Visit to Kimi's Orphanage.

CJ 11.25.2010

Visit to HengYang.

So we left at 8am for HengYang. It is about a 3 hour drive south on interstate. With in an hour Maria had thrown up a small amount and only on her coat… ugh! So we put that in a bag and tied it up. The rest of the trip she slept and then I put the blanket over her face so she couldn’t see out the window. Jerry also sat with Kimi in the back seat until she fell asleep. Then he sat up front again for a while to watch the scenery. The country side was so neat to see. There were lots of family homes… usually Grandparents, son and daughter-in-law and their children live in a house… the houses are fairly big too. There is usually a garden and a “yard” out front, not grass like we have but dirt of concrete and then just field or woods around it. Many of the homes are built right on the side of a hill. Kind of randomly scattered around too. We saw lots of rice fields. Most of them have been harvested. They plant two crops of rice in this area. One crop is planted in May and then when that is harvested in July they replant right away. They grow seedlings close together in a small field during the first crop so that when they are ready to plant the second crop they already have the seedlings ready to go in! Then they harvest the second crop in early to mid November. The fields for the rice are very very flat! If there are hills they terrace out the land so that each field is perfectly level. That way the water doesn’t pool at one end or anything.

We crossed the River several times! It was very pretty driving through there! The dirt in Hunan is very red, sometimes orange. I can’t remember if we got a picture or not… hopefully. Jerry took tons of video on his camera. So I know it will at least be in those videos. Our van had super tinted windows and we were moving pretty fast so it was hard to get pictures. But Jerry’s little droid phone takes nice video and good pictures too, so I think he was using that a bunch!

We got into town Kimi was now sitting in Jerry’s lap. Suddenly she started puking!!!! Oh my word! We about died!! All over the floor in the van, All over Jerry’s pant legs and shoes. All over Kimi’s clothes! Oh boy… I am just glad my camera bag was out of the way!!! Finally after a few phone calls we found someone who showed us the way to the orphanage. It is way out in the boonies! :) Which is kind of nice, you can hear the birds singing instead of horns honking! We were met by the Director, who actually over sees the orphanage and a some other institutions. I can’t remember what his fancy title is, but he is very nice and LOVED Maria! He wanted to carry her everywhere we went all day! Haha! it was cute, and she was ok with him. That way I was free to take pictures and help keep a hold of Kimi! Who will run off at a moments notice… she is very curious and busy! First there we changed Kimi. Haha! I brought this cute little dress from Josie… it was so short you couldn’t see it from under her coat! But it still looked so cute! Her skinny little legs in tights sticking out! Just adorable! Her legs are so long!!! So I still had to pull those tights up quite a few times the rest of the day!

Finally we went up to her rooms. We learned a bunch of things!!! First she actually came back to live in the orphanage around July this year. So the Foster parents have been out of the picture for a few months now… interesting. Then she was in one room and had to be moved because of some behavior problems of another little – bigger girl. Kimi was so excited to be back and see everybody and every thing… She was just running from room to room and I hardly saw her while we were up there! The caregivers were all sooo happy to see her and the volunteers from ICC were REALLY happy to see her and to know she was adopted. I did notice that most of the kids in her rooms have about the same behavior as her. And this is why… there are only 3 caregivers for 24 children and all the children are special needs. So as you can imagine, the caregivers have no time to train them or really play with them or anything. While we were in there I saw a little boy grab a dry orange peel off the counter and just stuff it in his mouth… the caregiver told him no and yucky… or something to that effect… but then just let him eat it. So I see why Kimi has no restraint, she wasn’t restrained by the caregivers… they don’t have time to really. All the kids just kind of go around, if they can, and do whatever pops into their head to do. So no one has taught them what to do with their time. That is why Kimi just bounces from one thing to another, and just looks for stuff to grab and amuse her, I guess. So very sad. I really am not sure what life was like for her at her Foster Family either, but it surprises me still that she doesn’t know how to feed herself with a utensil of some sort. I would have thought the foster family might have taught her some of that stuff. I don’t know… It will be fun to watch her change as she adjusts to family life. So we chatted with some of the volunteers about the orphanage some and they told us things about the facility and then showed us the ICC part of the orphanage.

