Our trip has been very good so far. We ate dinner at the hotel last night, and it was actually pretty good. We had lots of different dishes such as green beans and eggplant, beef, tofu, and others. We tried a little bit of each, but we found that the food here is very spicy. I must say, as much as we all enjoyed the other stuff, once the fried rice came out, we all jumped on it as if we hadn’t eaten in days. It was very good haha. By the time dinner was over, we all were very tired. Charlie and I got ready for bed and fell asleep at around 8, and slept all the way till 7!
Today we ate an asian breakfast at the hotel too. It consisted of different dumplings, rice, egg rolls, fried bread, and spicy chicken feet. Yes, that’s right. Chicken feet. And guess what. Charlie, Elyssa, Katie and I tried some. It was very interesting and very chewy, but wasn’t that bad. Kinda like a hot wing. Haha. The fried bread is pretty cool too.
We left the hotel at 9 to go to the orphanage. The orphanage is about a 15-20 minute walk. When we arrived we were met by the directors and had sort of a “meeting” to learn at about the orphanage and go over the rules and such. We found out that the original building was built in 1984, but they’ve moved twice since then, and have a new building now that they build in 2008. It is very nice, and I was very impressed. They say that they have a separate part of the building that takes care of the elderly (60+) whose families can’t take care of them. We will be going to the orphanage from 8:30-11 am and then 3-5 pm. The rules prohibit us from posting pictures of the orphanage on our blogs, but I may be posting them on facebook as soon as I get home.
After our meeting they showed us the older kids' room, and it looked like they were doing some sort of writing, so we went up to the babies' room. The infants were lying in their cribs when we got there and we were able to hold some of them. We went into the older babies (about 1-2ish years old) and played and cared for some of them. They were all so precious! It was so much fun to be able to interact with them and hold them. One of the sweet little girls fell asleep on me. It was neat to see just how much the nannies cared for them too. They played and held them and took care of them just as if they were their own. The kids just loved their nannies! When it came time for their lunch they got some rice congee in their bowls and held them up to the AC to cool them off, it was pretty funny.
At 11 we left and went to a market just outside our hotel. Half of it looked like a shopping mall and half of it was like a grocery store. We went and got some water and on the way we spotted st some very interesting sights such as fish swimming around in tanks, meat hanging around, and chickens laying around whole! But we got what we needed. While standing in line some kids came up to us and asked what we were doing there and if we could get our pictures taken with them. It’s really funny to see how many people just stop and stare at us. When we were walking to the orphanage a school girl stopped and told all her friends to look at us and they all stared and gasped in amazement. We get lots of stares everywhere go… you’d think we were aliens! Haha.
After the market we ate lunch (kind of a combination of dinner and breakfast) and then went back to the orphanage. We visited with the babies some more and then went back to see the older kids. Deena (Elyssa's mother) made friends with an 11 year old boy who was really funny. He’s got an interesting story which I’ll tell later. He taught her how to count in Chinese, and they drew together and in the end he gave her a hug. It was really sweet.
Today we decided that we wouldn’t take any of the donations we brought because we didn’t want to overwhelm the kids yet, but we bring the donations tomorrow. My lovely fake "Polo" suitcase we bought last time we were in China is falling apart, and there is no possible way I would be able to bring it around the streets anyways, so I have to figure out a way to get everything to the orphanage. That should be pretty interesting. Hopefully it’ll all work. I think we’re going to be doing a lot more stuff with the older kids.
We just had dinner… at the hotel again. Lily (our guide) said she checked all the restaurants down the street but they would all be too spicy… so it was either the hotel or KFC, which we decided that we’d use KFC when we got homesick for some American food later on in the week. The Hunan province is known for its very spicy food.
It’s about 8 pm here, and I’m starting to get really tired. So, I’m going to go get ready for bed, pack all my donations and things for tomorrow, and then go to sleep. I’ll hopefully post more tomorrow!
Thank you all for your prayers!
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