Got our first appointment (and questions about adoption)

For whatever obnoxious reason - which is no one's fault, but it's still annoying - my referral still hasn't been received by the Hannam clinic. So while I continue to harangue the gp's administrator to get the referral through (by carrier pigeon, if need be), the nurse at Hannam (bless her heart) scheduled our first appointment anyway.

So Feb 2 is the big day - yay. I don't have to wait a year to get in, like I did at the first two infertility clinics.

In the meantime, I promised DH that I would seriously consider adoption, and I really meant it. Even though the idea is inconceivable to me - to adopt instead of getting pregnant. (I'll write more about this later, since it's a long story.) I read somewhere that a successful marriage relies on the idea that each partner will consider that the other person might also be right, even if they seem wrong. So ok. I will try my best, and I trust that he will do the same.

I spent yesterday evening researching adoption options, and my preliminary findings beg the following questions:

1) Where, exactly, are all these thousands of lonely, unfamilied, Oliver Twist-ish kids that opponents of assisted reproductive technology keep talking about (in their efforts to prove that it is the responsibility of IF couples everywhere to care for them, rather than pursuing treatments)?

2) Why does it cost $25,000 to adopt one, if you and a child are lucky enough to find each other?

3) Is it okay for a white couple to adopt a child who is not white? (I ask this because I am aware that people's skin colour matters, and that being white gives me privileges in society that people of colour usually do not have. I hesitate about tearing children away from their cultural identities, particularly because it perpetuates colonialism, which I wish to avoid.)

Anyway, more later. I'm starving.