First day at Hidden Treasures

July 31, 1:30pm CT. This morning Malia took us to breakfast in the village at 7:30. We trudged through the rain, puddles, dirt, and mud to a little outdoor corner restaurant. It was basically a roof, 2 tables, plastic stools, and a stove. People from all over the village sat around eating noodles and dumplings. We all had peanut noodles and pork dumplings. It was so good. Everything seems to taste better in China. It was fascinating and humbling to eat with the local people under a roof on a dirt street in the rain. It's almost shocking to see the way these people live their everyday lives. Kyler and Shi Yu later gave us the tour. There are about 9 buildings that Hidden Treasures owns. We saw all the rooms and all the kids and workers. So many of the kids have severe Cerebral Palsy and Autism. The majority of the kids are non-verbal. Many of the kids however seems to have less severe special needs. Afterwards we ate lunch back at the guest house and met with the schedule coordinator to plan out the rest of the week. I'll be with the youngest kids this week. They're 3-5 year olds. Mostly heart defects, autism, and Down syndrome. We work 7am-7;30pm Tuesday to Saturday. Sunday after church and Monday before we leave, Malia will take us to see Fuzhou. Mostly markets and stuff.

I'll go to my kids room at 3 to meet the staff and kids better. Then we'll go to the local market to get foods for breakfast. It's been raining pretty much since we got here yesterday and it'll probably stay like this all week. Which is fine because it has been 115 degrees for the past few weeks. I'm very excited for the weeks ahead! I can already tell that these kids are going to bless my heart more than I am going to bless theirs. I won't be able to post pictures of the kids until I get back to the states but I'll write all about them and put names to faces later. There are about 15 children here that are available for adoption. Please share with anyone you know that may be interested in adoption of a child with special needs!

Here are some photos of the village:

6:45pm CT. Very fascinating and emotional day. At 3 Debbie and I went to the room on 2rd floor and Shyla and Alice went to 4th floor. I'll be there everyday all day for the next 5 days and Debbie will be there in the afternoons after her and Alice teach the girls to quilt in the mornings. There are 8 kids in our room 4 boys and 4 girls. I can't remember all their names yet; they're mostly Chinese names. 2 of the boys have Down syndrome and autism. Boy "A" is less severely autistic than boy "B". The two other boys are visually impaired. Boy C does not have eye balls and has severe autism as well. He does self inflicting pain a lot. He banged his head against hard objects over and over, including mine and Debbie's heads. He was probably the most heartbreaking of the group. Boy D who has eyes but can't see well, had heart surgery a while back. He seems to be more developed cognitively than the others. He really likes to lay on the floor and stare at the lights on the ceiling because they're bright enough for him to see. The four girls are amazingly full of hope! Girl A is 3 and has Down's syndrome. She is funny because the girls that work in the room say her hobby is napping (and it is). She fell asleep once while Debbie was holding her in our short time. They said she goes to school but falls asleep the whole time she's there 😂 (they have a school part for the more cognitively developed kiddos to attend in another part of the buildings for a couple hours a day.) Girl B had a stroke as a baby on one side of her body. They said she would never use that side of her body but today she's 4 or 5 and running all over the play room. She's probably the most active of all the kids! The last two girls are amazing. I'm not sure what Girl C's special need is. I know she's 5 and pretty small. She doesn't walk but crawls around well. They watch ASL videos during play time and she can sign very well! She may not say a lot but she can understand everything you are saying to her! She's so happy and smiles all the time! Girl D really touched me. She's 4 and has spina bifida. Her head, arms, and chest are normal size for her age but her waist down is very small. She is just absolutely beautiful! She seems to be on track cognitively. Frankly, I'm surprised she doesn't have a family yet. She's so beautiful and so full of life. She may not walk but she gets around on her arms perfectly fine!

I can't post pictures of the kids but if you would like to see them, tell either of my parents and they can have me send them pictures and videos.

The girls that work in the 2nd floor room don't speak much English, so it's difficult to communicate with them right now. They're all about my age or younger, which really surprised me! We'll go to the market in the morning, then go to the 2nd floor room at 7:30am. Tonight I plan to reorganize my stuff and go to sleep early.

Goodnight from Fuzhou!

Leaving Beijing

July 30, 12:30pm CT 

This morning we were able to sleep in until 9am. Even though we cancelled our 4am wake up call, they still called. 😑 We went back to sleep though, or at least I did! Then we woke up to another call at 9 from Debbie. I think she was bored and wanted us to be up 😂 We had breakfast down on the first floor. I wish hotel breakfast in the US was like they are in China. They have so much food of all sorts. This morning I skipped the congee, had so ham, fruit, bread, tea, coffee and some other stuff. I've eaten every meal with chopsticks here.

