Orphanage Visit Day

Yesterday, we finalized all the paperwork for here in Province. After a long morning of paperwork, we came back to the hotel to a lunch of peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Turns out, Kameron hates peanut butter. Each day we learn more about him. His likes and his dislikes.

In one of these small apartments, is where the Kunming City orphange and Civial Affairs does the adoption paperwork. They found that having this done in the government buildings was quite intimidating to the children and "many babies would cry." 

To celebrate our success in completing a lot of paperwork, we went out for dinner. Kameron helped us order and with resturant edicate. He ordered very spicy but very yummy food. I was a HUGE fan of the dumplings!

Today, was Orphange Visit Day. I have got to say, that I was incredibly honored for the privillege to visit the orphange and the people who helped care for our son. It turns out, he is an incredibly popular guy! Everyone knew him and were joking around with him. I could tell it was a bit hard for him, but he was a trooper! He put up with mom's repeated papparazzi moments with only mild groans.

The sign and the gate of the orphanage. 

It was an extremely large place and it even has its own hospital there. We were impressed by how clean it was. The rooms were bright and colorful. And every worker at the orphanage, whether they were administrative, housekeeping, doctors, nurses or nannies-- they seemed to deeply care for the children.

A model of the vast property and buildings of the Kunming City orphanage.

We got to meet some very important people to Kameron's story. We learned much more about our boy then we had known before. We are very thankful that we got to meet these people and that they felt open to share more with us about Kameron.

This is the very first person we met. She is an incredibly friendly and warm person. She is a nurse and was there and cared for our boy the first day he was brought to the orphanage.

 The lady in gray was the main person from the orphanage with our adoption. She helped with paperwork and gave us the tour of the orphanage. We found her to be very friendly, always smiling, and liked to joke with Kameron. 

This is us with the doctor and staff who first treated Kameron when he came to the orphanage. She spoke very good English, which aside from our guide, we haven't encountered too much of here. She gave us lots more medical information about our son. There are also nannies that helped care for Kameron when he was in the orphanage.

This was Kameron's favorite nanny. He kept asking and calling for her. This was the first time he asked me to take a picture (as opposed to mom insisting) :)

This is where Kameron lived, I believe, before being placed in his foster family. He also stayed in a special room for the 3 days before Gotcha Day. There he had very personalized care and had a couple nannies.

This lovely lady helped care for Kameron the few days he was in the orphange, before our Gotcha Day.

We got to see many rooms for the babies and the toddlers. In Kunming they have a separate (outside of the gate) small building (the size of a small shed) that has a bed and is warm and safe. This allows mothers that want to abandon their babies to do so safely. This orphanage is one of only two that do this. Its such a complex emotion, to feel grateful for something that is so incredibly heartbreaking.

We learned some startling statistics. Last year, they had 200 children abandoned. This year, 100 children. And only maybe half of these will ever get adopted. And that broke our hearts.

Many of the children are placed in foster families some distance away and in a rural village. We were not able nor allowed to go there this time. But if we return for a visit with Kameron, we could go visit there. I was a bit sad (but had been prepared) that this would likely be the case. We so wish we could thank Kameron's foster parents ourselves for the great care and love they showed our boy. Jesse and I suspect a return to China, and specifically Kunming, will be in our future.

After visiting the orphanage, we got to have lunch with our guide, Susan. What an incredible blessing this woman is! I don't think I have ever seen her not smile. The joy she has for her job is evident. We have been so grateful for her. She jokes with Kameron and she has really helped us ease Kameron and get him out of his shell. She tells us often, "he is very smart, very funny, and a very good boy." She may have offered to take him home to teach her son a thing or two.

Susan and Kameron at lunch after our orphanage visit. I promise Kameron smiles, but mom had taken a million pictures today.

After lunch we had some rest time back at the hotel. Jesse and Kameron like to play games and communicate back and forth on the iPad. He tries to teach us Chinese words and then laughs at how horribly we pronounce them. He has now said well over 15 English words. Which we very emphatically encourage. He picks things up quickly and misses nothing!

After, we walked around Green Lake, a very busy local spot. We seemed to be the only tourists around. I got my 10,000 steps in easily.

Two of the entrances to Green Lake Park.

And they even have adult exercise equipment (the red and yellow structures). 

Here is a picture of Green Lake with the "very lucky birds" (seagulls) we mentioned in a previous post.

Green Lake is known for the Lotus Flower. But it fades this time of year. The weather has been very good. Only requiring a light jacket in the morning and evenings. It's easy to see why they call it "eternal spring" here.

Well, its dinner time here. And we are eating panda...

(Instant noodles with panda faces in them. They also come with individual forks, which is just genius!)

(And these are panda shaped twinkies. These have chocolate filling and are delicious)

We are having a fabulous time here. Tomorrow we have sightseeing and shopping. Our posts will be a bit less frequent and will be longer as time allows for us to update. We are having a great time getting to know Kameron. He is an incredibly kind and thoughtful young man.