We left the little shopping area and our driver took us to the orphanage. Through David’s personal connections and those of his friends or other connections, we ended up being rather surprised with our day.
We just “happened” to drive up when one of David’s friends was walking in the courtyard with her lunch. He mentioned that we had gifts and wondered if we could bring them in to the office. The office was 4 white walls, a desk, and a couple wood benches. I was DRENCHING in sweat. I literally had to wipe it off every part of my body every second or two. It was absolutely disgusting.
As we talked, of course, more people joined us. The Chinese are a very curious people… especially of foreigners and foreigners with their babies. We were able to ask many questions and get some answers about Gabriella.
The one thing that sticks out in my memory was that they all said she couldn’t even stand when she came to the orphanage. The doctors don’t know what is wrong with her or how to treat her. Their CT scan said she has a small cerebellum.
They did teach her some Kung Foo exercises though... Kung Foo Mei Mei! It sounds like her “therapy” was very limited and very harsh. The Chinese believe that if your baby doesn’t cry in therapy that she is not doing enough. Whatever she did, because her body is so weak, it had to hurt extremely bad.
One of the gals gave Gabriella an apple. She had four bites from that. We gave them the gifts that we brought… 2 boxes of surgical gloves, lots of coloring books and crayons, and candies: organic suckers and ring pops.
We left the office after having been blessed with an extreme amount of time… not sure what that amount of time was but more than 20 minutes… maybe as much as 40 minutes. One of David’s friends, still on her lunch break, walked us around the courtyard. We did not get to go into the buildings though. While walking, we saw a giant rat. Oh joy!
We stopped at the park where we had seen some photos of Gabriella and her Chinese mama and sister You Mu Lan (Monique). Gabriella was EXTREMELY exhausted, so the photos didn’t go as well as we had hoped.
After saying our goodbyes, we loaded up into the van and left. As we rounded the corner, David and the driver were talking frantically on the phone. Not sure what they were doing, but they seemed to be frustrated about something. Good thing we were in an air conditioned vehicle. They could spend as much time as they needed doing whatever it was they were doing.