The children that hurt my heart the most were the tiny little newborns in there. They were just lying in their beds sleeping. Poor little things… they just got there and now they will have to grow up there… they should be at home in a mother’s arms. I had to fight back tears several times while we were in there. All I could see were their little heads too.. they had big thick quilts covering the rest of them! Just their little heads sticking out. Big round soft baby heads with little Asian eyes! I think there were 3 or 4 of them in the rooms we spent most of the time in. I wanted to snatch them up and bring them home with me… I know families would want them!!! I am certain, that most of the kids with special needs would be less of “special needs” if they had been in families their whole life… there’s just something about a family that makes such a huge difference. Like Kimi! She is already getting a lot better! She still has all of her old bad habits, but we see them getting a little less each day. She still has her crazy wild moments, but as long as we keep her busy with something she has less of those!

There is a building in the orphanage grounds that is for the older special needs kids, too. We met the “resident” grandmother too. In the ICC building I saw a friend’s little girl, so I was able to take a couple pictures to send them. I love being able to do that! I know how I would have LOVED getting some pictures of Kimi and Maria while we waited!!! I also took some random pictures of other little ones. I got a couple pictures of a little girl that had a severe heart condition. She has had one surgery and needs a couple more, but she is being adopted, they did not know who her family was though. So, if you are adopting anyone from Hengyang, leave me a message and we will see if I was able to get pictures of your baby!

The orphanage houses about 300 children. 99% are special needs. Apparently they received money to build a new building… it is being built behind the old ones. The new one is NINE stories tall!!! Goodness!! I wish the government would give them more funding to provide more nannies!! But… that is the way it seems to go sometimes! Silliness!

The Director took us into a board room where he had some bananas and clemantines for us and he told a bit about the orphanage and asked us to write some comments in a guest book. Then they tried to email us a couple pictures that they had on the office computer of Kimi when she was younger. Its in some weird RAR format though and I have to figure that out still.

Then we went to lunch. We drove to a restaurant downtown where there was a wedding reception going on. We got a table near the back, away form the loudest speakers we have ever heard. Amy ordered some food, but forgot we are vegetarian, so then she had to order a few more things, since EVERYTHING had meat in it. Haha! We had a dish that was celery, onions and cashews that was SOOOO good. There was also some green leafy vegetable that Maria and I loved. Kimi loved everything of course.

She’s so funny… you know how she is just starving all the time… well, actually she does get full… when she is full… she spits the food right back out. And if you try to give her any more… which she acts like she wants because she is just perpetually hungry right now… she will spit the next bite out and the next… so we have started just cleaning her up and “being done.” Usually she will still eat cheerios so we will give her a few at a time of those too. She now will grab a hand full but still only put one or two in her mouth at a time. She drops quite a few in her hastiness to get them to her mouth. We are trying to teach her not to eat off the floor, she will try to pick up the tiniest crumb off the floor to eat it. So we started taking all the cheerios she drops or dumps on the floor and throwing them away, because she would prefer to eat off the floor. We don’t typically eat off the floor at our house… haha! So she is learning to keep her cheerios in her bowl! :)

After Lunch we walked through the park across the street, it was very beautiful, as all the parks in China are. They are not just parks, but Gardens. We walked thru a couple of Buddist temples. One temple was for Buddha, the other was for the woman Buddha!!! Its so weird to see people actually worship an idol and not a living God. Just strange, and sad.

Then we drove to a Riverfront Park and walked a little… by now the girls were getting pretty tired, but we had to go to the train station before we could let them go to sleep!!! So after begging to get in through 3 ticket checker/guards we finally were able to stand in the waiting room where Kimi was found at 8 months old. Jerry took a few pictures while I held onto Kimi so she wouldn’t run off into the crowd! Haha!

Then we said goodbye to the director and his assistant and headed toward home. The girls were asleep in no time! We took a wrong turn and had to take some back roads to get back to the interstate… That was fun driving thru some smaller village-like towns. Maria slept almost all the way home! 3 hours… Kimi did too for that matter. I kept Maria’s face covered for the last 45 minutes or so to her dismay and Jerry didn’t do so good at keeping Kimi from looking out the window. But at least he had a plastic bag for her to puke in this time!! Haha! So we came home with two bags of puke clothes… and no time to really wash them, but we rinsed them out and hoped they would dry somewhat before we needed to pack them tomorrow. We gave the girls a little something to eat and then off to bed we all went… we were all soooo tired!!!