It is a funny thing about doing a blog - you really have no idea if anyone is reading this - except my mother who emails me on a regular basis to tell me how much she enjoys this (of course, I would absolutely expect this from my mother, greatest fan :)) When we were in China last, 8 years ago we did group email, and attached a few pictures when we could - this is so different - it is so out there, but yet, you have no idea of reactions.
The very cool thing is that now blogspot keeps sending us messages that for $14.95 we can create a book of this - so I think, although I will be creating a special memory scrapbook for each kid to capture this trip with pictures, ticket stubs and all that, what this has done is really given me an opportunity within just a few days to capture feelings, impressions and get them quickly "somewhere" since it is not on paper - yet. So, I am now going to just throw out some random thoughts - if you are just looking at pictures, just skip over this - it is as much for me to remember as to share.
Thank goodness for the western and Asian buffet breakfasts each morning. They typically have good coffee - not Starbucks (which I am having serious withdrawal from) but pretty good and they always have hot milk which is great with the coffee. They always have bacon and some type of McDonald's style potatoes in little hash brown cakes and bottles of ketchup - Ben will eat about 4 of those each morning. Hard boiled eggs (always boiled until the yolk is very dark) is also a favorite of Ben's. They typically always have chocolate rice crispies and mostly cold milk for it. We spend as much time as we can stuffing the kids with as much as they can eat in the morning. All the buffets also seem to have banana bread - interestingly. They make omelets and fried eggs as well. Asian favorites for breakfast include rice soup - many favorites - like red bean rice soup - congee, or noodle soup, or fresh fried fish, sauteed vegetables - everything you would expect at dinner. I have to admit I have become a bit addicted to these little sesame balls in the morning with coffee - sweet with some type of bean paste inside. For the mot part the best part for Ben has been learning to play card games including cribbage with some of the kids and adults. Hannah has made some wonderful little girlfriends - there are a total of 14 kids, including one 14 year old boy, biological brother of Chinese born girl who is I think 9 or 10 and then Ben. The girls ranged from 14 down to 6.5, who was Celia who Hannah became close with. As soon as Celia left Hannah became close to another couple of girls including Rose, whose parents are from NJ. we had one psychiatrist, two psychologists, another child care specialist who teaches, a neurologist who specializes in head aches, along with an archaeologist, a Harvard librarian, a lovely lady who is the sister of the psychiatrist who lives in Georgetown who has a Montessori school. Another sister of a mother is a teacher who lives in Dubai with her husband and she is the one who taught Ben how to play cribbage. The husband of the neurologist is an executive from a plastic manufacturer who does business in Asia a lot and they were able to dovetail some business with this trip. It has been an amazing group of people we traveled with. Frankly Herb and I had very low expectations for this trip - we were excited to take the kids back, knew it was important for the family, but did not really expect that this would be an enjoyable trip - just something that was important to do. We were so wrong. This trip has been not just been enjoyable - but wonderful - from the people we have met - the new friends that we know we will stay in touch with to the explorations of new cities - we have visited fascinating cities, met interesting people, have an entirely different perspective of China now and realized that we should come back in five years with the kids again. I think frankly that Hannah will need this particularly - more on her orphanage visit later. Ben took it all in and has enjoyed it but emotionally, he is still just too young to absorb what he is experiencing and what it means. his happiness has come from playing, eating and the games he has enjoyed. Hannah has been able to make new friends, share with other girls their experiences - but she also is more excited about the next pool at the next hotel than the heritage they have learned about. I don't think this is very different from many children their age, but I do think we owe it to them to take them back as teenagers. The 14 year old girl named Hannah (we have 3 Hannahs on our trip) is very fascinating with the history, the experiences of meeting Chinese teenagers and adults, has taken each experience and journaled for herself. she has created a poster of herself as a baby and as she looks today (which by the way - she is spectacularly beautiful) and is posting these posters around her home town when they do their orphanage visit to see if she can locate her birth parents. I am not sure if she posted a phone number, or email or website or how she will connect, but she is committed to trying. that is the difference between a 14 year old and a 8 year old on this trip - she understands where she is going and what she is facing - she is trying to find some history. That is not to say that every 14 year old who goes back is interested in this - but she is intellectually aware of her history and is seeking to find something. We will be interested to find out if she finds anything. Each child will come home with some memory of their orphanage visit. We (the parents) are anticipating that we may not hear anything about what they are thinking to maybe months later - as they may think about it and want to ask questions later - we are planning to keep in touch so we can share and compare what comes out of this. Anyway, I do think it will be great to come back in 5 years and do another tour with a other families - maybe some of the same ones and see how the trip differs - we would also go to other cities which we haven't seen and probably skip Beijing which we have now been to 3 times !
OK...so now let me tell you that when we walked into the hotel in Guillin it had a beautiful lobby (as it appears all hotels have beautiful lobbies - but the rooms can differ completely) however you immediately got slapped in the face with the smell of dampness and mold. It was horrible. Guillin is a spectacularly beautiful city - but the weather in June/July is amazingly hot, hot, hot and so humid you can't imagine. You could cut the air with a knife and the knife would be wet! Now, remember, it was 3:00 in the morning and most of us were somewhat delirious. So, we all went to the rooms - which were horrible and went to sleep. However, facing two more nights there was just enough to make you cry. We all slept, got up late and met in the lobby late the next morning. One family did not sleep at all because of mold allergies. They asked Louie to move to another hotel. Although we hadn't asked we all felt the same way. Now, all the hotels we stayed in so far in the big cities were 4 star hotels, for big cities they were quite nice. When you go to a smaller town like Guillin - 4 star hotels are like 2 star hotels in US. So, Louie immediately moved us all to a 5 star Sheraton which was spectacular - our family had a two bedroom suite with a living room and 2.5 bathrooms - we were very happy. Once again, Louie made it all good and everyone was very grateful. Lotus Travel picked up the difference in cost and Louie apologies 10 times over about the hotel and couldn't have been more gracious about moving us and improving our conditions!
So.....after knowing we were going to the Sheraton, we piled back onto our bus and off to a local noodle shop - where we would experience local rice noodles - the aerage lunch would cost us $1.20 per person!! the pictures above are from this - you ordered the noodles from a counter, they put a bit of chopped meat on top and then you took your steel bowl of noodles to a counter and added hot peppers with bamboo shoots or pickedled peppers, etc to mix. We then took the noodles bowls upstairs to the air conditioned roo which means it was about 85 instead of 95 while we were eating the hot noodles. The toilets by the way (squat only - haven't even described these in detail yet) were a -2 on a scale of 1-5! The noodles were wonderful! By the way, Hannah has become incredibly profeciant at using chopsticks! However, because Ben does not like using metal silverware (part of his sensory issues) we had packed plastic forks and spoons with us and always had them in purses or back packs - so Ben didn't have to wrestle with chopsticks and when Hannah got tired of suing them we always had back ups!
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