Day 3&4: Inside/Outside the Orphanage

It has become an interesting routine, as our evenings are filled continuing to work with the children. We arrive to relieve the second shift about 11:30p to a quiet sleepy orphanage.  We spend most of our early shift hours cleaning and sanitizing the area in preparing for the next days events.  Doing laundry, mopping rooms and hallways, sanitizing bottles and equipment, even scrubbing the bathrooms.

Some of the premature or under nourished babies require more frequent feedings and need to be woken up and fed by bottle or feeding tube.  Some of the children need to have periodic diaper checks due to intestinal challenges.  Here and there we hear disruptive chirps but most of the time they fall right back to sleep.

As we finish the 4a feedings, we begin to prepare for the morning awakening.  This is a strange sensation at that time of evening in that we've noticed that as the sun begins to rise, about 5:30a - 6:00a, we say, "the building begins to awaken" also.  Noises can be heard from outside, other floors and hallways begin to bustle, and then, one-by-one, the babies of our unit begin to wake up.  Once they wake, we take each of them, feed them and bathe them, and give them their individual vitamins. Once this is completed, it's time to get them settled in a happy, playful place so you can go get the next one.  If it's a good morning, we have a nice slow awakening which lets us pace the assembly line of production.  However, sometimes, we have a mass eruption of babies which leads to controlled chaos.  Things can get a little frantic, especially when the two toddler boys finish their bottles and baths. One of us just has to monitor their whereabouts and ensure they are not pulling, pushing or disrupting something.  Cute as can be, they are just at that age...

By the time the 1st shift arrives at 7:30a all systems are go and we are at pretty full activity with a spectrum of child noises happening at any given time. Anything from belly laughter to lung-filled screams fill the room.  It is a bit of a handful to try and watch all the babies while trying to transition the evenings events to the next staff.  Each shift transition group prays for the the next before we depart and then it's off to breakfast, FaceTime with home and some much needed sleep.

Over the last two evenings we were able to go out and do some exploring of the area.  We ventured to the nearby city mall.  It is a very clean and fancy looking mall with modern features and architecture.  We were surprised by the dominant western designer name stores that were present.  Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, Columbia, Sephora, and many others were in this 6 story mall even a Starbucks, but no Chai Tea Latte for Susan...     It was interesting to look at prices, for Columbia winter coats $3,700RMB or $600US seemingly higher than in the US.  I guess that's why many of the Chinese buy a lot of US brand clothing when they visit  America.  

As we elected to walk from the mall back to our hotel, we saw street vendors with interesting food choices.  Let's just say, it was a type of fowl and "parts is parts"...no waste after the killing of the bird.  And we mean No Waste. We were entertained by watching regular citizens waltzing to music being played on a boom box in the middle of the park.  About 20-30 men and woman were dancing together, men with woman, woman with woman, even several women with phantom men were gliding on the concrete dance floor under the moonlight sky.

The next evening we were invited to one of the director's homes for dinner.  As always, driving in China is a near death experience.  A traditional bicycle culture, the Chinese drivers are taught not to look in their rear/side-view mirrors.  They are trained to always look forward and not worry about the sides or behind the car. It's the other driver's responsibility behind you to watch.  If everyone watches what's in front of them, then everything else takes care of itself.

Our leader, and gracious host for the night is American born and raised. With his American wife, 2 birth children, 2 adopted children and 1 foster child, it was a lively household. It was great to experience a little city living with a wonderful family.  We especially enjoyed when the oldest child showed us her home work of transcribing words into Chinese characters and definitions.  What a neat advantage they will have being raised by American, English speaking parents in the Chinese language and culture.

Another interesting experience I had was trying to buy flowers from the nearby florist shop to bring to our host and his wife.  I did a little pre-buying research to have the words ready for our interaction and negotiation.  As I entered the shop, the woman began to show me how much the different arrangement options were by typing the numbers onto a calculator.  Once I decided, I went to pay.  The exchange rate in China is abut 6 RMB (Chinese) to 1 US.  Therefore, you lose perspective about how much money you need.  So, the arrangement I selected was 180RMB or about 30US.  Unfortunately, that left me a little short in the cash department.  So, I offered my credit card.  Yeah, good luck with that.  This is where the story gets interesting.  I was escorted to the back of the store to try and get the credit card machine to process.  Suddenly I got the distinct impression that I was not only in a florist, but I was also in a pet store...well, sort of.  You see, as we tried to process the credit card, big furry animals with long tails continued to scurry around.  While I began to watch around myself in a 360 degree way with my head on a swivel, my floral credit card processor remained unfazed and focused on the task at hand.  Of course, wanting to exit the shop with my flowers and without a chance meeting with Willard, we continued to have machine processing issues.  Therefore, I offered to go get more money from the ATM.  Success was soon found and upon return, I did not stray from the front foyer of the store in case I had to exit quickly.  Needless to say, the flowers were a big hit and for what equaled about 30US we got what would have been easily a $100+ arrangement in the states.  Plus, I got to experience the local pet store.

After dinner, we rested a bit and headed over for our 3rd evening shift.

Until tomorrow...