hui to know other boys from the same S.W.I. While neither of these boys' families live close to us, we still will be able to have contact with them through the internet, and we hope to be able to arrange visits from time to time as they grow up.