Day 4 (August 4th) A work project and playing with kids

I can't believe it's taking me so long to catch up on all of this! It is so hard because I have to go and gather everyone else's pictures -from facebook or snapfish- and organize them in the right order on my computer. Everyone else got such good shots I didn't want to only share my pictures on here. Anyways... moving on!

Day 4 was our first day with nothing huge planned. The days previous consisted of meeting everyone, flying and arriving in China, and climbing the Great Wall. This day was much more mellow but still amazing!

At breakfast we gathered out all of the different products we had. It was so interesting to see Chinese 'Sprite' or 'Coke' It sometimes tasted the same but other times it would taste very different from what we're used to!

Our agenda for the day was cleaning out this 'shed', which was more like a warehouse, about the size of... a 4 car garage? maybe? either way, it was big and FULL of donations. We had to remove all the donations then put them back inside, in order. The dust was unlike any other dust I've encountered. Add to that the fact we were so hot and sweaty, and you'll get a gross group of people! It was SO exhausting but fun at the same time. Here's a picture of about half of us. Can you tell how dirty and disgusting we were?!

This project took 3 or so hrs, if I'm remembering correctly. Afterwards we cleaned up and went to find some kids to play with.

This is sweet little Anna, she has a disease that affects her legs. She cannot walk and drags herself around, it was so sad to watch. She was such a beautiful girl and praise GOD she left halfway through our trip to go get adopted! (I'm not sure why only this part is underlined, and I can't figure out how to fix it!)

I love these next 3 pictures. Ben - the boy in the picture above - is one of the oldest orphan boys at Hope Foster Home. He LOVES to take pictures. He got a hold of my camera and went around the room, getting people to pose for him. This picture is of the 3 nannies, or Ayi's, that are in charge of this room. Each nanny is responsible for 2 or 3 kids. One of the girls on our team brought sunglasses for the kids, but the nannies liked them too!

This little girl was so beautiful and precious. Looks like a little doll :)

This little guy broke my heart and changed my life. I'm not sure how exactly, but he did.

Up until this point, all the kids we had been playing with had been overjoyed to be with us. They would immediately greet us, with hugs or huge smiles, then lead us off to play. You couldn't help but be happy. You forgot about how serious their situation was. This little guy, however, had the most heartbreaking expression. I had seen him with other people and he was happy and playing, but when I went in the room to be with him, he was not. I'm not sure if he was tired or what, but either way, he pierced my heart. He looked so forlorn and was whimpering, so I picked him up. He didn't stop. I tried to make him more comfortable, holding him in different ways, yet still he whimpered. I can handle just about any kid crying, but for some reason, his cries broke my heart in half. It was like I was sensing his sadness, this lonely life he is living. I realized, for the first time since being in China, that yes, these kids may act happy and excited to see us ( like the kids previous had) but at the same time, they are orphans, with no family. They are deprived of love. That absolutely tore me up. Tears wanted so badly to flow but I fought them back. I wanted to be strong and just love on this little guy.
I finally got myself together, at least a little bit. I took a picture with him and held him some more.
The rest of day 4 consisted of eating supper and having our first devotion. It went really well and we all slept good after a long and busy yet life changing day!

Day 3 (August 3rd) Climbing the Great Wall

It's taking a little longer to post everything than I expected. My wisdom teeth surgery seems to have backfired. My body apparently didn't like the meds they gave me for swelling, infection, and pain. I can't keep any of them down. We talked to the doctor and now I'm off all meds. So far that has solved the nausea problem but now the pain is intense and always present. Not fun :( So now I'm trying to ignore pain and focus on blogging. This will be a long post with lots of pictures!

Our first night in China we fell asleep around 8PM or 9PM, and woke at 5AM! Jet lag didn't affect us too terribly, just turned us into those 'early to bed, early to rise' kind of people! They scheduled the Great Wall for the day after arriving to help knock us out of any jet lag slump - it worked!

Here are a few shots I took in the morning before we left. This is a view of the orphanage from the back. We had to walk on this path from our yurts to get inside the orphanage. Can you tell how foggy/smoggy it is?!

Here's the view from the opposite direction as the picture above. The 2 groups of girls slept in the yurts on the right and left, while the 2 boys slept in the middle one further back. We were all quite excited about the yurts but they were not what we expected. They definitely looked cool though :)

I loved this little circle arch :)

China had such pretty flowers. Here's one in the backyard.

Driving to our destinations on this trip was one of the most interesting things of all. It was so neat to observe and take China in as you pass by.

This is our whole team right outside the entrance to the Great Wall. It took a few hrs to get there, which gave us time to get our levels of excitement even higher!

Another group picture :)

There were quite a few of these cannons scattered about on the Great Wall. It was so crazy and surreal to be on something that is such a part of Chinese history. Not to mention it is one of the 7 wonders of the world! So unreal.

The Praying Mantis wanted to try climb the Great Wall too! Wonder how far he made it?

Comforting, right?

We took a ski lift type thing to get to a certain level of the Great Wall, where we could begin climbing. I took this picture from the ski lift but this is the 'toboggan' we would later take on our way down the Great Wall. The ride lasted at least 10 minutes and wasn't as scary as I was expecting. We each had our own little 'toboggan' with a lever we pushed to make it go faster/slower. It was definitely an experience!

