Our trip to Zhuzhou and the orphanage

Zhuzhou was about a one hour drive from the hotel. This was a different kind of trip -- not same as Ben's. Ben's trip was unique because his orphanage no longer exists - he was the first boy adopted out of the Heilongjoung Provence and only 36 kids total were adopted out of his orphanage and then they closed the Children's Welfare Institute for children and opened a new one. When we visited his orphanage this time there were no children there. However, the assistant director of the orphanage from 10 years ago was now the Director of what was now a home for the elderly and disabled adults - she remembered Ben. They were able to locate his foster mother and we could spend the day with her and of course she remembered Ben because she only fostered two children it turned out. When we adopted Hannah we did not go to the orphanage - however, when we adopted Ben we went to the orphanage two days after we adopted Ben for a big celebration and ceremony, since the children adopted with Ben were the first adopted from his orphanage. For whatever the reason, when we adopted Hannah we did not visit the orphanage. The orphanage that Hannah was from was very large and had adopted out hundreds of children, mostly girls before Hannah. We had never met the director of her orphanage and because it was so large, they probably would not remember her. When Ben was found, he was found in the same city as the orphanage. Hannah was found at a police station on the doorsteps in a town called Chaling - a very difficult two hour drive past Zhuzhou - and then she was taken to the orphanage. She was found by a policeman. When we arrived in Changsha this time, we had to make a decision whether to drive, after our orphanage visit to the rural area of Chaling to visit her finding spot and see if anyone would recognize the name of the policeman who found her. After much discussion with Hannah and both Herb and I, we decided to visit the orphanage but not take the rural drive - 2 hours of dirt bumpy roads to the finding spot.
The orphanage where Hannah was from is pretty progressive and thanks to many families who adopted from there many years ago there is a website which lists things that the orphanage needed. With that list we went to a big supermarket - Walmart-like and bought a DVD player, many cans of formula and large packages of diapers of many sizes. We arrived at the orphanage at 10:00 a.m. We met the current director and some of the teachers. They toured us around the entire orphanage. The orphanage now has over 300 children but well over 2/3 of them are in foster care and were not at the orphanage. The children remaining at the orphanage and who we saw are all special needs and severely disabled children - both physically and mentally. It was quite heart breaking. there are many children who may never get adopted. They had young adults as old as 30 years old there - at that point they are in apartment/group homes, cared for. The orphanage was not in great shape, but somewhat, pretty clean and it appeared the children were well cared for. The rooms were air conditioned for the most part. There were several rooms where they had equipment such as parallel bars and exercise mats for the children to receive physical therapy. There were a number of babies who you could tell may be Down Syndrome children and it was frankly - again, very painful and sad to realize that their chances of being adopted were so minuscule. They took us to the 5th floor where we were told that Hannah was when she was a baby. That is the picture of the empty room. In that room they would have about 14 babies - two to a crib. after our tour we met a number of the older disabled children - we saw the playground that was donated by a number of families and then took pictures with the directors. It was interesting - I had taken a dress from home for Hannah to wear for this visit. However, we had gone shopping and Hannah wanted a Chinese dress and we bought it and she decided she wanted to wear that to the orphanage so she did.

She did not have any questions about the orphanage, no reaction, no emotions that we could observe. It kind of worries us that she didn't. Many of the other children on the trip spent quite a bit of time talking about this - discussing it, being nervous, wanting to find out more about whatever they could - but Hannah had almost no reaction. we don't know whether it is suppressed and it may come out later, whether she is too young or just doesn't see a connection - I think only time will tell. We also asked the Director if we could see her original files. We were very disappointed that she told us that the person that had the keys to the files was out of town and they couldn't get into the files (how convenient). No matter how we asked, or how many times they just wouldn't share anything with us. In comparing with some other families we saw after their orphanage visits - some got new pictures they had never seen - some got more medical information or just notes that they had never been given. We were very disappointed - we were told there was nothing that had not been already given to us and that there is no information about her birth parents at all. We had to accept this.

They gave Hannah a beautiful book of 2010 Year of the Tiger stamp collector's book - and we took the two teachers out to lunch after our visit. Early afternoon, we left Zhuzhou and came back to Changsha. The pictures below are driving to Zhuzhou, the orphanage building, her room, the playground, and pictures with the Director of the orphanage.

After our return back from the orphanage we had to go to the Office of Adoptions for Hunan Province - because we had to pay our fees for visiting the orphanage - 900 yuan. I guess because adoptions are down and homeland visits are up they decided to charge families for visiting the orphanages. We never did figure out why we didn't have to pay this in Harbin for Ben, but the mysteries of how things work in China still allude me!

When we got to this office it turns out that the same lady who did the paperwork for us 8 years ago was still there. She wasn't in the office, but she was expected soon. We paid our fee and they called her and she quickly returned to the office to see Hannah. Here is the incredible part (and you will have to go to the next blog to see the pictures or else they will end up in front of these pictures and I am too tired to redo the blog so they are in the right spot - but the next blog will have the pictures I am referring to): This lady not only remembered Hannah but we had our pictures with us from our original adoption and showed her the pictures - she said she had the same picture of the three of us ( her, Hannah and me) at her house. I guess we had emailed it to her 8 years ago or she had the same picture - so of course we took more pictures - see next blog for pictures....

After we got back from that adventure Hannah went swimming and I continued to try to get caught up on this blog! Meanwhile Herb emailed this lady from the office of adoption the new pictures of all of us and she returned our email within an hour thanking us, and saying lovely things about Hannah and her wishes for her (and our) happiness....it was all very sweet and memorable.

That evening one other family who was going to do their orphanage visits the next day arrived, and another family who had traveled via plane with us from Guilin got back from their touring ( they were doing their orphanage visit on Tuesday also) and we all had dinner together in the restaurant at the hotel. They had a big buffet including turtle soup, sushi, braised snake, hand tossed pizzas, lamb chops, roast whole pig(let). It was fun to eat some western food such as pizza - Ben ate an entire cheese pizza himself.

We (our family) was leaving for Guangzhou the next day (Tuesday early afternoon) for the last final leg of our journey! We had such great memories of both of our trips to Guangzhou with each of the children - it is where we finalize the adoptions, go to the American Consulate and stay at the wonderful White Swan Hotel! We were going back to enjoy the hotel, show the kids where we took their passport pictures and finalized all the paperwork! We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare - however, we had much more time than we had bargained for because our plane was about 2.5 hours late - fortunately we still arrived in Guangzhou around 5:30 at were at the wonderful White Swan Hotel by 7:00 in time to go to Lucy's for dinner!