Friday, July 5 - Orphanage visit and bullet train to Hangzhou

Today was an exciting day because we got to visit TongJie's orphanage.  It's in a new building in a different part of the city now, but still the same staff and the same Wenzhou Children's Welfare Institute.  We got there around 10:00 and we were immediately impressed by how big and nice the new building is.  It is bright and has lots of space, both indoors and outdoors.  There is a colorful playground and open courtyards for kids to play, and everything looks bright and cheery and kid friendly.  The orphanage staff who led us on our tour kept reminding us that it's not quite finished yet, and they don't even have a gate yet, which I guess is a big deal to them, but we thought it was a really nice facility.  Right away, we got to see YiWen, TongJie's caregiver who came with him when he was a baby on the train to Hangzhou when we adopted him at the civil affairs office.  The director, who also came with him and YiWen in 2012, has since retired and there is a new director, but YiWen recognized him right away, as did a couple of the other ladies who were leading us on the tour who had been there when he was in the orphanage.  There were a lot of hugs and comments about how tall he is getting and how he still has the same eyes and still has long eyelashes, as well as asking if he is doing well in school.  Everyone was also commenting about his Wenzhou shirt that he was wearing (from Grandma Scheibner), and one of the ladies gave TongJie and Ezekiel each a stuffed animal at the beginning of our tour, which was really nice especially for Ezekiel to have something to carry around with him.  It was a little hard for Ezekiel to have all of the focus on TongJie, but he really did quite well for most of the time.  We went on a tour of the orphanage and they said we could take pictures inside of the orphanage as long as no kids were in the pictures.  We saw and hugged a lot of little kids with special needs (mostly boys) who all were very happy to see visitors and came right up to us wanting to be hugged and picked up.  We couldn't talk to them other than "Ni Hao" but that was okay.  The orphanage is a lot like a school, and the kids are divided into different rooms by age and the older ones by developmental level.  We looked into some rooms where the students were in class just like at school and we didn't go in, but in the rooms with the younger kids we did go in.  They do occupational and physical therapy in small groups so we got to see some of that, and we went into a room with older kids who were doing art at a table.  One teenage boy, who is blind, played a song for us on the piano in the art room.  Sarah said that he has just graduated from middle school and they are getting ready to transfer him to the building next door for high school and some vocational training.  Jeff remembered that boy from when we were at the orphanage in 2012 and they confirmed that it was the same boy.  In the art room there was a whole wall of shelves with kids' artwork and crafts displayed.  All the rooms that we saw were bright and open with lots of windows and potted plants both inside and outside.  It was a very pleasant orphanage and it really seemed like the kids were happy and well taken care of.  There were a whole bunch of photographs displayed in all of the hallways, some of kids in the orphanage on field trips or special events, and some of kids who have been adopted with their families.  The lady leading the tour probably could have told us about all of the kids and families in the photographs if we would have had time, but she pointed out quite a few with special stories (those who had gotten adopted as older children, families who had adopted two children both from that orphanage, children with more severe special needs who are now thriving in families, etc.) and there was even a picture of our family!  It was after we had Ezekiel too, so that was nice that we were all in it.  Sarah took a picture of us next to the picture of our family.  One of the most special things, besides getting to see YiWen, was that we got to meet the caregiver who gave TongJie his name.  All of the kids who came into the orphanage in 2010 were given the surname "Sun," and all of the kids who came between July and September were given the name "Tong," but Mrs. Zhao chose the name "Jie" specially for TongJie.  It means "hero" in Chinese.  We took a picture of TongJie with Mrs. Zhao.  Then we got to look at TongJie's file from the orphanage.  Most of it we'd seen before in all the paperwork involved with his adoption, but there were some new pieces of information that we learned from his file, such as the policeman's name who filed the abandonment report, and the time of day (around 8:10 in the evening) that the police station got the phone call about a baby being discovered abandoned at the orphanage gate.  We also got a photo of him as a baby that we'd never seen before.  It's one of only two photos that we've seen of him before his lip was repaired, and it was when he was first admitted to the orphange so his hair hadn't been cut short yet - he was a baby with a lot of hair!  He was very cute.  TongJie was delighted to hear from his file that as a baby he liked to throw toys and he liked to watch TV!  He still likes to do those things.  :)  We had lunch at the orphanage with some of the orphanage staff.  There was a lot of seafood because Wenzhou is on the coast, and we had a special fish soup that is a specialty of Wenzhou.  The soup was good, it was kind of sour like hot and sour soup from American Chinese restaurants, but the broth was clear and it had large chunks of fish.  TongJie liked the soup, and he liked the shrimp even though they were hard to peel.  There was also a plate of mussels that were good.  TongJie did a really good job of trying things and being adventurous and Ezekiel tried bites of most of the things I gave him too, but he mostly filled up on the rice and pork.  There was a big bowl of cucumber chunks (not slices) with sugar and they were surprisingly good that way.

After lunch, we went to the Wenzhou train station and took a bullet train to Hangzhou.  We checked into our 7th (!) and final hotel of this trip, which is the same hotel we stayed in when we were adopting TongJie in 2012, and then went to Pizza Hut near our hotel at the boys' request with Sarah for dinner.  It was getting late, but we walked around a little bit so Sarah could show us a grocery store that we want to walk to in the morning.  We got back to our room after 8:00 and once again TongJie and Ezekiel crashed into bed as soon as teeth were brushed and pajamas on.  Tomorrow we're planning to go to a market because the boys want to buy a few more things and we've been suggesting that they save some of their money for shopping in Hangzhou.  They also really want to swim in the pool, so hopefully we'll have time for that too before our last night in the hotel.  This has been an amazing trip!  I wanted to add one more thing about this trip, in case I don't get a chance to tomorrow . . . this is a paragraph from our travel handbook from Sun Travel (the agency that plans the adoption heritage trips).  It's a little bit cheesy, but pretty much sums up why we wanted to take TongJie and Ezekiel on this trip and really what I feel like we've gotten out of it:

"If we had to boil it down to one thing, a heritage trip is about making your adopted children feel proud of who they are and where they come from.  This is one of the ways to show them that China, their birth country, is a magnificent place of ageless wonders, diverse peoples, and thousands of years of tradition, and to make sure that they know - through interaction with our exceptional adoption guides, friendly locals, and the kind people who cared for them before they joined your family - that love has no boundaries, and that they are important, not just in the U.S., but even halfway around the world!"         

Photos:

1.  Our family with some of the orphanage staff at the new orphanage in Wenzhou (YiWen is the one with her hand on TongJie's shoulder)

2.  TongJie and Jeff recreating a picture from when TongJie was a baby and we stayed in this same hotel in Hangzhou

3.  Ezekiel and Sarah deep in a discussion about the history of the Chinese dynasties at Pizza Hut