Here is Katie and myself on this ski lift thing we rode. It took a while to get to the top. We didn't mind, it gave us time to take in the amazing view!

Here's another picture of us. We had some team members who were really faithful at taking pictures and now we're sharing them, so that is why I'm IN a lot of the pictures :)

Getting off the ski lift was QUITE the feat! It did not stop so it was up to us to jump off at just the right moment. As you can see the Chinese man is helping us out a bit :)

Such a beautiful place.

If you can't tell from my very RED and SWEATY face, it was a hot and humid day.

Here is Amanda, Katie, and me, in front of one of the many 'buildings' located along the wall. This picture is so unreal to me now. It doesn't feel like this actually happened, that I really did climb the Great Wall. It seems like too amazing of a thing to have actually happened! I guess this picture proves it did!

Our team eventually broke off into little groups, as some people wanted to turn back, or wanted to go a different route. In this picture is my group - Hannah, Katie, myself, and Jonathan. We had SO much fun! We were miserably hot and so thirsty and tired, but we managed to laugh just about the whole time. Jonathan was quite the sport to put up with us three :)

We searched all over for a bathroom, and finally (after a long detour due to our failure to read Chinese maps correctly) we found a bathroom! We had only encountered American toilets so far, so you can imagine our surprise when we opened the stall doors and found.....

the Squatty Potty! (the name is pretty self explanatory)

We had American toilets at the places we stayed throughout the trip, and sometimes when we were out and about, but we had become well acquainted with the good ol' squatty potty by the time the trip was over.

Here's a video I sneakily recorded of this sweet little family climbing the great wall. I'm guessing it was a grandmother, a mother, and her son.

Our first full day in China was such a blast, as you can hopefully tell from these pictures. It was such an experience and started our trip off in such an amazing way!

Day 2 (August 1st & 2nd - due to time change)

This day will get a little confusing due to the massive time change, but I'm just grouping it all as one day, even though it consists of both August 1st & August 2nd.

Our day began with the hustle and bustle of getting all our luggage and ourselves ready by 9AM sharp. We had to take a shuttle to the airport, where we began our flight check in. Our flight didn't leave till noon but since it was international, you're required to check in around 3 hrs early. I'm always a little nervous about the security part of flying, all of the checkpoints and whatnot that you have to go through. The process is much more in depth when the flight is international, but I quickly got over the nervousness.

This picture is most of our team gathered in the hotel lobby, ready to head to the airport. We just about took up the whole lobby!

Our seating arrangements were in alphabetical order so I was with the 2 other last name "L's" on the team. Next to me is Elizabeth, she was the youngest person on our team (just turned 15) and next to her is Katie. As you can see, I somehow managed to get the window seat. I was pretty excited about that!

We flew over some really neat places - Siberia, the North Pole, Greenland, Russia, and Mongolia. This picture was somewhere over Siberia or Greenland.

Russia!

The plane we flew on was SO NICE! We each had our own personal TVs with a few hundred different movies and tv programs to choose from. My TV quit working 3 hrs into the flight but Elizabeth was nice enough to share :) When we were almost to China, we synced Elizabeth and Katie's TVs to play Mulan at the same time. We took a picture of this, the scene with the Great Wall, because we couldn't believe that scenery in a movie we had all loved growing up was about to become reality to us! We were going to see this with our own eyes.

We landed in Beijing about 12 or 13 hrs later. It was around midnight for us, but in Beijing it was 3 in the afternoon. The airport was very different than I was expecting. We all expected there to be huge masses of people, but it was actually fairly empty. We had to go through customs - this time it was a little more nerve wracking. China is a little crazy about swine flu (we saw a lot of people walking around with masks, trying to protect themselves from the sickness) so we all had to go through this fever detector. If any of us had a fever, we would be quarantined and kept for who knows how long. Thankfully we all made it through!

Here is a picture of most of our team on the escalators. I'm on the left side towards the top in the blue shirt.

We had to gather all of our stuff (40 suitcases total!) and wait outside for our bus. The weather was humid like you wouldn't believe. Humidity in the US and humidity in China are not the same, I'll tell you that much!

The drive to our destination - Hope Healing Home, was full of excitement and amazement as we tried to take in all of our surroundings. It is a whole new world over there. When we arrived, these sweet little boys were looking through the window, anxious to meet us!

We had a quick tour and introduction to the people who run Hope Foster Home, then we were able to spend some time with the kids. They absolutely LOVE camera's. If you had your camera with, you were instantly attacked. It was so cute though, they were so full of curiosity.

This is Julie showing this sweet little boy Timmy a picture she took.

Here is Stephanie and Elizabeth with a sweet little baby girl.

This little boy - Joshua, was such a ham! He had the biggest smile ever, and these big chubby cheeks to show it off on. He was such a funny little guy.

This boy quickly became one of my buddies. He was such a fun little guy, eager to play and show you things.

This picture cracks me up! Joshua was looking so intently at the camera. I love his crossed legs!