3/17/11 - Day 8: Xuzhou Orphanage Visit

Today we visited April & Carter's orphanage. We had a fabulous multi course Chinese lunch at a local restaurant with some of the orphanage officials, visited the park where Carter was found, got a driving tour of Xuzhou, enjoyed the great Chinese high speed trains, were able to visit with some of the other waiting children at the orphanage, and toured different areas of the orphanage.

We learned Carter was the favorite of a nanny who worked there as a temporary second job. She is no longer there but still visited him. When she left she told the other nannies to give him extra attention. We also learned that our son can be naughty and that he threw this nanny's shoes in the trash, which led to her having to go home in slippers.

We asked about how much he ate at the orphanage. The nannies said they cut him off when they thought he had eaten enough and that he tried to take food from other kids.

The officials and nannies at the orphanage were very excited to see April. It was an emotional day for her but she managed to rally and spend time talking to and hugging the different people. She recognized some kids and was happy to see them again. We are very proud of her.

Carter continues to amaze us by how comfortable he is with us and the behaviors he exhibits that we did not expect to see for weeks or months. He will be a handful when we get home, but we are so happy to have him as part of our family. He is sleeping well at night (so far), which is great!

I heard a knock at the door about 10 pm while Lisa was sending some emails and pictures we took to parents who are in the process of adopting other children from Xuzhou. Thinking it was one of the kids (possibly Bennett coming back from Grandma & Grandpa's room after April pushed him out of the bed while they were sleeping again), I opened it. This pretty well dressed girl was there. I expected her to say "sorry, wrong room", only to have her gently push by me and start walking in the room. Stunned, I stopped her with "excuse me?". She replied she was there for the massage service! I told her she had the wrong room and she left. We are pretty sure this was a "full service" massage service. Just for the record, my personal masseuse (er ... wife) is already asleep now but Lisa insisted we needed to include this visit in the blog.

The pictures for today start off with Carter's two fisted food delivery service at breakfast this morning.

Tomorrow we get Carter's Chinese passport and fly to Guangzhou to start the U.S. paperwork. After breakfast and packing, we plan to wander around the Confucius Temple market again before it is time to leave.

The next two pictures are of a photo in a framed set on the wall as you walk into the orphanage. The first photo is from when we visited the orphanage in October 2009 afer adopting April. We visited the orphanage with 2 other families (Ken & Erica and Sheri & Ben) who had adopted their children from Xuzhou the same week as us. The second picture shows the framed set our picture is in.