Visit to the Orphanage

We visited the orphanage yesterday (Tuesday). It was about an hour away from our hotel. I didn't realize it was that far. It was an interesting drive. Quite a different way of life from even the city we are staying in. Although I had seen many pictures from other families who had visited the same orphanage and was prepared for that, I was not prepared to see the extreme poverty of the surrounding area. Above are just a couple pictures of what we saw on our drive. I spared you the picture of people digging through a very large pile of trash. Above are some pics of the building itself and Kai with the orphanage director. She was very kind and sent him off with a stuffed bear and small bag of treats. I never would have taken Kai with us, except for the fact he has not been there since November of 2006 when he entered foster care. It didn't really mean anything to him, since he didn't remember being there. It was nice to see the nannies who remembered him wish him well with his new family. They commented on how much he had grown. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the building, but they showed us the room and crib where he slept and some of the rooms were nannies were taking care of lots of babies. There are about 200 children at that orphange from birth to age 18. After the age of 12, they are not able to be adopted, according to China law. There are 14 orphanages in Chongqing province alone (one in every city). Do the math on how many orphans are in all of China!!!! It was amazing to see so many babies in one place knowing how many families are waiting in the US. Clearly, many of them had a special need of one kind or another. However, the shear numbers never cease to amaze me.

One of the first pictures of Kai we saw was of him standing on a bridge. Driving past the entrance, I noticed the bridge and we took a picture on our way out.

We ate dinner at the "western" buffet at the hotel. It was late and we were all looking forward to getting some dinner and ending our day. As we approached the buffet, I opened the first tray of food and inside was french fries, yay! The other trays included: ox tendon, ostrich toungue, and many other horrifying delicacies that I can't even remember--I think I blocked them out!! (Robin--they even had shark's fin soup--haha!!) There was one try of some dried out, chewy pieces of pizza, and let me tell you, pizza never tasted so good! We found some noodles and cut up pumpkin, and other random items that were not so bad-at least we were able to fill our stomaches. I think we might try pizza hut tonight.