New Places & Faces

Our day started off at around 3-5 am... that was when most of woke up
and couldn't go back to bed. We went downstairs in our hotel to have
another Chinese breakfast. We had most of the same stuff: chicken
feet, mushrooms, steamed bread :), bread filled with veggies, soy
beans, sticky rice, pumpkin bread, some fried pumpkin & banana, and
then they brought us a donut type food. It was covered in sugar and it
was absolutely delicious!! However, at breakfast you just choose what
you want from the carts they bring around and they only give you 3 at
a time. It's a little hard when you have 10 hungry people! Haha, but
they ended up making us 3 more batches especially for us, since the
Chinese don't like too many sweet foods. After we had breakfast we
headed to the orphanage for day 2, part 1. When we got there all of
the older kids were upstairs playing in the playroom and watching
Spongebob Squarepants on the TV. We brought some of the toys and
crafts for them today so we decided to let them see the bubbles while
we were in that room. They LOVED them!!! They would blow them for each
other and then run around chasing after them. There was one little
girl that I noticed though that only had 2 toes on each foot. She
couldn't walk very well, she would take a couple of steps and then she
would fall or would try to grab something to support her. All of the
kids were running around chasing the bubbles, and she was trying so
hard to but she still couldn't. So I picked her up and took her to
where all the bubbles were and she loved catching and popping them, it
was so fun to watch her smile and laugh because she is usually very
shy. After a little while the kids had to go, so we went into the baby
rooms and held and played with them for a while. Katie and I got to
feed some of the infants and rock them until they all went to sleep,
and then for the rest of the time we played with the toddlers in the
play room. After we left the orphanage we went to a new restaurant
(actually the only restaurant we have been to besides our hotel and
the service stop). It's specially was noodles and they had supposedly
been famous for 100 years or something like that. The noodles were
quite yummy, they had some lemongrass in them and were much better
than the rice noodles from the service stop! When we were done with
lunch we went back to the hotel and took naps and played cards. Lily's
nephew Carrey played (or tried to) cards with us. It was quite funny
because he doesn't speak English so it took awhile to explain the
games! At about 2:40 we headed back to the orphanage. Megan, Charlie,
and I went up to the newborns and held them for quite a bit. Both
Megan and I found two little girls that had a really bad cough and
would cry hysterically if you put them back in their cribs, so we held
them for about half an hour until they got really sleepy and would
finally go to sleep. After all the babies were asleep we went and
played with the toddlers for a while. Of course I went straight to my
little crazy haired girl and played superman with her until she was
laughing so hard I thought she may choke! Haha. Also, I got to hold
the little boy (we thought it was a girl) who doesn't have any eyes.
He loves to be held and laughs so hard when you lean him down so his
head is towards the ground if that makes sense. After a little bit we
all went down to the big kid floor and they all sang and did
introductions for us, it was so cool and sweet. Susan had brought some
foam picture frames and stick on foam stickers for the kids to
decorate and they loved it! (As I type this I think that may have been
in the morning, but I'm so exhausted everything just meshes together,
but I do know we did that today, haha). We also gave the big kids some
Silly Bandz which the nannies used to put little ponies all over their
head (for the girls). We took lots of pictures and they loved looking
at them afterwards and saying that it was them in the picture. It was
too cute! Some other big hits for the older kids were the jump ropes,
stickers, tattoos, and soccer balls. I truly think they had a lot of
fun today, and I can't wait to go back tomorrow morning. When it got
to about 5 we had to leave and we headed back to our hotel. Some of us
went to the supermarket and some of us just stayed at the hotel to lay
down for a while. At 6:30 we went to dinner at the same place we went
to for lunch. They made us a salty/spicy beef, delicious green beans,
HUGE steamed bread (like 20 of them... and we took some back with
us :)), rice, a scrambled egg type dish, seasoned tofu, and some type
of leafy type thing. We were all so tired we weren't even that hungry
(except for the steamed bread of course!) and it was really quiet most
of the time. Tomorrow we're going to the orphanage like usual, but
Susan, my mom, and probably Lily are going to get some gifts for the
orphanage. Alright, well I probably need to go to bed because I can't
even think straight while typing this (sorry for any mistakes, or if
it doesn't make sense)

P.S. I am going to post some pictures on another blog in a minute...If
someone could just email me at elyssamapple@mac.com saying if you saw
it or not that would be great! Thanks so much and we'll see you soon!