Okay, NOW I'm starting to get what I need. What a life story Kaluah! I'd like to hear more about you. Some things I need to clear out though...

True orphan: I'm indeed sorry if I hurt anybody with that little word. But I just think that there is a huge difference for a child if the biological parents are alive or dead. If they are alive, there is always the tiny chance of actually finding them and getting explanations from them. But if the parents are dead, there's no chance. There's no way to find out what happened and why. Maybe that is less or maybe its more painful than having biological parents alive, but anyways there is a difference between them. If I had to choose, I would rather be so-called true orphan cause the knowledge that my biological parents are living somewhere would probably drive me nuts.

"You talk about adoptees as if they are a group of angry ungrateful people. we aren't ungreatful we hurt." All anger comes from hurting. As a psychology student I'm aware of this. It's just that I don't want to mess up with anybody's life by adopting them, unless the probabilities to raise the child somehow happy and satisfied are bigger than ending up with a person who is deeply sorry for his/her destiny. I'm still little bit unsure about the positive sides of international adoption. Some say that it IS actually better for them to grow up in the poor orphanages. On the other hand, there are lots of people who are very happy for being adopted. I just want to know what are the chances.

Agencies & administration. It is NOT the agency that decides if someone is accepted as adoptive parent. The administrators do that. And you can deal directly with them. In my country it is a office in social welfare sector somewhere who is in charge of this. Whether you use an agency or not, you still have to go through the education for adoptive parents and all that. It's just a matter of who makes the phone calls across the countries and sends your papers around. And I'm willing to do that paper work myself.

Also, how do you match personalities when you have just written information from the parents and maybe a picture of the child? I think it's much better to actually go to the orphanage, meet the children, observe how they behave, see if anyone of them has this sort of connection kind of feeling and most importantly of all: the children can make their own choice. Even a toddler can have preferences of people, not everyone likes everyone, and those things you cant know from pictures. You have to meet the children in person to find out if the chemistry matches. I don't want other people to select a child for me. I want the right kid to come to me her/himself.

"Degrees don't make you a good person to adopt. they just make you look good on paper. " I agree. And if I go through the normal process, all that people will have about me, are papers. Nothing else. There will be statements and analyses on me, written on paper and people will look at my CV and wonder how much my salary is. If I do it on my own, I will be dealing personally with all the people in the process, throughout the way, they will see me in person, talk with me, see how I interact with children, not just with the kid they appointed me with their lottery system, but with all children. I think that gives much better information about me than just reading faxes that are sent across the agencies.

"...still not act anything like your family...," That's exactly what fascinates me. If I want to get more people like myself, I will get cloned. I think it's much more interesting to have a child who is not like me. Usually parents have all these stupid expectations for their biological children, like that he must be a lawyer too because his dad is one etc. If I adopt, no-one can do that and put pressure on the child. She/he can grow up to be anything in the world and we, as parents, will just help the process and not make decisions for him. With biological kids it is so easy to start thinking "oh he is just like me at that age" etc. With adopted child you will always have surprises and you can never just assume things to go exactly like they went in your own life. Well, you shouldn't assume things with biological kids either but I think most parents still do that.

"help find funding for better facitities. make sure the money is going where they say it's going and not to dunkin donuts or subway."

Yeah, working in those funding organisations is my job. And when I travel, I'm also funding people and facilities directly. But I just don't think it's enough. Having only biological children feels wrong. The world is already overpopulated and there are lots of children without parents. Especially in the country I'm planning to adopt from. But anyways, we have your vote now (Don't). I'll keep it in mind.