7/27 - Guiyang & Foster Family, Part 1

Today was very emotional!  It began around 9 am when we met our guide and went to the Guiyang orphanage.  It took about 40 minutes to get there and the neighborhood surrounding the orphanage was so sad!!  The government is building bigger, "prettier" buildings and in doing so demolished an entire neighborhood.  Some homes were still standing amongst all the rubble and a few families were in tents.  It's mind boggling!  All over China we've seen how there is new construction everywhere and each guide has said pretty much the same thing...those new buildings aren't occupied yet or they are too expensive for local people to live in.... Why build then?  Well, it gives people a job.  :(

The orphanage itself is set among lots of beautiful trees and landscape, the buildings however are old but seem well maintained.  We visit with one of the directors who has Megan's file but was not here when Megan was.  (The director was about 7 months pregnant.  We've actually seen many pregnant ladies in Guiyang!).   She had Megan's file and went through it a bit.  We were able to take a few pics of some of the papers we didn't have.  She slid the file over to me and said I could go through it.  As I started to go through it somehow it was slyly slid back over to here.  I didn't even notice she did that as we were talking but that happened two times.  I never did get through the file.  😕  She tells us that Megan's foster family is coming too.  As we wait for them, she takes us on a tour.  The first building is where the kids who are too sick to go our or be adopted live.  She said she doesn't even have permission to go in that building.  Next was the cafeteria building and a small, old playground. The next building was the "teaching" building where the children live.  Odd, there are no children around.  There are 8 couples who live here too and each couple provides family type care for 4 children each.  They are to live as a family and then most of those kids are adopted.  Megan had to use the bathroom and so we went into one of the family apartments.  The mom was cleaning because there was a bleach smell, laundry was being done and the dad was making lunch, just a regular summer day.  The main building is where we started and all of the offices are here.  Upstairs there is a medical clinic and both PT and OT rooms, each had a few kids in them for therapy.  The director told us they hav 400 children (yet we only saw a few).  She said that over 90% were special needs and of those a very high % were "unadoptable".  This orphanage also uses several foster families.  She never really said how many lived at this facility.

Kyle asked about funds and how they go about getting new playground equipment.  (It could really use some modernization!  Lot of rusty things.). She said that they would apply for a grant for special projects and if approved they would wait for the government to then take care of it.  If someone gave money for a special project, the money would go into a fund and wait until approval for that project.  When asked what needs they had, she said they have enough funding and actually give back their extra funds.  What????   Extra funds? Give back?  😟  What she said they need is people to come and love the kids and adopt them.  💔
As we were getting ready to leave she took another phone call (had a few earlier too) and supposedly the Foster family wasn't going to make it, said it was too inconvenient for them.  Hmm! (Were they even informed or was this just "lip service"?)  Megan was so disappointed!! All of us were really, even our guide!  We were told that the orphanage doesn't even have direct contact with the foster family, that there is a "middleman" they work with.  As we left, our guide said he could take us to the hospital which was Megan's finding location.  Then he asked if we could have lunch there as his mom was one of the cafeteria managers.  Lunch was nice, we had a private dining room and our guide was so excited to have us try some Squirrel Fish!  Interesting!!  The fish is cut into a chris-cross design then battered & deep fried.  When fried, it causes all of those chris-cross sections to pop out.  It reminded us of a blooming onion look.  The flavor was like sweet & sour, not bad but it had lots of little bones.  Too many for me! We once again had waaaayyyy too much food!  We just don't eat that much, especially having been sick and with the all heavy heat & humidity.  After lunch we took pics of the hospital.  The Women & Children's hospital has now been split into two parts connected by a walkway.  Both were quite busy!

Next stop was "Monkey Park" or officially known as Qinglin Park.  We visited back in 2008 and Megan was both excited and terrified back then, we guessed she must have visited as a toddler.  Today she was excited!  The park looks much the same with some additional shops along the entrance and a large video screen that is used for announcements and celebrations.  This visit we took the path up to the top where there is a large Buddhist temple.  It's also where all the monkey are now living.  The park officials had to move them up to higher ground as there was so many and they were becoming dangerous to the park visitors.  (Probably because the locals don't seem to follow the posted rules of no feeding/touching.)  This path took us past the large lake where there were several boaters enjoying the water & sunshine.  Megan got a stick of cotton candy which was larger than her head, she thought it was awesome!  As we neared the top we began to see lots of monkey and just as before, they will take whatever food they see so we made sure all our water bottles were secured inside our backpacks.  Megan took lots of pictures and was especially fond of watching the momma monkeys with the babies hanging onto them.  Natalee enjoyed watching from a distance.  Our guide thought since we were at the top we should walk through the temple.  Interesting!  Megan had lots of questions about the burning of incense and kneeling with all the fruit and such before these huge statue gods.  Our guide got her some blessing coins in which you try to drop them into the water so they land in one of the dishes at the bottom of the pond.  Megan was able to get her first coin into the dish.  Kyle & I were asked to be in a few pictures by the locals and Megan tried to touch the buddha belly which supposedly leads to blessings if you're able to do so.  So much "superstition".  About this time, our guide received a phone call.  He had heard from the middleman who invited us to his office and to meet with Megan's foster family.  A huge smile comes across Megans face at the same time nervousness sets in.

We no longer have our gifts either.  Oh, that was odd too.  At the orphanage, I gave the director a gift and a bag of gifts for the nannies (which we were not able to meet either).  She politely refused her gift and the nannies gifts too.  She said they were not allowed to received gifts.   Hmmm?   At the time we didn't know what to do with our gifts for the foster family.  The director and our guide convinced us to leave them at the orphanage with the assurance that they would get them to the middleman.  I wanted to keep them and try to get an updated address and mail them within China.  But, the pressure was on and so we left the gifts.  So... now we are going to the middleman's office to meet the foster family again and I have no gifts.  Ugh!  The only thing I have are the gifts that were for the nannies.

Oh, yeah, as we were leaving the orphanage Kyle noticed a Porsche parked by the offices.  He asked our guide who would be able to drive such a nice car.  Our guide was a bit stumped as he said the only people he knows able to afford such cars are rich kids who get their money from their parents hard work.  Most people can't afford them and he said that the orphanage workers could not drive them as they are considered government employees.  As government employees they are not allowed to use their salary on expensive cars.   Interesting!

One thing we've noticed about Guiyang is that they tend to have "neighborhoods" for each type of business.  For example, on our walk last night each business along one of the streets was for signs & trophies.  Another street was all computers and phones.  Today we passed a street that was all florists and plants with a different street all jewelry stores.  Makes for tough competition when it's all the same around you.  

We drove over to the "middleman's" office after the monkey park.  To be continued....