Orphanage visit

Today we went to Arianna's orphanage. It was an interesting experience. Arianna was very happy to be able to go back and say goodbye to her friends and to show off her new family. When we got to the city that she is from she recognised it right away. She directed our driver to the right road to go down to get to the orphanage. When we drove through the gates she saw one of her friends walking around. She jumped up in the van and wanted to get out while it was still moving! We had to tell her to sit down again and wait until we were stopped before she could get out. We could not get the door open fast enough! After we got out she lead us right to the orphanage office and she ran in and said hello to everyone. All the people in the office were just as happy to see her. We could tell that she was very well liked by everyone there. We then went up to a reception room and had some local fruit and tea and visited with the vice director of the orphanage. A little later we got to visit the children that were in the orphanage and specifically Arianna's friends. Her friends were very happy to see her too. We had brought some treats for the kids that Arianna and Annika and Tim handed out. The kids all enjoyed them very much. There was one little boy that Lauren's mom and I wanted to know about, because he is good friends with Lauren and Arianna. I was able to find out his name and his age and that his file had been sent to the CCAA already. We found out that his file and Arianna's file and three other girls' files had been sent at the same time, but Arianna was the only one of the five children that had a family. It just tore my heart out to know that these beautiful children might not have a chance to have a family. I know that I will do everything I can to find out were the file for this little boy is so that I can advocate for him and he can find a family also.
After we spent time with the older kids we went upstairs to see the babies and Arianna's old room. There were only a few babies and as far as I could tell they all had SN's. There was one tiny baby who was very cute, but I don't know if it was a boy or girl. I think it was a girl,if it was and she was healthy she will most likely find a home with a family in China. The orphanage that Arianna comes from does a lot of domestic adoptions.
Arianna's room was nice, in that it was clean and neat. Her bed was a youth sized bed with metal rails all around it and a wooden board for the bottom. On top of the wooden board was a bamboo mat and a couple of blankets. There is a major problem with mosquitoes there so the windows had screens, but I don't think it helped much.
After our tour of the orphanage and the grounds, we loaded back up into the van and drove a short way to a Chinese restaurant. It was a very nice place, and we got to eat in a private room. After some tea and chatting for awhile our food started to come out. The first dish looked really good, it was some fried meat and onions and peppers. We were given one small piece of meat each to try first. We asked our guide what it was and she told us that it was Camel meat! I tried it, it tasted pretty good but it was very chewy and the texture left much to be desired. After that they started bringing out more and more and more food. Some of our choices were eel with it head still on the plate, abalone in the half shell, massive shrimp with two inch legs hanging down, whole small crabs shell and all, cooked lettuce, mushroom with fish meat, and watermelon. After a very short time Tim decided that he was way to full to eat any more. I was pretty brave and tried almost everything. Some was good,some was not. We spent about two hours just eating lunch and visiting with the orphanage staff. When we were done eating, we went outside and got pictures of everyone with the director.
We headed back to Guangzhou at about 1:45 pm. On the way back we ran into some road construction that we had to go around, so we ended up away from the expressway that we needed to be on. We ended up getting very lost! Our guide and driver had never been to the city that we were in so they didn't know how to get back onto the expressway, so we ended up paying a motorcycle taxi driver to lead us through the city and back onto the right road. It was quite the adventure! The drive back should have only taken us about an hour and 45 minutes but it ended up taking us until 4:00 pm to get back. At one point our guide said that we may need to stay the night in the other city! When she said that I started praying hard! When we got back to our hotel I thanked the Lord many times for getting us back safety and on the same day!
After all that we just had a nice quiet evening and cheeseburgers at Lucy's.