Visiting the Orphanage

Today our morning started in leisurely fashion, with a relaxing breakfast and a little more shopping. In the afternoon we met and drove about a half an hour to the orphanage, The Children's Welfare Institute of Kunmimg Municipality. Our first impressions of the CWIK was that it was located in a very nice part of Kunming surrounded by many new apartment buildings and wide streets.

The orphanage was tucked away on a hill in a nice quiet setting. The offices and the adoptive parent waiting room was very clean and nicely arranged. We were offered some Kunming tea and asked to wait a few minutes before we toured the orphange. The entire facility was immaculately clean and orderly, however, all of the orphanages are somewhat "staged" when the families tour the facilities. Nonetheless, Tracy and I were very happy to see that Tess lived in such a clean place. This orphanage has 600 children, but today 400 of the children are in foster care families. Today we saw a few children. Sadly, 85% of the children at the CWIK are disabled and will not likely live outside the orphanage and seeing some of the disabled children was upsetting for all of us. Even more upsetting was seeing some older boys, we felt like we bringing them home too. That said, the childeren we met were very polite, happy and full of bright smiles. I gave the boys the thumbs up, peace sign and high fives and they certainly loved the attention.

We visited a number of the play rooms, sleeping rooms, eating rooms, bathrooms etc. The babies slept in rooms with as many as 18 others. Tess-- Xia Jai Li (she ji lee)-- was a bit of a celebrity today. Every woman that passed by us immediately recognized Tess and called her by name and then they called their friends over to see her. We had the opportunity to ask a lot of questions and we found out that Tess had been sick recently and received an IV to keep her from getting sicker. We also found out that Tess wasn't much of an eater so nobody took the time to feed her solids and baby food beyond a bottle. So she really fell behind in her growth and that explains why we'll have some challenges getting her off a bottle and on to solid foods.

Tess is really a beautiful baby with gigantic brown eyes and long lashes. Every worker commented on her beauty and her huge curious eyes.

We think Tess knew where she was this afternoon and the change in her demeanor and personality after we left the orphanage has been amazing. She's been belly laughing, and smiling all evening, and her movement has shown marked improvement. More importantly, she knows that she has a family that loves her. Tomorrow we will sightsee in the countryside and will visit the Stone Forest. Friday we fly to Guangzhou for the final leg of our journey.