Welfare Home Tour

June 29, 2007

Today was the day that we would go back to the welfare home. After a day of travelling we had a Chinese style Western breakfast. We met Christina and Elsie down stairs in the lobby - we carried our 2 big bags of donations, a present for the director and a picture collage of me throughout the years.

We arrived at the orphanage after a 15 minute drive. As we got out of the van we saw another family entering the orphanage. They were also here for a homeland trip to visit their orphanage. We met with the assistant to the director at the door and told her my Chinese name, Bao Lixian. Christina told us she said that she had remembered me because of my big eyes. We went into a conference room and met with the director, Mr. Chen. He told us about the orphanage and how it had been rebuilt in 1997. He showed us upstairs to a play room where the special needs children were playing. We even gave them some of the toys we had brought. We left the room and went to another section of the welfare home where the babies slept. We played with more kids there. We toured the rest of the welfare home and they had gifts for us. It was a silver coin with the front of the welfare home engraved on it. We went next door to where the welfare home use to be, but is now a kindergarten. In the kindergarten there are children from the welfare home and from the neighborhood. Ironically, Christina's son goes there.

We left the orphanage and drove to a close by village to try and find my finding location. Since China has modernized so much, it was difficult to find the exact street. We finally found a street. There were railroad tracks, small apartments, stores and a gate at my finding place.

We returned to the hotel and and Dad & I walked in search of a McDonalds. After walking about 10 blocks, we finally found it. We had spicy chicken wraps, quarter pound BEEF burger and french fries. Lucikly it tasted like home.

We went to the pool andon the way we found a place to get a foot massage. After a very relaxing day we had dinner and went to sleep.

(Elsie had called the airport and had discovered that there will be no morning flights on July 4th, the day we were suppose to leave Zhanjiang for Guanzhou. So we will be leaving a day earlier, July 3rd in the afternoon).