Just five days ago

Okay, I should begin by admitting that the title of the last post was not correct and in fact asks if I speak English, which at times I begin to doubt. My meager Mandarin has come in handy on a few occasions, but most of the time the reaction I get is narrowed eyes and furrowed brows as the noise I produce fails to trigger any language receptors in the recipient's brain.

Yesterday, we took a 2-hour bus ride to Luohe, the city of Alex's orphanage. Alex was very giggly the whole way there. It was a good trip and Alex took it all in stride, but it was very sad to see where he was just 5 days ago. Five days. His documents say he was left at the gate to the Luohe Social Welfare Institute, and as our van rode through the gate it gave me a strange feeling to look down and see where that was. The institute itself is surrounded by a high gate and has a fairly nicely maintained lawn around it. On one side of it is a retirement home (such a great idea combining retirement home and orphanage!) and on the other side is the orphanage. There's also a special building for children who are deaf, but I'm not sure if that's a school, boarding school, or also an orphanage. We were greeted by the orphanage director and given tea, then presented with a beautiful embroidered, framed wall hanging. We made a donation to the orphanage and were then taken on a tour. Inside Alex's wing were two rooms, one for sleeping and one for spending the rest of their time. The furnishings were very spare, just a few rocking horses and a ball or two. In China, children don't wear diapers and instead wear "split-pants" that are open in the back. As a result, there was some kid poop on the floor that was just being cleaned up as we came in. The kids didn't look very happy and were pretty stunned to see a group of Americans standing there holding Alex, who had just been living among them 5 days ago. We developed the film that was in the disposable camera we mailed to the orphanage and the picture below is of Alex in his crib from that roll.



After the tour, we were given a large, delicious meal in a very cold room. Alex fell asleep on the way home. We got pizza for dinner and Alex seemed to like it a lot.

There's a cute ginger bread house gift shop in the lobby of our hotel and we stopped before breakfast to snap a quick family photo:

All is well here. We decided to skip the museum trip today in favor of taking it easy and making a foray to the local McDonalds. Tomorrow we fly to Guangzhou.