When Chris retires from his 26-year military career, Aminta, who studied in Japan and holds a master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins, gets the couple hired as teachers of English at Taishan Medical College in the province of Shandong, south of Beijing.Īs Chris observes after he, Aminta, and their three youngest children settle into their new, small apartment, “It’s China out there. The book opens with Aminta and her husband, Chris, as parents in a blended family: two teenage sons from Chris’s first marriage, and three young children together, including their middle child, Grace, a preschooler whom they adopted from China three years earlier. Writer and adoptive mother Aminta Arrington has done exactly this, and her newly published memoir, Home is a Roof Over a Pig ( Overlook Press), brings to life her family’s story. We transcend the rank of tourist, and become regulars in the neighborhood. Once situated, we learn the language, shop in the local market, experience traditional holidays, and eat authentic food. In this dream scenario, my husband and I rent a house, enroll the kids in school, and get jobs to pay the bills. Like many other adoptive parents with children born in another country, I harbor a fantasy of someday packing up our family and moving to the land of my children’s birth.
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