After breakfast we went back up to our rooms and packed up our stuff to be airplane ready. We bought so much yesterday that we're having a little trouble stuffing everything in already! Since we had so much time before our flight, we took a walk down the street of our hotel. Our final destination was a shopping mall called "the place." We were looking for the bathroom but the signs kept telling us to go upstairs. We took 3 or 4 escalators until we finally found it. I nabbed a western toilet but it still didn't have TP. They keep one holder on the wall outside the stalls by the hand dryer. I think I've used 3 or 4 squatty pottys during our trip so far. (If you don't know what that is, google it. I've meant to take a picture, but they're all so gross that I just can't get myself to do it 😂) When we were leaving, we found the bathroom on the first floor... lol oh well. Before we had made it to the place, we went into several little shops along the way. One was a fabric store with a little pregnant lady running it. The walls were lined with the most beautiful silk rolls. We went into one store with a boy a little younger than me running it. The front had a handwritten sign that said "fair prices, no negotiating." That was fine by us, we had had plenty of that yesterday. His sign was right! He had really really great prices. Debbie and I had a hay day in there! She finally got her umbrellas she had been looking for. I got 4 six packs of off brand command hooks for ¥4 each ($2.37 all together!), 2 apple brand lightning cords for ¥15 each ($4.45 all together). I also got a bunch of other things too. That was our major jackpot for the day! When we were leaving "the place" afterwards, a man on a motorized rickshaw (an enclosed motorcar thing) waved us down. I had been really wanting to ride in a rickshaw so me and Alice went with him. He didn't speak any English so we weren't for sure where he was taking us but he seemed to know what he was doing 😂 Just like everywhere in Beijing, the motor vehicles have the right of way above any bikes of or pedestrians. He drove really fast and on the sidewalks. Most everyone was coming towards us and he layed on his horn basically the whole ride! He stopped in front of the subway stations just a few blocks from our hotel. We payed and thanked him and went back to the hotel lobby to wait for Shyla and Debbie who opted to walk. 

3:20pm

We're at the airport now waiting for our flight to Fuzhou. The security is a lot tighter here than all the other places we've gone through. We all got frisked, had things we needed to take out and even took away. We said goodbye to LiLi before going through security. Me and Debbie bought some peaches at the Great Wall (it's peach season here) So we're eating our peaches and waiting for the flight. 

Goodbye Beijing!

This is a squatty potty

We just got to Hidden Treasures in Fuzhou! It was a really nice flight. We were the only non-asians on the plane lol. The plane was a lot bigger than I expected. All the seats had the TVs in the back of the seats like from Dallas to Hong Kong. We had a surprisingly good meal on the plane for Asian airlines. The flights that we have taken in-country have had a strict no phone policy. They want it turned all the way off for the whole flight. I didn't understand when we flew from HK to Beijing and got in trouble lol. So I watched Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 and then played some games on the tv. Kyler Temple picked us up at the airport in Fuzhou and we drove an hour to the village. It's very dark so it was hard to see the village today. We met some of the workers who helped showed us to our rooms. We stay in the guest building. It's 4 stories and our floor has 3 guest rooms with 2 bunk beds in each room. There's another typhoon coming through tonight so it's very muggy and humid! We've all gotten settled in and I'm headed to take a shower and go to sleep. We're going to breakfast in the village tomorrow morning then we'll meet the kids and get started! Good night from Fuzhou!

... "here's some bonus pics of our snacks in the Beijing airport. The chips were MUCH better tasting than original chips in the US and the packaging is so smart! Also, we took a bus from the airport to where the plane was parked to board.

2nd Day in Beijing

7/29, 9:30am China time, 8:30pm US time. We had a fun experience at breakfast this morning. The four of us we're sitting at a table in the restaurant part of the hotel. Two Chinese men and a woman sat at the table next to us. They stared at us and talked about us in Mandarin (as usual). We exchanged hellos. We were trying to figure out what one of the fruits were that we had. The guy at the table didn't speak a lick of English but was obviously enthralled with the American ladies. He came over and showed the fruit to us and said the name of it over and over in Chinese. We told him, "I don't know what your saying, we don't speak Chinese." I pulled up my translator app and spoke into it to ask "what is this fruit?" I showed him my phone and held up the little fruit. He was over joyed to try and help us! He spoke into my phone in Chinese, saying what the fruit was. It translated to "spring is very beautiful" 😂 We finally figured out on our own that the fruit was Leeche and what we thought was Leeche the other day was fig. We sat in the lobby afterwards waiting for our bus. He stayed with us and tried to get me to add him on WeChat (which is kind of Chinese Facebook). I tried to tell him I couldn't, but of course he couldn't understand me. LiLi told him I couldn't add him, in Chinese when she got there. It was a very funny experience. We told him goodbye and he grabbed my hand, kind of shook it, and bowed his head and touched his forehead to my hand. 

Right now we're driving through the Chinese country side for about and hour and half on our way to the Great Wall. 

