Saturday, November 28, 2009

Day 7 - Zhanjiang

Today was a big day because it was officially the last day of the tour and many families will be leaving for home or other locations tomorrow. So that meant lots of group pictures and goodbyes. However it's not our last day because we are going to visit Briley's orphanage in Huazhou on Sunday which is approximately 2 hours away by car. The orphanage director is actually going to meet us at our hotel and take us there along with our guide who can interpret. We asked them beforehand what they needed at the orphanage and we are going to be purchasing a water purifier for them tomorrow.

Today which I think is Saturday we visited an "Important National Park of China". I guess that's how the translation worked out. Anyway it was a large lake formed in the crater of a volcano. The vegetation around the lake was very lush since this is in a topical area. Several of the kids from Brighton's orphanage joined us on the tour. Everywhere we went people were very friendly and would wave and say hello (nǐ hǎo) to us.





After touring the park we then had lunch at one of the hotels in town. The meals seem to get stranger every day. Today they served a dish that contained many animal parts including chicken feet, cow stomach and I don't know what else. They had an octopus dish that looked like sweet and sour chicken so a few people ate that before realizing what it was. Jeanna took a bite of another dish that was jellyfish before she knew it and then freaked out after finding out. At least they always serve rice and enough other dishes to find something to eat each time. Plus we've gotten pretty good eating with chop sticks.
This isn't a great picture but the girls on each side of the server look exactly alike and one of them is from the orphanage and the other is adopted from the orphanage and lives in Atlanta. We have no idea if the girls are related or not.



Here's a big piece of the jellyfish. Yummy...




After lunch we visited a pearl factory. Brighton got some pearl earrings and Briley got a custom made pearl bracelet.









Then some of us went back to the orphanage to meet their kid's foster parent. Brighton got to see her nanny again who took care of her at her home until we adopted her at 6 months. She still works at the orphanage but no longer keeps children at her home. She gave Brighton a very nice diary with a handwritten card in it for her plus some more pictures. We gave her a photo album of Brighton and some jewelry Jeanna had made. We exchanged addresses and she wants to keep in touch. She was very happy to see that Brighton was happy, healthy and beautiful.




Then we got to go to the baby rooms again...







That evening they had a going away dinner for us at the hotel. The ophanage director and people from BLAS who organzied the trip was there. The kids really liked it because they had some american food such as spaghetti and pizza along with the chinese food.



Brighton even got up on stage and made a lovely little speech on how much she enjoyed the trip and would like to come back one day.














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