I have very good 'travel karma' ... always have had. Things tend to work out for me when I'm on the road. Connections are made, and if wires are crossed, it almost always turns out to bring about some providential meeting resulting in life-long friends or never-could-have-been-planned event. Weather seems to cooperate with my agenda, as do politics and circumstances.

I have seen this as cosmic intervention ... some great unseen hand guiding me through my adventures toward experiences that would most facilitate learning and growth. Maybe. I suspect, however, serendipitous circumstances that follow me around the world arise because I let them.

There's no way to control everything that happens anywhere you are, and when you're in a place very different, sometimes unrecognizable, from your familiar world, the list of potential upheavals can grow very long. Putting effort into attempts to wrestle command of circumstances very obviously beyond your control is not only a waste of time and energy, the very fact that you're trying to bully a situation can cause it to blow up in your face.

Railing against a downpour that's put the kibosh on your day at the beach, chewing your nails to the nub in a slow taxi that's sure to have you miss a connection, being profoundly disappointed at finding yourself nowhere near the historical point of interest you aimed for ... none will get you any closer to satisfying the plan you may have thought engraved in stone.

Should you manage to make yourself relax, however ... go with the flow ... you could find entirely new adventures, unforgettable and wonderful experiences, waiting for you in the rain after you should have arrived and right around a corner you would never have marked on a map.

Putting aside nervousness, anxiety and the need to control will also leave you more likely to connect with the people in the world you visit. A warm smile and enthusiastic engaging with the new, the exotic, the fascinatingly different, will invite a welcome you would never get with a demeanor of suspicious trepidation, flinching fear or arrogant superiority.

If you're traveling in your child's birth country, the people will be most interested in your family. Although it can be nerve-wracking ... especially for newly adoptive parents ... to have so much attention focused in your direction, the great majority will be wishing you and yours all the luck for a bright and happy future. Recognizing this as motivation allows you to acknowledge and accept brief connections between yourselves and your child's compatriots, and to add these to to the wealth of experience adoption brings.

Comments? Questions? Shy? E-mail me ... intladoptionblog@adoptionmail.com