1:30 Were driving back through the country side again leaving the Great Wall. It was an absolutely incredible experience! I was pretty worried about how the weather would be here before we left because it was supposed to rain our whole time in Beijing. The weather is perfect! There's been an overcast both days and a nice breeze today. We went to one of 4 tourist sections of the wall. We took our bus to the wall entrance where we pasted through a very aggressive street market 😂 The people selling from their booths we all shouting, "HELLO!? HELLO!? LADY LADY LADY! You need t-shirt, you need oom-bray-ya! (Umbrella) I give you low price!" They would chase us down, grab our arms, and follow us, the whole time shouting in broken English. It's very funny but kinda stressful! The First Lady tried to sell me a t-shirt for ¥280 ($40)! I told her "no no no! You crazy!" I got one for ¥25 ($3.75). After we got through the market, we took a chair lift up to the top of the wall. It was a beautiful ride up there! We climbed the wall for a while. The part we were on, sloped way down and then way back up again. We climbed down to the bottom and about a 1/4 of the way up the next slope. It wasn't very crowded at all. The breeze was so nice and not too hot. Climbing down wasn't bad but climbing back up took us a while! It was VERY steep! We rested back at the top for a while, then we got to take a toboggan down the mountains!! It was just one of the coolest experiences! It was basically a half metal pipe that lay through the mountains all the way back down to the entrance. We sat on this chair that folded in half. There was a stick in the middle that you used to control the speed. I would have liked to go a lot faster but with all the people in front of us, we were close to bumper to bumper at times. The people in front of us kept stopping. After we got back to our van, LiLi took us to a tea house where her friend performed a Chinese tea ceremony for us. That was a really neat little unexpected experience. The tea was very very high quality and lasts for many years. The tea lady taught us all the kinds of tea and their uses. I bought 3 kinds of tea and a tall tea cup with a strainer that changes the design on the outside of the cup when it gets hot! We went to the Pearl market after our little detour. When we think of markets in the US, we think food. But not in China. When you hear market, it means more like a flea market for new items. Many people with their booths of virtually the same thing, where you haggle for the best price. This particular market was at least 4 stories of just booths and a couple more with restaurant type places. The people are SO aggressive! Just like at the wall they will yell and grab you and chase you down to get you into their booth. If you hesitate in front of someone's booth, they will pester you until you either ignore them and walk (quickly) away or buy something. Even though it's a little stressful, it's also really fun. I think we got lots of great deals. 

Tomorrow we go to Fuzhou, our final destination, to spend a week at Hidden Treasure. We were originally supposed to fly out of Beijing at 6:40am but the flight was cancelled due to a typhoon in Fuzhou. Now we leave at 4:20pm. I think we're all totally fine with the later flight. We were not looking forward to our 4am wake up call! Goodnight from Beijing!

Beijing China

July 28 9:30pm China time, 8:30am US. One thing I think about as we're driving around the streets of China, is how big the world is but how small it is at the same time. Dreaming about a place you want to visit is much different than actually being there in person. When you dream about it, it's surreal and almost imaginary. When you're there however, you're completely immersed in the culture of other human beings who are both so same and so different. I'm a people watcher, so I'm completely enthralled with watching these people of China and how they look, talk, dress, act, how they look at us, how their kids look, act and dress. While out and about in Tiananmen Square, the summer palace, the Olympic campus from 2008, and everywhere else we went today, we were as much of a sight to see for these domestic tourists as the historic areas. I lost track of how many time we took pictures with different people and how many times they tried to be a little less obvious and just take pictures of us like that's what we were there for. We were even followed for a while. 

Today we started at Tiananmen square. It's Friday here so the domestic  tourism rate was high. LiLi our guide, says that many of the people are from all over China. That coming to Beijing is similar to them as NYC or Washington DC for us. It's the big city and if the people are from a rural area, that they may have never seen anyone who was not Chinese before. We were asked to take pictures with people a lot and we were constantly pointed and stared at. I couldn't decide if I felt more like a celebrity or an exotic zoo animal. 

We saw way more of the Forbidden City than what we did when I was here before. LiLi told us all about the history and the emperors and the dynasty's. She is very knowledgeable about Chinese history. After that we drove to the Birds nest and whole campus area where the Olympics were held. By that time, is was so hot and tired that it was difficult to enjoy. We ate lunch after that at a hotel restaurant that was very good. We had meat (hopefully chicken), sticky rice, fried fish, water spinach, sweet egg drop soup, corn, jasmine tea, and watermelon for desert. We went to the summer palace after lunch which is so much bigger than I thought. It is really a very long stretch of land along the side of the lake that is shaped like a dragon. It was interesting to see all the hundreds of families visiting the summer palace who looked like they spend the day there. There were people sitting and relaxing along the lake and on the palaces. When we finally reached the end, we took a dragon boat back to the entrance where our driver picked us up and we went to the hotel where the Chinese Opera show was at. We had 2 hours to kill before the show started so we ate dinner there and did some shopping in the big souvenir store. I had a very hard time staying awake during the show but the parts that I saw where pretty cool. They incorporated Kung Fu and kind of a dance into the show. We said goodnight to LiLi after the show and the driver took us back to the hotel. We are all dead tired. We'll get up at 6:30am to eat before LiLi meets us at 8 to make the trip to the Great Wall. Good night from Beijing!

Squatty potties  port-o-potties