Today was a great day! Much more relaxing, although our morning was quite the experience.
We had to take two taxis to the orphanage since there are so many of us. So I took Hayden, Addisyn and Sam and Baylee rode in another taxi with Jane our guide. We had the equivalent of a Disneyland Indian Jones ride for our taxi experience so we arrived rather quickly. The kids were all bugged eyed and holding on tight to the door and the seat to stay in their seats. I was holding on to Sam to keep him from flying through the front window if we stopped suddenly. We arrived about ten minutes before Baylee and Jane and were quickly directed into this nice greeting room with couches and tables. We were ushered to a specific couch with cameras flashing and everyone smiling at us. Of course no one spoke English so we didn't really know what anyone was saying. After about a minute they decided that we needed to move to another couch due to better lighting. They just kept snapping pictures and talking. Finally Baylee and Jane arrived. Jane was a bit overwhelmed as well, it was more than she expected as well. They video taped and took pictures for about a half hour. They made a big deal of the gifts and the photo album that the director presented to us for Sam. The photo album was really sweet, it had baby photo of him and then several pictures of him at different stages. At the back of the book was pictures of him with his foster family. The funny thing with the gifts is they were all ones that we sent him but he never got to play with or have. Everything was packed as we sent it. Long story but this orphanage director has been playing games with all sorts of things with Sam's adoption. She has been full of accusations and lies. I was really worried about meeting her face to face but it turned out fine. Then they suggested that we also give our gifts to the director and her assistant. After all of that we finally got to go visit the orphanage. The reports came with us as we went to the playroom. It was so staged it was quite comical. They had us give candy to the kids that we brought and play ball with Sam. All of the kids wanted attention of course but they wanted us to just play with Sam. Then the media left! Yeah! We saw a couple of babies in cribs, one only 15 days old. It looked premature. I asked why so few children were placed for adoption. There were several cute kids with repaired heart defects and an adorable little guy with limb deformities of both arms. I tried to tell the director in a polite way that families would probably be interested in adopting these children. The director through our guide just said "Why?". Jane our guide said you could tell from her tone and expression that she really didn't believe that to be true. How sad.
After the orphange visit we went to the beach. It was beautiful. It was warm but not overly hot and the water was warm. We played in the Yellow Sea! We stayed for hours. The kids all collected rocks and shells and played in the water and sand. Sam and Addisyn experienced the beach for the first time. We took a long walk down the beach where hardly any one was and found some little tide pools. It really was such a fun day.
A great time was had by all!
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