节目资讯
刊物:空中英語教室
日期:2012-03-23
难易度:Medium
关键字:pregnant, inspire, think long and hard, affection, enrich
(Music).
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to Studio Classroom Worldwide.
Thanks for joining us today.
My name is Steve.
Four-children families aren't as common as they used to be, are they?
To see a four-child family walking around the mall or eating in a restaurant
together is a pretty rare thing these days.
Well, Aaron Heidel and his wife, Jean, have four young children.
As special as that is, there's something more special about this family.
You see, all four Heidel children were adopted.
Please turn with us to page 46 as we ask Aaron some questions like: Why did you
do this? And What's it like to adopt a child?
(Music).
Adopting Children.
One family describes their adoption experience.
This month Studio Classroom talks with Aaron Heidel about adoption.
Aaron and his wife, Jean, have written a book about their adoption experiences.
They live in Taipei with their four children.
Tell us about your family.
I'm an American and my wife is from Taipei.
We have four adopted children.
Hannah is 8 and is in second grade.
Ellie is 6, Danny is 3, and Andrew is 2.
The youngest three spend their time hanging out at home.
Why did you decide to adopt four kids?
We wanted to have kids and tried everything but couldn't get pregnant.
Our friends had adopted two kids, and we were inspired by their example.
We applied to adopt, and one year later, we received 11-day-old Hannah.
Hello, friends.
Thank you for joining us.
I'm excited to be talking about such an important topic.
This is an article called LIFE EXPERIENCES.
And this is really an important experience to discuss.
Yeah. We're talking today about Adopting Children.
Now Kaylah, first let's talk about this word, adopting.
Adopting. That means when you take someone into your family.
So they're not related to you; but they do not have a family, so you take them
in.
You pay to bring them and accept them as one of your own.
Yeah, they become your own child.
And so when you adopt a child, they come from another family and then become
your own.
That's right.
Now one family describes their adoption experience.
So we see from our deck here that we are going to interview a family.
Yeah. This month Studio Classroom talks with Aaron Heidel about adoption.
And Aaron and his wife, Jean, have written a book about their adoption
experiences.
So that makes them very qualified to be talking about adoption.
We're going to find out just how many kids they have adopted.
Now we see that they live in Taipei with their four children.
So they are a local family for the Taipei area, and they've written a book about
the process of adopting.
So Studio Classroom decided to interview them.
Yes. And I'm sure they have a very interesting story to tell about adopting
these four children since they wrote a book about it.
So let's find out exactly what happened.
OK. Well, Studio Classroom we start with, "Tell us about your family." That's
kind of a broad question to ask.
Yeah. Well, they answer it well.
She says: I am... Uh... he says: I'm an American and my wife is from Taipei.
So Aaron is the one that we are interviewing, so he will be answering the
questions.
Even though his wife Jean wrote the book with him, we're specifically talking
from his point of view.
Exactly. OK. So we see he is an American and his wife is from Taipei.
OK. So now they've married, they want to have children together.
And now we see that they have four adopted children.
That's right. They have adopted four children.
Now we can say "I have adopted," as in the verb, to adopt.
But you can also use "adopted," as an adjective, to describe the relationship to
the child.
Exactly. Now he's going to tell us about his kids a little bit here.
Hannah is 8 years old and is in second grade.
Ellie is 6, Danny is 3 and Andrew is 2.
Now the youngest three spend their time hanging out at home.
So the oldest one does go to school, and the other three stay at home with their
mom.
Yeah. They're all quite young; the oldest, of course, being 8 years old.
So now we've learned a little bit about um, Aaron and his wife and now their
four children.
So it's time for Studio Classroom to ask our next question.
We ask: Why did you decide to adopt four kids?
Now this is a great question.
Most people might not start with four; and we'll see here that they didn't start
with four either.
That's right.
Now often when we think of people adopting, they adopt one, or maybe two
children, to add to their family already.
They just want to take someone else in.
Well, Aaron has a wonderful answer for why they adopted four kids.
Right. He says: We wanted to have kids and tried everything.
Now when he says he wants to have kids, that means they wanted to have their own
children.
And they tried everything but could not get pregnant.
Now this is unfortunately a problem a lot of families do face.
Now "pregnant" is when a wife, when the woman is going to have a child.
So the child is growing within her, and she is going to have her own child.
But we see here that they could not get pregnant.
Sometimes because of our bodies, we... when... we combine the two, you just
can't have a child.
And that's very hard on families.
But there is this wonderful option of adopting.
Exactly. They weren't able to have their own children, but they could bring in
other people's children. OK.
Now... they said, "Our friends had adopted two kids." And they were inspired by
that example.
So they accepted that they could not have their own children.
And so they were inspired; they saw that their two... their friends had adopted
two kids and thought this was a great idea.
Yeah, they were "inspired." That means they thought it was a great idea.
It gave them an idea, made them want to do something.
So they were... they wanted to adopt seeing their friends' example.
That's right.
They felt it was something they should do.
Well, he says, "We applied to adopt, and one year later, we received 11-day-old
Hannah." So a year later.
When you're pregnant, you're only pregnant nine months.
It takes a year for them to get Hannah.
Yes, so it is a very long process most of the time if you are interested in
adopting.
But eventually they did get their first child, 11-day-old Hannah.
Now let's take a look at this interview.
Hello, friends.
Studio Classroom is happy to be here today with the Heidel family from today's
article.
Hi, Heidels.
Hello.
Hi.
Aaron, can you introduce your family to us?
Sure.
This little guy is Danny, and he's 3.
And there's Ellie.
She is 5.
And this is Hannah.
She's 8 years old.
And Andrew over here is 2 years old.
And this is my wife Jean.
And now it's time for Andrew and Danny to go take a nap.
Say bye... Bye-bye... Let's go.
Bye, boys.
Here, Danny.
Aaron, you mentioned in the article that you adopted Hannah first.
And then you adopted Ellie so Hannah wouldn't feel lonely.
Mmhm.
You also mentioned you wanted a son.
How did you end up with two sons?
Well, after Ellie, we decided we wanted a son, so we applied to two different
orphanages for a boy.
After a few months, the first orphanage contacted us and said they had a boy for
us to bring home.
So we brought home Danny when he was five months old.
A few months after we brought Danny home and got used to him being part of our
family, the second orphanage contacted us and said they had a boy for us.
We were very surprised because it was very soon, much sooner than we had
expected.
But we decided that another boy is a good thing.
So we decided to bring him home as well.
Aaron, you mentioned in the article that when you first adopt, you feel kind of
like a 24-hour babysitter.
But over time, you develop strong feelings of attachment to the child.
Tell us, how do you go from feeling like a babysitter to feeling like a parent?
Well, it is true that when you first bring the child home, you do feel like a
babysitter because you don't know this child.
This child is a complete stranger.
But gradually, after you change the baby's diapers and put them to bed and feed
them and do all the things that a parent has to do, you begin to feel like a
parent.
You begin to love the child more and more.
And pretty soon you realize that if this child were not in your family, you
would feel horrible.
You begin to love this child very, very much.
Aaron, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us today and
introducing us to your family.
Friends, we'll be back with the Heidels again tomorrow to learn more about this
amazing family and theirexperiences.