After a Night of Rest

The rooster that has been waking us up each morning may have moved, slept in, or died. Any is fine with me as we were able to sleep until after 6:00 this morning. It was great.

I've decided that the only easy way to summarize the orphanage visit is that the orphanage and its employees are making the best out of a bad situation. The people were clearly friendly, interested in the children, loving to the children, and welcoming to us. They provide a clean environment with medical care, some schooling, and programs to give these children the best life they can get. Approximately 300 children have been adopted from this orphanage into families around the world in the last ten years. I come away knowing the Francie was loved there and was able to form attachments with people who adored her.

The other side of the story is that all of this good starts from a really bad situation. There are 200 children there, and more than 98% of them have special needs. The range went from Francie's repaired heart to children with severe mental and physical challenges. It was even difficult to look at some children, which is too often my most common means of avoiding people who are less fortunate than me. Katie was reminded of a quote she read recently that questioned what the world would be like if we spent time each day thinking about the things that we don't want to see. What I see daily in Davidson, NC is far different from what I saw yesterday where my daughter lived just last week.

The events of the day were very interesting. We had a tour guide who my brother arranged through a fairly random network. We didn't really need a traditional guide. We needed someone who could translate between English and the local dialect and had a car. It turned out our guide, Wisdom, is a lawyer who studied law in London and grew up and has business in Shantou. It was enlightening and extremely interesting to spend the day with him and get his insights into the Chinese culture.

Wisdom picked us up at the airport, and we drove directly to the orphanage. When we got there we were reminded of a new restriction that prohibits visitors from taking pictures inside the orphanage. Instead, our contact took pictures for us and said she will e-mail them to us. We saw all of the rooms where Francie lived and played and took pictures with all of her caretakers. As the tour was wrapping up, we were told that the director wanted to take us to lunch. Dan and I agreed and wondered what we were getting ourselves into.


Lunch was quite a memorable one. There were six of us - the director, the vice-director, our main contact, Wisdom, Dan, and me. When we arrived at the restaurant we saw tanks full of live fish, eels, shell fish, etc. as well as a long iced table with dead fish chilling. (Notice the elephant clams at the bottom of the picture.) At that point, the director, through Wisdom, asked if there is anything that we would prefer not to eat. I quickly remembered and answered with Greg's line saying "No head, no feet, no guts - no problem." Maybe that wasn't enough.

We went upstairs to a private room with a round table with a turntable in the middle. Since I was the new father and the director learned that Katie and I donated to the non-profit organization that sponsors this orphanage (Love without Boundaries), I became the one who was served each dish first. That would have been fine if I had any clue what was being placed in front of me and, more importantly, how to eat it, and even more importantly, how to eat it with chopsticks. First up was supposedly a mushroom. It was the slipperiest thing I have ever attempted to pick up, stab, shovel, or guide onto my plate. That was just the beginning. Next was deep fried soft chicken bone. Yep, that didn't fall into my restrictions. The rest of the meal included about ten dishes including pork, fish and beef soup, oyster cakes, some rice thing with a purple paste, shrimp to be eaten with the shell and head, pumpkin stuffed with pinkish paste, and crab. I didn't get a chance to try the crab, but Dan said he had trouble shelling and eating a crab with chopsticks.

Although Dan and my stomachs are in pretty good shape today, they just aren't feeling quite right. We are both happy that we had this lunch experience and had extra time to spend with the people who run the orphanage.

After lunch, Widson took us on a took of Shantou. The sites were interesting and the conversation with him would have been work the trip by itself.

Overall, I woke up this morning grateful for the people who helped us yesterday and especially for the people who took in our daughter, saw her through heart surgery and recovery, and generally raised her for the first two years of her life. How can you thank people enough for that?