January 25, 2008

Well, it’s 5:30 am here in very cold Nanchang! I bet this town is wonderful in the fall and spring, but wow…we caught it in the midst of a cold spell.

Mei and Jen are still asleep. Mei did great last night. She was a bit restless for the first half, but settled down for the rest. We will be getting ready soon so we can eat breakfast and be ready to leave by 8:30 for the trip to the orphanage.

We are very excited about going to the orphanage. I’m a bit nervous, but very excited. It is obvious from looking at Mei that they took great care of her. I hope we get to see her Nannies so they can see how good she is doing and that we are a great family.

Sorry if my post from last night seemed down. I didn’t mean for it to be. It just threw off what we had hoped to do by her going down so early, but like Jen said, if she wants to sleep, we let her sleep, we will worry about a schedule when we get home. She is right.

At the Super Happy Fun Go Go store, we found the cutest clothes in the world. They were very pricey, so we didn’t get them, but we may before we leave. By pricey I mean like $15 to $20. That may not seem like much, but we are trying to watch our funds. We paid all but two fees and have only our meals to pay for in Guangzhou, but I am not sure how easy it will be to access my accounts from here if I need more. I think it will be one of those things where the last day we will go on a spending spree as we will know exactly how much we need.

Due to the weak dollar and inflation, things are more expensive than we were told. There are lots of hidden costs such as tipping your guides and bus drivers and getting your laundry done. I was thinking we had access to a laundry center, like many hotels have where you can wash your clothes yourself. But what we actually have is a service that picks up our dirty and brings back our clean, all for a cost. We had a good bit washed for $15. Things like that just eat away at your money. But the good news is we unloaded almost all our fees to date. That makes me feel better walking around town now!

But, you should’ve seen the cute outfits! Yes, this is Mike writing this…I couldn’t help myself. Something tells me we will be back to buy Mei and Madi matching outfits.

Walking around town is an adventure. Poor Jen gets stared at the most because she is holding Mei. I’m not sure how the average Chinese person feels about Americans coming over to adopt. I guess many of the looks are just out of curiosity. Some of the people we come into contact with, may not see Americans very often, so they stare. The Moores have it worse. They both have blond hair and blue eyes, and he is probably 6′-2″. They almost got mobbed at Wal-mart by curious onlookers!!!

Mei ate cereal mixed with formula from a spoon yesterday for lunch. That is the first time we have been able to get her to do that. We are thinking she has never had anything but bottles her entire life. A spoon or something in her mouth is just totally foreign to her. So it was good to have her eat from a spoon. We will probably just keep trying.

I’ll write more later.

Orphanage Visit

Today we went to the orphanage (Fengxin County SWI) where Mei spent the first 10 months of her life.

It is in Fengxin County, which is about 1:30 hours from here. Together with the Moores, we loaded into a small van for the trip to the orphanage.

It seemed to take longer, mainly because it was raining/sleeting and the roads were a mess. Once we got out of Nanchang, things picked up a bit.

We passed through very poor countryside. The houses and fields are what I would call dirt farmers. In fact, the side road we had to take to get to her city reminded me of south Georgia. Very rough road, farms, and red clay.

Once we arrived, the orphanage director met us, and we followed him to the orphanage.

Like most buildings here in China, only a few rooms have heat. The hallway was the same temperature as outside, but when we went into the room, it was warmer. It was probably 50 degrees in the room.

The room had about 15 to 20 little cribs in the center of the room. About 5 Nannies were standing around looking after the kids. When we walked into the room, two Nannies came running over to us. One pulled up Mei's hat and said, "Yun Man!!!!" which is her Chinese name. The Nanny lifted her from Jen and just loved all over Mei. They did the same with the Moore's baby.

And here are some pictures of Mei with the Nannies.

 

 

 

We got a chance to talk with the director. He answered what he could. They brought in a bag of clothes that had Mei's name on it and said they were the clothes she was found in. They let us keep it. That was pretty cool.

Us and the Director

 

After that, he took us to where they found Mei. She was found at the gate of the local power company. It was in the middle of town on a busy street.

Where Mei was Found

 

I am very glad we got to see her Nannies and where she was found. These will all be things she may want to know about as she gets older.

For lunch, the director treated us to a lunch at a local restaurant. It was the best food we've had since we've been here. No joke. The area is known for rice noodles and bamboo...both were wonderful! It was a nice lunch, and the director asked us many questions about what we do for a living and where we live. I tried to explain what a pecan is, but they were clueless. Next time, someone remind me to bring a bag of pecans with me. I think he would have gotten a kick out of them.

It was a long day, but very worth it. Jen and Mei are sleeping now, and I am heading that way myself. I hear we are doing more sightseeing tomorrow. I hope the weather breaks. We have not seen that sun since we have been in China.

Until next time, good night.

 

This page hosted by